COMM231 Lecture 1: Questions and Quotations 5
16 Dec 2017
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Document Summary
A common mistake many beginning speakers make is to seek dramatic change in the values, beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors of their listeners. Keep in mind that the more firmly your audience is anchored to a position, the less likely you are to change their attitudes. A speaker needs to ease in their argument. Trying to immediately and dramatically change beliefs will not work, as it will make the audience feel more anchored to their position on the topic. In order to ease in an argument, the speaker needs to tackle smaller pieces first before going into the main issue, by then the audience should have enough information in order to illicit a change. The article refers to this as arguing incrementally. The goal should be to catch the audience off guard, by putting them in a position where they are unsure of what they actually believe in and thus vulnerable to outside influence.
