Experiential Learning #7

Critique on Peer Persuasive Speeches

In each of these speeches the goal of my peers was to gain the favorable consideration of the audience for their points of view. This is also known as the art of persuasion.

To begin, all of my peers including myself utilized audience demographics in order to better motivate and persuade their audience; though this seemed to be done unconsciously. For example, in order to achieve the maximum effect of persuasion from the audience, my peers tended to adjust as much as possible to the audience demographics. Audience demographics are defined as “how people feel about subjects is often affected by their age, gender, education, group affiliations, and sociocultural backgrounds. This action is done to better identify important “attitudes, preferences, or concerns across a general population” or in this case a “target audience”. For example, the target audience is the class which includes a total no larger than 10 individuals all gathered for a common cause, to take a class and learn the aspects that go along with Public Speaking. Age and education are a couple of these demographics, and because the majority of the audience is around the same age and we are all there in the same situation being in college and have about the same education, those two are given. There is also the identification of the gender and sociocultural backgrounds of each individual. There was a speech that pertained to one gender more over the other, but it didn’t seem as if the information was adjusted based on the genders included in the audience. The topics that were discussed seemed to be basic and not bias toward any one demographic over another; but it is important to note that this should have been something that needed to be taken into consideration when preparing these speeches.

Next, all of my peers utilized attention grasping information including: facts, statistics, and plenty of examples; some even used expert testimony and quotations. Another thing that I thought was useful was the inclusion of definitions for some terms that were being used. I thought this was important because if an individual in the audience was unaware of the subject being discussed, in order to better motivate them they would need to be fully aware of what is being said. For example, one of the speeches performed by Arieyl was titled: Emergency Contraception a.k.a Plan B. Even though I could reason it was a type of contraception which would be something to help prevent pregnancies, I didn’t know exactly what it was; so a definition was totally useful in this situation.

Lastly, all of the speeches included the Process of Persuasion. This process is defined by five stages: awareness, understanding, agreement, enactment, and integration. In my opinion, some of these speeches skipped some stages or even did not finish the process to move its audience toward a goal, but in the end the message was still understandable.

The first stage as previously noted is awareness. In this stage the speaker had the responsibility of telling the audience about a problem and informing them of the effects it has on our lives. For example, in one of the speeches, “Animal Testing” by Erin, she immediately let the audience know of her position on animal testing and explained why it was such a problem that needed to be confronted. Erin did this by asking a plethora of questions at the beginning and throughout her speech in order to both keep the attention of the audience and to reiterate the significance of the problem. She then stated how it affected our lives and gave numerous alternatives to solve the problem.

The second step is understanding. In this phase it is the job of the listeners to retain and understand what it is that the speaker is saying in order to make the audience want to react. For example, in Christy’s speech on “Organ Donors” she showed her stance on the issue by showing the importance of becoming an organ donor. For example, after she was done giving examples and reasons for why one should sign up to become an organ donor I related it to myself and understood that I would want to be able to save another life by registering to become an organ donor and tried to remember if I was registered or not.

The third and fourth phase seemed to take place simultaneously for me. These are: agreement and enactment. In these phases I found myself agreeing with a lot of these speeches and realizing that there was a problem that needed to be acted on and I wanted to help make a change. For example, one of the speeches that really got me thinking was Mary’s speech on “Capital Punishment”. First of all I already agree with the fact that I don’t think anybody should have the right to take the life of another person just because of an action taken by that person. Secondly, I realized that was not her only argument when she stated the total costs of execution vs. life imprisonment. When I heard this information I was ready to make a change, especially given the fact that this money was coming from the pockets of the American taxpayer.

The last step is integration, in which the audience realizes the connection the information shared has with their lives. In this connection we tend to see a “consistency between our values and behaviors.” For example, in the speech “Drink Water or Die” by Rachael, I always knew it was important to drink water and keep that balance; but when I heard her speech and all the possible side effects from not drinking enough water, I wanted to change my actions and thinking on the subject. Therefore I integrated this new attitude to drink more water and committed to it after the speech. Rachael also helped make this decision easier when she passed out water bottles at the end of her speech.

In conclusion, all of the speeches seemed to persuade my thoughts. From the use of audience demographics and the persuasion process I feel as though my peers did a great job persuading the audience.