Page 390 - Between One and Many The Art and Science of Public Speaking

Chapter 13 Informative Speaking 357

openly discussed. We don’t feel that student speakers should altogether avoid
sensitive topics such as this one. However, they do need to consider the question
of compatibility with audience belief systems so that they can soften or qualify
the information to make it appropriate for everyone in the audience.
Consider how we might approach an informative speech on stem cell re-
search for two different audiences. The fi rst audience is composed of family
members of people with diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and diabetes.
The second is a religious group whose members believe that life begins at the
moment of conception. The fi rst group is likely to be hopeful that embryonic
stem cell research can provide a cure for their loved ones. The second is likely
to oppose any research that could lead to the destruction of what they believe
is human life. A speech virtually the same would engender quite different re-
actions from these two groups. In approaching the second group, we need to
make it clear that our intent is not to attack their deeply held religious beliefs.
We might qualify the information in the speech with statements such as these:
“I realize that for many people the whole issue of stem cell research raises
ethical concerns, and I am mindful of these concerns.”
“Putting aside our religious views for the moment, let me describe what we
know about the potential benefi ts of stem cell research.”
“Regardless of how you feel about this issue, I’d like you to put yourself in
the shoes of someone who has just learned his or her young daughter has
been diagnosed with juvenile diabetes and faces a lifetime of insulin shots,
with potentially fatal complications.”

The point is that information that is potentially incompatible with audience
members’ worldviews can be made appropriate if it is presented in a way that
acknowledges the audience’s point of view.

Audience Accessibility

Simply put, audience members cannot benefi t from information that they can-
not grasp. An audience accessible informative speech is one that the audi-
audience accessible
ence readily understands. Suppose, for example, that you are a biology major
Content the audi-
and you want to inform an audience about mapping the human genome. Should
ence is able to under-
you use words peculiar to your major? Should you use the same approach with
stand, regardless of its
an audience of beginning speech students as you would with a group of seniors complexity.
in a biochemistry class? Of course not.
Research tells us that one of the quickest ways to turn off an audience is to
unnecessarily complicate a topic. We don’t have to avoid complex topics for our
informative speeches. In fact, they are likely to be both novel for the audience
and interesting for us to research. The goal is to make complex topics accessible
and compelling.
Jaime Escalante’s calculus classes in Stand and Deliver are models of the pre-
sentation of complex information. He broke the lessons into easy-to-digest bits,
what he called “step by step.” In fact, he would say to his students, “This is easy.”
It’s not so much the complexity of the topic as the complexity of a speaker’s ex-
planation that makes a topic diffi cult for an audience to understand.
An excellent way to reduce the complexity of a speech is through analogies
or comparisons. Explain a complex process, for example, by comparing it with
a common process based on the same principle. In his speech on stem cell re-