Ch. 23

This chapter was extremely helpful with our last speech. I was really struggling with finding my voice in this speech because although it’s something I care about deeply, growing up in a small and mostly religious town, a lot of people didn’t and despised it. I’m not going to lie after reading this chapter and looking back at my dry run, I have a lot to change and also in confidence. Out of the whole chapter, my biggest takeaway was on page 171, “Success in persuasive speaking requires attention to the human psychology.” The other section of this chapter that I found Bothe helpful and interesting was “Appeal to Emotion.” If I can use my emotions and the audience that I can provide a powerful persuasive speech. Within that section it states, “Infusing parts of the speech with repetition and parallelism, which creates rhythm and drama, also arouses emotion.” Sometimes I fear that I do that too much, but it’s obviously a key aspect in persuasive speeches. Obviously I can’t state everything I enjoyed in this chapter, but those are definitely the key portions I will remember.

Ch. 24

First off this chapter talked about claims and how there are all sorts of different types of claims. I never knew that, I just thought a claim was a claim and that that was all there was to it. This was also one of the first chapters that used examples that I could relate to and connect with. In one of the examples they used the phrase that “Nikes are superior to other brands of shoes because everyone wears Nikes” (186). I know that wasn’t a good example, but it sparked off inspiration form one of my previous classes where we had to convince the audience that our company we chose was the best company out there. It made it easier for my brain to understand the aspect behind being persuasive in a manner I never thought of. This chapter also makes it extremely obvious that there are so many ways to set up a persuasive speech. Once I was done reading it was information overload in my brain, but after letting it soak in, I realize I have options when it comes to my organization and set up.