Chapter 14

Goals of informative speechs (362ff)

1. Providing new information or perspective
2. Agenda setting
• I should probably clarify this a bit -- in class, I often state that agenda setting is literally agenda setting.  It is.  But you should understand that there are a number of different sorts of agendas.  In this section of the book, it concentrates on political agenda setting.  What should the country (or town or university or other collective audience) currently be considering?
  
3. Creating positive or negative feeling

Strategies (364ff)

1. Definition -- tell us the terms, the parts.  Affirmative action is...
   
2. Reporting -- tell us what happened.  Can be chronological, but doesn't have to be.
3. Describing -- tell us what happened, but tell it to us as a story.  Where reporting is objective, describing doesn't have to be.
4. Explaining -- tell us the context of what happened.  Where reporting and describing concentrate on the outward effects of actions, explaining tells us why those actions happened.  Think forensic.
5. Demonstrating -- show us, don't tell us.  Demonstrating an action can be particularly memorable.
6. Comparing -- describe something for us by a sustained evaluation against something both similar and different at the same time.  This is a good way to present multiple options in a speech.

Encouraging Retention (374ff)

The "forgetting curve."  As time passes, we forget more.

Strategies to maximize retention:

1. Keep audience attention
2. Reinforce active listening by your audience by recognizing and supporting it
3. Organization
4. Use the nurse's we
5. Be interesting.  Yes, this is #1 again.