ELEMENTS OF PUBLIC SPEAKING : We can explain public speaking by identifying its essential elements and processes and by comparing and contrasting it to everyday conversation. In public speaking a speaker presents a relativly continuous message to a relatively large audience in a unique context Public speaking. Like all forms of communication, is a transactionalprocess. À process whose elements or parts are interdependent. Never independent. Each element in the public speaking process depends on and interacts With all other elements. For example, the way in which you organize a Speech will depend on such factors as the speech topic, the specific audience. The purpose you hope to achieve. And a host of other variables, all of which are explained in the remainder of this unit and in the units that follow. Especially important is the mutual interaction and influence between speaker and listener. True, when you give a public speech, you do most of the speaking and the listeners do most of the listening. The listeners, however. Also send messages in the form of feedback, for example, applause, bored looks, nods of agreement or disagreement, and attentive glances. The audience also influences how you'll prepare and present your speech. It influences your arguments, language, method of organization—almost every choice you make. You would not, for example, present the same speech on saving money to high school students as you would to senior citizens. Speaker In conversation the speaker's role exists in short. spurts; Alice says some-thing to which Rick replies to which Alice responds. and so on. In public speaking you deliver a relatively long speech and are usually not interv rupted. As a result, the public speaker occupies a more central position-you're the center of the transaction; you and your speech are the reason for the gathering. As a speaker you bring to'the public speaking situation all that you are and all that you know. Further. you bring with you all that the audience thinks you are and thinks you know. Everything about you becomes Significant and contributes to the total effect. of your speech. Your knowledge. speech purpose, speaking ability, and attitudes toward the audience tell the audience who you are. Message In both conversation and public speaking you communicate with some purpose in mind. For example, in conversation you might want to tell a friend about what happened at a recent. basketball game. in this case your purpose is informative. Or you might wrufit to convince your boss to give you a raise. Here your purpose is persuasive. in public speaking, you also communicate with a clear purpose in mind, and public speeches serve these same functions. If you wanted to convinceyour friend to go to the movies. you would not simply say, "Come to the movies with me." More likely, you would offer some reasons or inducements: "It's a really exciting movie," or "Today is the last day it's playing." The number of arguments or reasons you offer will depend on howresistant you think your friend might be. The same is true in public speaking. You don't simply say, "Vote for Johnson." Rather, you would give your listeners reasons why they should vote for Johnson and perhaps reasons why they‘shouldn't vote for Johnson's opponent. This is where the often-dreaded research comes in; you have to discover through research the reasons why your listenersfshould vote for Johnson. What are Johnson's voting records. achievements. and competencies? Technology has made an enormous body ot in‘lormation available to everyone. The World Wide Web alone contains more information than would ever have been in ahy single library, and all of it. is available on your desktop. At the same time, technology has made searching for just the right information extremely1 easy and a great deal of fun. Generally. in conversation you don't give any real thought to how you're going to organize your message. In public speaking, however. Organization is crucial because it's an extremely useful tool for both informing and persuading an audience. Organization adds clarity to your message and therefore makes it eaSier for listeners to understand what you're saying. At the same time. it will help listeners remember what you said. Organizationm-for example. where you put your strongest argument or how you develop an argument to present to a hostile audience is one of your most powerful persuasive tools. In conversation you vary your language on the basis of the person with whom you're speaking, the topic you're talking about, and where you‘re located. When talking with children. For example, you might use easier words and shorter sentences than you would with friends. If you were trying to impress someone, say, at a job interview. You might use a more sophisticated style. In public speaking you also adjust your language to your audience. The topic. And the situation in the same way as in conver- sation. In public speaking. However, your listeners can't interrupt you to ask what a particular word means or to repeat that last sentence. Your language must be instantly intelligible. ChanneIs In public speaking a speaker addresses a relatively large audience with a relatively continuous : discourse Usually, it takes place in a face-to-face situation : you deliver an oral report in your economics class. you ask your co-workars to elect you as shop steward, you try to convince your neighbors to clean up the streets or other students to donate blood. These are all public speaking situations. But, increasingly often, public speaking is mediated ; often it's delivered in a television studio and heard by millions in their own livingrooms. And as it has changed so much else. the Internet has given new life to public speaking. Making it much easier for the average person to reach large avdiences. As video and sound capabilities Become more universal, public speaking on the Net is likely to increase dramatically in frequency and in cultural significance. Messages are the signals sent by the speaker and received by the listen-or or From listener to speaker. These signals pass through one or more channels on their way from speaker to listener and from listener to speaker. The channel is the medium that carries the massage signals from sender to receiver. Both the auditory and the visual channels are significant in public speaking. Through the auditory channel. You send your spoken messagesyour words and your sentences. At the same time, you also send messages through a visual channel through eye contact (or the lack of it). body movement, hand and facial gestures, and clothing. Noise Noise interferes with your receiving a message someone is sending or with their receiving your message. Noise may be physical (others talking loudly. cars honking. illegible handwriting. "garbage" on your computer screen]. physiological (hearing or visual impairment, articulation disorders). psychological (preconceived ideas. wandering thoughts). or semantic (misunderstood meanings). Technically. noise is anything that distorts the message. anything that prevents the listeners from receiving your message. All channels contain noise or interference. Each medium has a builtin source of noise. A useful concept in understanding noise and its importance in public speaking is "signal-to noise ratio." Signal refers to information that you'd find useful and noise refers to information that is useless (to you). So. For example. a mailing list or newsgroup that contains lots of useful information would he high on signal and low on noise, those that contained lost of useless information would he high on noise and low on signal. When you search for a topic on the Web and the search engine identifies 6,342 sources. much of them will he noise interfering with your securing the messages you want. junk mail. and the corresponding phone calls urging you to switch phone companies or get a new credit card would also be examples of noise (at least to those who don't want to switch phono companies or get a new credit card). Public speaking involves visual as won as spoken message, so it's important to see that noise may also be visual. The sunglasses (that prevent someone from seeing the nonverbal messages from your eyes wguld be considered noise as would dark print on a dark background in your slides Table 1.2 identifies these four major types of noise in more detail. All public: speaking situations will involve noise. You will not be able to totally eliminate it, but. you can try to recluse its effects. Making your language more precise. organizing your thoughts more logically, and'pre; sentjng your speech with reinforcement from visual aids are some ways to combat the influence of noise.