Chapter Overview

To be effective in persuasion, you must have a thorough knowledge of the audience. Find out exactly where your listeners stand concerning your view. Are they opposed, apathetic, neutral, or already convinced? Then plan a strategy to move them toward your position.

During a persuasive speech, enhance credibility with the audience by explaining your competence, by being honest and careful with speech material, by remaining open-minded, and by showing common ground with listeners.

Build your case by using strong evidence (such as statistics, examples, and testimony) that is accurate, up-to-date, and typical. Try to use a variety of sources, all of them reliable and reputable.

Use sound reasoning as a powerful tool of persuasion. Two popular forms are deductive reasoning, in which you take a generalization or principle and apply it to a specific case, and inductive reasoning, in which you observe specific instances and then form a generalization. In using logic, avoid these fallacies: hasty generalization, red herring, attack on a person, false cause, building on an unproven assumption, false analogy, either-or reasoning, or straw man attacks.

Whenever possible, appeal to listeners' motivations—their needs, desires and drives that impel them toward a goal or away from some negative situation. Focus on the listeners' needs, not your own. If possible, appeal to more than one motivation, and anticipate conflicting needs.

Finally, try to arouse the listeners' emotions, making sure that you always combine emotional appeals with rational appeals, and that you always use emotions ethically.