Public Speaking Chapter Nine

Organization:
- Critical listening is difficult when listeners cannot tell where the speaker is going or how
the parts of the speech are related to each other
- Following a speaker’s organization helps:
o Recall, remembering the main ideas
o Active listening
o Personal satisfaction, being able to anticipate what is coming next makes listeners
feel good
o Organization can be a guide to check and make sure nothing important gets left
out
- Organization has two parts: selection and arrangement
Organization: the selection of ideas and materials and their arrangement into a discernible and
effective pattern
Selection:
- Main ideas are signaled in the speech by roman numerals, these are the claims that
address the issues in the speech
- Determine possible main ideas from thesis or specific purpose or from patterns in the
research
o Based on what the issues are in the thesis
o Based on topics that appear multiple times during research
- Criteria for selecting topics
o Most speeches have between 2 and 5 main ideas
o Reduce number of topics by asking two questions
§ Is this idea really essential to the speech?
• Material that does not relate the topic to the purpose is nonessential
• Nonessential material may distract listeners from the speech
§ Can a more general statement combine several ideas?
- Characteristics of Main Ideas
o Simplicity
§ Main ideas should be memory aids for the speaker and the listeners
§ Main ideas should be stated in one simple short sentence
o Discreteness
§ Each main idea should be separate from the others
§ Overlapping ideas cause confusion for the speaker and audience
o Parallel Structure
§ Sentences that have the same grammatical structure and similar word
counts are easiest to remember
o Balance
§ Main ideas should contain roughly the same amount of material to make a
balanced perspective for the listeners
o Coherence
§ Separate main ideas have clear relationships with each other
§ Listeners understand why these main ideas appear in the same speech
o Completeness
§ Main ideas should cover everything of importance from the topic
 § The main ideas should give a complete view of the subject
Main Ideas: claims that address the issues in the thesis statement, the primary divisions of the
speech
Parallel Structure: structure in which phrases are of similar syntax and length
Coherence: clear relationships among ideas and topics so that the speech appears to hang
together as a natural whole
Arrangement:
- Ideas can be arranged dependently or independently
- Logically dependent ideas are like links in a chain
- Logical dependence is common in telling a story
- Logically independent ideas stand alone and the truth of each in no way rests on the
others
- A dependent pattern of reasoning can be risky because one under-supported main point
can cause the whole speech to fall apart
- A dependent pattern if done right is highly coherent and easy to follow
- Whether the speech is dependent or independent is highly based on the thesis
- If the ideas are dependent the arrangement is fixed, if they are independent the ideas need
to be intentionally arranged
Logically Dependent Ideas: cannot stand on its own but requires that another claim or statement
be true
Logically Independent Ideas: does not require the truth of any other claim or statement as a
condition for its own truth
Independent Arrangement:
- Are some of the main ideas unfamiliar?
o Begin with something that is already familiar to the listeners so after the become
engaged it is easy to shift to ideas they know less about
o Audience analysis helps to arrange the ideas from most to least familiar
- Should the strongest idea come first or last?
o The speaker can go with the primacy effect or the recency effect
o If one idea is weaker than the rest it should be placed towards the middle of the
speech
o Audience analysis affects topic, purpose, thesis, strategies, and delivery
Primacy Effect: a tendency for what is presented first to be best remembered
Recency Effect: a tendency for what is presented last to be best remembered
Patterns for Arranging Main Ideas:
- Chronological
o Past, Present, Future become the main points
o Normally start with past and go towards future but can go from future to past
- Spatial
o Arranges based on place or position
- Categorical
o Each main idea becomes its own major division in the speech
o Has no required order so main ideas should be stated in a parallel fashion
o This pattern is also called topical based on topoi
- Cause- Effect
o Cause and effect can look at either causes or effects first
 - Problem- Solution
o First lays out the problem and then gives one or more solutions
o May want to get listeners to think one solution is the best, or might just attempt to
teach the audience about the different solutions
o Problems may not be evident to the audience prior to the speech
o Speakers might have to prove there is a problem before they can provide solutions
- Comparison/Contrast
o Displays the similarities and differences between other topics that the audience
would be familiar with
- Residues
o Organizing the speech based on the process of elimination
o Could use this strategy to rule out all but one of the subject matter and then
support the last idea standing as the most reliable
Choosing a Pattern:
- The organizational pattern depends on the subject, purpose, audience, and culture
- No organizational pattern is right for any given speech
- One pattern will give the speech the most power based on strength of ideas
- Potential combinations of patterns are limitless
Selecting Supporting Materials:
- Main ideas are complex when they contain several supporting ideas or subheadings
- How much support is needed?
o Use enough evidence to support all the claims but do not become repetitive
o Depends on the audience analysis
o If the speakers already support the claim little support is needed
o If the speakers do not support the claim a large variety of support is needed
o The greater distance between the audience’s current views and what the speaker
wants them to think, the more support is needed
o Supporting material should not be redundant
- What kind of support is needed?
o The general goal is to aim for variety
o The audience is likely to pay more attention if the evidence is varied
o Different members of the audience will be swayed by different forms of evidence
- What criteria can be used to asses supporting materials?
o Strength of supporting materials
o Support that is easy to understand
o Support that is vivid or interesting
o Support that is consistent with other things you know
o Support that is efficient to present
o Support that is easily cited
Subheadings: ideas that are components of or support for the main ideas in the speech