Although we cannot know for certain, it is safe to assume that the art of speaking has been with us ever since we started using speech as a tool.

Our best guess is that our ancestors were already communicating this way nearly a hundred thousand years ago.

Over time, as these skills developed, it turned out that being a skilled speaker and one's standing in the community were connected.

It is much the same today: public speaking is regarded as a leadership skill, the one that lets your idea reach other people.

Getting your own idea heard takes some work these days. But we also have something that people before us had far less of.

We started writing down how to speak.

The classics

The earliest surviving records of a thorough approach to public speaking come from ancient Greece.

Aristotle, who lived 384–322 BCE, laid the foundations of today's art of speaking in his Rhetoric, setting it within the whole of the philosophy he stood for.

The foundations he laid were later developed by, among others, Cicero (106–43 BCE) and Quintilian (36–96 CE).

We single out Cicero for his political and oratorical successes, the experience of which he gathered in On the Orator (De oratore) and Orator.
We single out Quintilian for his achievements as a teacher of the Romans; of his works, Institutes of Oratory is the one most interesting to speakers.
It is worth adding that these are only three of the many philosophers and practitioners who took up the subject over hundreds of years.

A field to explore

What was the context that rhetoric belonged to?

Rhetoric

The art of speaking in order to achieve a goal. The word has had many definitions in the past – from "refined, purposeful speaking" to "the theory of speaking" – and other concepts later began to emerge from it.

Dialectic

The art of bringing two people with different views to a shared position.

It relies on finding common ground, isolating the points of dispute and examining each of them separately, talking through the consequences and how likely they are.

Contradiction

Throughout such a dialogue you should keep analysing what the other side says, because they may be making mistakes in their reasoning, deliberately or not.

Dialogue

Dialectic often takes the form of a dialogue. One person can even hold that dialogue with themselves, contrasting different perspectives, shedding light on the points of dispute and showing the consequences.

Eristic

It is also possible to speak in a way that sidesteps the substance, or that is entirely wrong and still sounds convincing to those listening.

This is the domain of eristic – the art of winning disputes. It works with sophisms: ways of arguing that contain deliberate errors, but errors that are hard to catch while someone is speaking.

Ethics

Rhetoric itself is morally neutral, but it can be used for good and for ill alike.

The classics were already aware of this, which is why they held that a good speaker should follow their values, should not lie, and should not hide their purpose from the audience.

Logic

Under this heading – understood differently today – people tried to answer questions about the nature of thought and about ways of reasoning (including how to draw conclusions from other information).

Closely tied to logic is the concept of the syllogism .

Argument from deduction

A conclusion drawn from two or more premises.

A classical kind of a logical argument that was a precursor to formal logic. Also called a syllogism.

It is a kind of deduction from two (rarely more) premises that are assumed to be true. When used properly, a conclusion drawn from these premises will also be true. There are 24 valid forms (from 256 possible combinations) and we are not going to introduce them all here, but here are some examples worth mentioning:

  1. Every person is mortal. Each Pole is a person. In conclusion, each Pole is mortal.
  2. No person has wings. Each Pole is a person. In conclusion, each Pole does not have wings.

When building a syllogism you start from your conclusion and find two premises, a major one and a minor one. A major premise is more general (as in above - every person...). A minor premise is smaller than the major one (as in above - every Pole). Premises can be written in the following forms: all X are Y; none X are Y; some X are Y; some X are not Y.

Example

Below is a set of premises. We need to draw a conslusion that the accused was not on the crime scene at Saturday's night.

  1. Witness: I was on night guard duty with the accused on some days in the week when the crime had happened.
  2. Witness: One of these days there was a bright moon.
  3. Weather report: All of the days except Saturday were clouded all of the time.
  4. Fact: The crime happened at Saturday's night.
  5. Witness were assigned to a guard duty from Monday to Sunday at a place where he met the accused. Before and after the week he was assigned to other duties.
  6. Except for this duty, witness had no contact with the accused.

From these premises one can draw the following comclusions:

  1. If the witness testified being on guard duty from Monday till Sunday and had no other contact before or after, he could only refer to the week when the incident had happened.
  2. Because the witness testified that he stood with the accused on the night where the moon was bright and the only night with visible moon was Saturday's night, the accused was on guard duty with the witness on Saturday's night.
  3. The crime happened at Saturday's night, at a night in which the accused has an alibi because of the witness testimony. In conclusion, the accused was not at the crime scene at Saturday's night.
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Although logic itself is closely bound up with mathematical proof, the quality of arguments is still debated today in a field called argumentation theory, which continues the work of classical logic.

We also know far more about the mistakes that can be made in an argument. That is the territory of cognitive biases, together with logical fallacies, which come from applying logic incorrectly.

The purpose and message of a speech

Building a speech should start with the answers to two important questions.

What is the purpose of the speech?

What does the speaker want to achieve? To persuade, to praise, to rebuke, to judge, to propose?
What are they speaking about? Is it something familiar? Unfamiliar? Publicly praised? Condemned?
Whom do they want to persuade? What are these people like? Are they part of the audience or all of it? Do they have anything in common? Do they know the subject?

What is the message of the speech?

What should the listener remember? Will they leave the room with something they did not have before?
What should the listener feel about the subject of the speech?
What should the listener feel about the speaker?
It is worth writing the answers to these questions down.

Three elements

The classics believed in certain interlinked threes, the so-called rhetorical triads.
teach move delight
logos ethos pathos
reason will emotion
future past present
deliberating judging praising

Deliberative speeches

These speeches serve teaching, but also decision-making. This form was tied to the future, and so to politics, answering the question: which of the available solutions is the best?

Judicial speeches

These speeches serve to interpret the past. They present the facts so as to lead the audience to the conclusions that follow from one side's interpretation. It is the form associated with court trials.

Epideictic speeches

These are speeches of praise and speeches of blame; speeches meant to entertain, humorous ones, but they can also condemn someone's actions. They leave the audience with a sense of fullness, satisfaction, inner agreement. They refer to what surrounds us today.
The best speakers combine elements from all the triads, so that their speeches are dynamic: not only persuasive, but also full of logic and beauty.

Emotions

Use the names below if you are looking for the right emotion for a part of your speech.
Love Contempt Admiration
Hope Shame Desire
Desire Hatred Joy
Sorrow Hope Rivalry
Courage Compassion Shame

Speaking to people

Preparing your speech well means knowing more than you intend to say, and feeling confident that you understand what you are talking about. That is what you are aiming for.
During the speech this gives you room to watch your audience. It is not only eye contact; it is also a chance to look at them properly and give each person a little of your attention.
After all, you are not talking to an audience. You are talking to each of the people in your audience, separately, since each of them has their own experiences and their own convictions.

What to look for

This lets you respond to your listener. You have at hand the pause, which captures attention; the paraphrase, which says something again in other words; and the variety of your own voice.
Or perhaps you sense that one of your arguments is missing the mark? Then you have a chance to react. Perhaps your listener lacks a piece of information that is essential to understanding your argument?
To some extent you can adjust the content of your speech as you go, and for that you need your attention on each of your listeners – not just on the inside of your own head.

Effective evaluation

When you evaluate yourself or someone else, remember one rule, two kinds of comments, the three steps of the sandwich method and the four points of the FUKO method.

One rule

Nothing is bad. There are only things that can be improved.

Two kinds of comments

Three steps of the sandwich method

Four points of the FUKO method

The name comes from the Polish words for facts, response, consequences and expectations.

Facts

Say, in the simplest words you can, what happened.

Your response

Time for your subjective opinion. How do you feel? Why does this particular fact matter to you?

Consequences

If what happened keeps happening, what will that lead to in the future, in your opinion?

Expectations

What change would you ideally like to see?

Classical speech

This speech structure is as old as ancient Greeks (400 BCE) and was written down by Aristotle. Because of that it pretends to a name of universal (or base) speech structure. It's main purpose is to persuade others to our cause, but it can successfully be used for other purposes as well.

Introduction

Grab attention. Open your audience for your argumentation that will be presented later. Set the tone and style of your speech.

An introduction (called exordium in Latin) is a part opening your speech. During this part, you are going to introduce the following:

  1. Your topic, thesis and an explanation why this topic is important for your audience
  2. Whether your speech relates to the past (making judgements), present (commenting on current events) or future (deliberating on solutions)
  3. Tone and style of your speech and what is to be expected from you
  4. Your own authority / competence regarding the topic

Depending on the topic, you can determine:

  1. What rhetorical styles are you going to use and when:
    • low (plain), useful for teaching and passing knowledge
    • high (grand), emotional, figurative, that persuades and moves people
    • middle (tactful), balancing between high and low style, used to please people, make them feel satisfied and in agreement
  2. What are the values or people you are going to defend? Are you on the side of the consensus and most of the audience is sympatethic to your casue? Or maybe you are in the minority and need to fight for sympathy? Does the audience even understand the topic?
  3. Should the introduction be presented directly or indirectly? Is it better to be secretive, to delay showing the topic until you'll gain sympathy from the audience?
  4. What is the tone of the speech? Is it a serious tone, a light tone, a thankful one, a judgemental one?

Avoid introductions that are long, generalized, too complex or loaded with tons of rhetorical figures as it can distract your audience.

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Narration

Lay out the facts, strong premises, information, events in a persuasive manner. These will become a ground for your argumentation.

In classical argumentation there is a visible division between laying down all of the factual evidence and drawing conclusions from them. In some speeches it can be showing evidence. In others it might mean presenting definitions necessary for understanding the speech.

Nowadays, a similar duality can be seen in court proceedings, where there is separate time for investigation and finding evidence, and a separate time for trial with evidence known to all parties.

Your audience believes that all important elements will be shown in the narration part of your speech. Separating evidence with your argumentation will be perceived as more credible and will give the audience time to verify your line of thinking.

Even given that rhetorics not always is used to find out truth, it is unreasonable to deriberately omit some information just because they are uncomfortable to a speaker. It is also risky as it requires only one person from the audience to speak up about missing evidence to put your argumentation in unfavorable light.

But you are not defenseless. Roman orators propose to use amplification techniques to strengthen facts that support your thesis and weaken claims against it. You can use these with references, emphasis, subverting anticipations and piling-up techniques - look up their definitions to learn more.

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Structure

Describe what arguments are you going to present and in which order.

This part is optional. It is up to you whether you want to state the order of arguments or not. We encourage you to have at least a table of contents if you are going to speak more than 20 minutes.

So what are the benefits of presenting the order of arguments? Well, in long lectures maintaining engagement through the whole time is near impossible, especially if some people in your audience know some of what are your going to say. If you present the structure of your argument first, your audience will know when a part interesting to them is going to happen.

On the other hand, consider leaving out some surprises for your audience, as these can easily make your speech more interesting. If there is no need to present the structure of your argument, remove this element from your outline.

When composing the speech, writing down all of the arguments will help you check if all of them are distinct and strong enough to be used. It might also be easier to find holes in your reasoning this way.

Arguments should be presented in the following order: 1) ones supporting your cause, 2) refutations to counterarguments from other people.

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Argumentation

Discuss the arguments that support your cause, draw the conclusions from these arguments and use other techniques that will persuade your audience.

If a speech contains a thesis, this thesis must be supported by arguments.

Arguments can refer to different modes of persuasion - Aristotle pointed out three: pathos (simply put, emotions), ethos (simply put, your credibility and authority) and logos (data, logic - or tricks merely imitating logic).

It's worth to mention that arguments do not need to be logic-based in a formal sense. A good rule of thumb is the ARG rule (described by Trudy Govier) which says that an argument can be deduced from premises that meet the following criteria:

  1. are acceptable to the audience (they refer to common knowledge, topics or in any other way are hard to falsify)
  2. refer to a main premise which we want to prove with our argument (as a counterexample: Poland does not need to introduce Euro because China does not have the currency and experiences economic growth - both countries are unrelated to each other)
  3. together all premises give a satisfactory ground to persuade audience that the main premise is also true (as a counterexample: all people I know earn less money than the average, so the average must be wrong)

Some people might be tempted to not follow these rules if they feel safe they are not going to be catched red-handed during your speech. It's important to keep that possibility in mind, especially during debates. Of course, we discourage doing that in your speech as it is most probably going to be recorded somewhere.

This app contains different types of arguments. Add them here after you've gathered your material.

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Refutation

Address the most common critique of your idea and present them in such a way that the counterarguments will lose their strength.

After presenting your arguments you are going to refute the most common counterarguments by your opponents.

The rules are similar to argumentation with one difference - you do not know exactly what counterarguments are going to be used against you so you need to do some guesswork which ones are going to be the most probable ones. Have answers ready for them.

Your goal is to contest the logic behind these counterarguments and find points that do not match your case or assumptions that you do not believe to be true. It is a mistake to admit that the perspective of the counterargument is of the same weight as your arguments. In such cases, even with evidence against you, you can try to find losses and other bad consequences that follow not listening to your advice.

There are some circumstances under which you might need to start with refutation and then follow with argumentation. If the topic is very controversial and there is a danger of losing your audience's attention it's better to start refuting common counterarguments straight away, and bit by bit gain more ground before trying out with supportive arguments. However, do not put all refutations early, as a large number of counterarguments can also be perceived as another counterargument. Try to refute two or three most important counterarguments at first, and then follow it up with your supportive arguments.

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Conclusion

A conclusion should be a short and impressive summary, where you remind your audience of the most important conclusions and instill a sense of closure in your audience.

It's time to wrap up your speech. In this part your thesis should be restated at least the third time.

How can you do it? For example:

  1. Self-reference your opening statements.
  2. Try to rephrase your message using other words, appealing to imagination but not losing cohesivity.
  3. With a simple anecdote that visualizes what would happen if we started doing the action now (or in near future).
  4. Presenting data in memorable format - If all of us spent one less minut with lights on...
  5. If your speech includes a call to action, do not forget to mention it.

All of these elements can be found in this app.

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Summary

See our other materials too.

European Funds Knowledge Education Development; Republic of Poland; Institute of New Technologies; European Union - European Social Fund

This application is a part of "Incubation of social innovations in the area of life-long learning of adults" co-funded by the European Union as a part of Operational Programme Knowledge Education Development 2014-2020.

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