Page 410 - Between One and Many The Art and Science of Public Speaking

Chapter 14 Persuasive Speaking 377

depends on an honest accounting of these constraints and confi guring your per-
suasive speech accordingly.
Time and place are two additional constraints common to the rhetorical situ-
ation. Your speech class is an immediate case in point. No doubt your instructor
has or will put a time limit on your persuasive speech. Your persuasive purpose
needs to refl ect this fact. You cannot hope to radically change something about
your audience in a 10-minute persuasive speech. Thus branding, reinforcement,
or inoculation may be your best option.
Speaking in the typical college classroom also can constrain the channels of
communication you’d like to use with your persuasive speech. We’ve noticed
during recent political campaigns, for example, that the candidates take the
stage accompanied by popular music. The music is intended to refl ect the cam-
paign theme and/or the persona of the candidate. Much as you might like to
follow suit, what are the chances that your instructor will approve you taking
center stage in the front of your classroom accompanied by music you perceive
as emblematic of your persuasive purpose?
Finally, there are potential constraints on the rhetorical situation that involve
you and your potential limitations as a public speaker. As we will discuss, how
your audience perceives you has an inordinate impact on the potential success
of your persuasive speech.
The point is simple. Persuasive speaking is a process where you will be re-
quired to make decisions about your chances of succeeding with a specifi c audi-
ence, in a specifi c context, under knowable constraints. Speakers need to think
about their persuasive purpose in this light. In addition, they also need to be
willing to rethink their persuasive purpose should the audience, context, and/or
known constraints demand it.

Managing Audience Perceptions

Even when we’ve done the best job possible of grounding our persuasive pur-
pose in the rhetorical situation we face, our task is far from complete. We must
also begin to think about how we are likely to be perceived by our audience, and
how we can manage audience perceptions to our persuasive advantage. Fortu-
nately, we have centuries of theory and research to guide us.
What an audience perceives to be true about a speaker is all that counts. And
nowhere is this more true than in the case of ethos, which is the degree to which
ethos
the audience perceives the speaker as credible. Aristotle believed that ethos is a
The degree to which an
personal attribute that is essential to a speaker’s chances of persuading an audi-
audience perceives a
ence. In fact, as the opening quotation in this chapter suggests, he viewed ethos speaker as credible.
as the most important aspect of a speaker’s persuasiveness.
Modern communication researchers have substantiated Artistotle’s thinking
about the importance of ethos. Today’s scholars use the term source credibil- source credibility
4
ity, which is the audience’s perception of the believability of the speaker. It is
The audience’s percep-
a quality your audience gives to you rather than one with which you are born.
tion of the believability of
Thus, a speaker might be truly competent in a particular subject matter, but if the speaker.
the audience does not know this, the speaker’s expertise will not increase his or
her credibility. Similarly, a speaker may be of good character, but if the audience
does not believe it, the speaker will suffer low credibility.