NOTES

Speech and Oral Communication

Topic: THEORIES (Part 1)

Persuasion

 induce attitude change

Enthymemes

 logos, appeal to logic

 Aristotle introduced the concept of shortened arguments, one premise is missing

 These shortcuts may work work because people have short attention spans

 however it is not applicable to all contexts, so use it carefully

Speaker Centric

 what can the speaker can do to persuade

Audience Centric 

 audience have the agency 

Cognitive Dissonance Theory

 psychological theory by Leon Festinger 

 in between speaker centric and audience centric

 mental discomfort or psychological stress produced by conflict attitudes, beliefs, or

behaviors
 usually leads to an alteration in one of the attitudes, beliefs, or behaviors, to reduce the

discomfort and restore balance

 The bigger life choice, the bigger cognitive dissonance and presence of conflicting

thoughts, but we automatically rationalize the dissonance we feel

 Hide the Pain Harold Meme - guilty feeling of what you´re doing wrong

 Change one or more of the attitude, behavior, beliefs to make the relationship

between the two elements a consonant ne or to eliminate the dissonance

 Acquire new information that outweighs the dissonant beliefs

 Reduce the importance of the dissonant cognition or belief

 NOTE- make audience feel uncomfortable, then make them listen to the speaker to

lessen the dissonance felt by audience and perhaps change their behavior or attitude

but make sure that the level of dissonance can be addressed