Supporting Materials, Persuasive Appeals, and Delivery in Speeches

Supporting Materials in Speeches

The three types of supporting materials are examples, testimonies, and statistics and facts.

Examples

Examples you can use to illustrate your points include:

• Brief examples: Offer a single point of view about the topic.
• Extended examples: Provide multifaceted illustrations of the idea presented.
• Hypothetical examples: Describe what you believe the outcome might be.

Testimonies

Testimonies can add credibility to your speech. There are two main types:

• Expert testimony: Comes from a person with specialized knowledge about your topic.
• Lay testimony: Can be from an eyewitness with firsthand information.

Statistics and Facts

Adding facts and statistics to your speech can strengthen your arguments. Facts are documented information, and statistics are quantified evidence that summarize, compare, and predict things.

Aristotle's Three Persuasive Appeals

Aristotle identified three persuasive appeals:

• Logos: The Appeal to Reason

  Logos refers to persuasive appeals directed at the audience's systematic reasoning on a topic. It focuses on the logic behind the arguments.

• Pathos: The Appeal to Emotion

  Pathos is the appeal to emotion. Feelings such as love, fear, anger, and compassion underlie many of our actions and motivate us to do what we do.

• Ethos: The Appeal to Credibility

  Ethos is the appeal to credibility. It involves showing your audience how trustworthy and knowledgeable you are concerning the topic.

These three appeals work together to create a persuasive speech.

Voice and Body Language in Speech Delivery

In a speech, your voice and body behavior are crucial.

Vocal Delivery

• Volume: Adjust your speaking volume so your audience can hear and understand you clearly.
• Intonation: Vary the intonation during the speech.
• Pitch: Change the pitch of your voice from high to low at certain moments to convey your mood, enthusiasm, and commitment to the occasion.
• Pauses: Use strategic pauses to emphasize meaning and provide different types of punctuation.
• Pronunciation and Articulation: Carefully pronounce and articulate words correctly.
• Dialects: Be mindful when using dialects.

Body Language

Body language, including facial expressions, eye behavior, gestures, and general body movements, can communicate a lot about your enthusiasm and credibility when delivering a speech.