7.3 Exploring Types of Support

Website	URL	Type of Information
Bureau of Labor Statistics	http://www.bls.gov/bls/other.htm	The Bureau of Labor Statistics provides links to a range of websites for labor issues related to a vast range of countries.
Bureau of Justice Statistics	http://bjs.gov	The Bureau of Justice Statistics provides information on crime statistics in the United States.
US Census Bureau	http://www.census.gov	The US Census Bureau provides a wide range of information about people living in the United States.
National Center for Health Statistics	https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/	National Center for Health Statistics is a program conducted by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It provides information on a range of health issues in the United States.
Sense about Science Stats Check	https://senseaboutscienceusa.org/	Sense about Science Stats Check is a nonprofit organization that helps people understand quantitative data. It also provides a range of data on its website.
Roper Center for Public Opinion	http://ropercenter.cornell.edu/	Roper Center for Public Opinion provides data related to a range of issues in the United States.
Nielsen	http://www.nielsen.com	Nielsen provides data on consumer use of various media forms.
Gallup	http://www.gallup.com	Gallup provides public opinion data on a range of social and political issues in the United States and around the world.
Adherents	http://www.adherents.com	Adherents provides both domestic and international data related to religious affiliation.
Pew Research Center	http://people-press.org	The Pew Research Center provides public opinion data on a range of social and political issues in the United States and around the world.

Statistics are probably the most used—and misused—form of support in any type of speaking. People like numbers. People are impressed by numbers. However, most people do not know how to correctly interpret numbers. Unfortunately, there are many speakers who do not know how to interpret them either or who intentionally manipulate them to mislead their listeners. As the saying popularized by Mark Twain goes, “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics” (Twain, 1924).

To avoid misusing statistics when you speak in public, do three things. First, be honest with yourself and your audience. If you are distorting a statistic or leaving out other statistics that contradict your point, you are not living up to the level of honesty your audience is entitled to expect. Second, run a few basic calculations to see if a statistic is believable. Sometimes a source may contain a mistake—for example, a decimal point may be in the wrong place or a verbal expression like “increased by 50 percent” may conflict with data showing an increase of 100 percent. Third, evaluate sources (even those in Table 7.1 “Statistics-Oriented Websites,” which are generally reputable) using the CRAAP Method.

Definitions

Imagine that you gave a speech about the use of the presidential veto, and your audience did not know the meaning of the word “veto.” In order for your speech to be effective, you would need to define what a veto is and what it does. Making sure everyone is “on the same page” is a fundamental task of any communication. As speakers, we often need to clearly define what we are talking about to make sure that our audience understands our meaning. The goal of a definition is to help speakers communicate a word or idea in a manner that their audiences will understand. For the purposes of public speaking, there are four different types of definitions that may be used as support: lexical, persuasive, stipulative, and theoretical.

Definitions are important to provide clarity for your audience. Effective speakers strike a balance between using definitions where they are needed to increase audience understanding and leaving out definitions of terms that the audience is likely to know. For example, you may need to define what a “claw hammer” is when speaking to a group of Cub Scouts learning about basic tools, but you would appear foolish—or even condescending—if you defined it in a speech to a group of carpenters who use claw hammers every day. On the other hand, just assuming that others know the terms you are using can lead to ineffective communication as well. Medical doctors are often criticized for using technical terms while talking to their patients without taking time to define those terms. Patients may then walk away not really understanding what their health situation is or what needs to be done about it.

Lexical Definitions

A lexical definition is one that specifically states how a word is used within a specific language, or in other words, a word’s dictionary definition. For example, if you go to Dictionary.com and type in the word “speech,” here is the lexical definition you will receive:

Speech

noun

1. the faculty or power of speaking; oral communication; ability to express one’s thoughts and emotions by speech sounds and gesture:

Losing her speech made her feel isolated from humanity

2. the act of speaking:

He expresses himself better in speech than in writing.

3. something that is spoken; an utterance, remark, or declaration:

We waited for some speech that would indicate her true feelings.

4. a form of communication in spoken language, made by a speaker before an audience for a given purpose:

a fiery speech.

5. single utterance of an actor in the course of a play, motion picture, etc.

6. the form of utterance characteristic of a particular people or region; a language or dialect. (“Speech”)

Lexical definitions are useful when a word may be unfamiliar to an audience and you want to ensure that they have a basic understanding of the word. However, our ability to understand lexical definitions often hinges on our knowledge of other words that are used in the definition, so it is usually a good idea to follow a lexical definition with a clear explanation of what it means in your own words.

Persuasive Definitions

Persuasive definitions are designed to motivate an audience to think in a specific manner about the word or term. Political figures are often very good at defining terms in a way that is persuasive. Frank Luntz, a linguist and political strategist, is widely regarded as one of the most effective creators of persuasive definitions (Luntz, 2007). Luntz has the ability to take terms that people don’t like and repackage them into persuasive definitions that give the original term a much more positive feel. Here are some of Luntz’s more famous persuasive definitions:

Oil drilling → energy exploration

Estate tax → death tax

School vouchers → opportunity scholarships

Eavesdropping → electronic intercepts

Global warming → climate change

Luntz has essentially defined the terms in a new way that has a clear political bent and that may make the term more acceptable or distasteful to some audiences, especially those who do not question the lexical meaning of the new term. For example, “oil drilling” may have negative connotations among citizens who are concerned about the environmental impact of drilling, whereas “energy exploration” may have much more positive connotations among the same group. Or “estate tax” might sound like something that only affects wealthy people who have estates, but “death tax” makes this levy sound intrusive because it indicates that people are being taxed for dying.

Stipulative Definitions

A stipulative definition is assigned to a word or term by the person who invents it. In 1969, Laurence Peter and Raymond Hull wrote a book called The Peter Principle: Why Things Always Go Wrong. In this book, they defined the “Peter Principle” as “In a Hierarchy Every Employee Tends to Rise to His [sic] Level of Incompetence” (Peter & Hull, 1969). Because Peter and Hull coined the term “Peter Principle,” it was up to them to define the term as they saw fit. You cannot argue with this definition; it simply is the definition that was stipulated by the authors of the book.

Theoretical Definitions

Theoretical definitions are used to describe all parts related to a particular type of idea or object. Admittedly, these definitions are frequently ambiguous and difficult to fully comprehend. For example, if you attempted to define the word “peace” in a manner that could be used to describe all aspects of peace, then you would be using a theoretical definition. These definitions are considered theoretical because the definitions attempt to create an all-encompassing theory of the word itself.

Examples

Another often-used type of support is examples. An example is a specific situation, problem, or story designed to help illustrate a principle, method, or phenomenon. Examples are useful because they can help make an abstract idea more concrete for an audience by providing a specific case. Let’s examine four common types of examples used as support: positive, negative, nonexamples, and best examples.

Positive Examples

A positive example is used to clarify or clearly illustrate a principle, method, or phenomenon. A speaker discussing crisis management could talk about how a local politician handled herself when a local newspaper reported that her husband was having an affair or give an example of a professional baseball player who immediately came clean about his steroid use. These examples would provide a positive model for how a corporation in the first instance, and an individual in the second instance, should behave in crisis management. The purpose of a positive example is to show a desirable solution, decision, or course of action.

Negative Examples

Negative examples, by contrast, are used to illustrate what not to do. On the same theme of crisis management, a speaker could discuss the lack of communication from Union Carbide during the 1984 tragedy in Bhopal, India, or the many problems with how the US government responded to Hurricane Katrina in 2005. The purpose of a negative example is to show an undesirable solution, decision, or course of action.

Nonexamples

A nonexample is used to explain what something is not. On the subject of crisis management, you might mention a press release for a new Adobe Acrobat software upgrade as an example of corporate communication that is not crisis management. The press release nonexample helps the audience differentiate between crisis management and other forms of corporate communication.

Best Examples

The final type of example is called the best example because it is held up as the “best” way someone should behave within a specific context. On the crisis management theme, a speaker could show a clip of a CEO speaking effectively during a press conference to model appropriate verbal and non-verbal behaviors when dealing with a crisis. While positive examples show appropriate ways to behave, best examples illustrate the best way to behave in a specific context.

What to Consider When Using Examples

Although examples can be very effective at helping an audience to understand abstract or unfamiliar concepts, they do have one major drawback: some audience members may dismiss them as unusual cases that do not represent what happens most of the time. For example, some opponents of wearing seat belts claim that not wearing your seat belt can save you from becoming trapped in your car if it catches on fire. Even if a speaker has a specific example of an accident where this was true, many audience members would see this example as a rare case and thus not view it as strong support.

Simply finding an example to use, then, is not enough. An effective speaker needs to consider how the audience will respond to the example and how the example fits with what else the audience knows, as discussed under the heading of accuracy earlier in this chapter.

 

Narratives

A fourth form of support are narratives, or stories that help an audience understand the speaker’s message. Narratives are like examples except narratives are generally longer and take on the form of a story with a clear arc (beginning, middle, and end). Clella Jaffe explains that narratives are a fundamental part of public speaking that can be used for support in all three general purposes of speaking: informative, persuasive, and entertaining (Jaffe, 2010). Also, people like stories. In fact, narratives are so important that communication scholar Walter Fisher believes humans are innately storytelling animals, so appealing to people through stories is a great way to support one’s speech (Fisher, 1987).

However, you have an ethical responsibility as a speaker to clearly identify whether the narrative you are sharing is real or hypothetical. In 1981, Washington Post reporter Janet Cooke was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for her story of an eight-year-old heroin addict (Cooke, 1980). After acknowledging that her story was a fake, she lost her job and the prize was rescinded (Green, 1981). Also, if you are sharing a real story, clarify whether or not it is yours: an account of an event where you were actually present, or someone else’s that you heard second hand. In 2009, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal gave a nationally televised speech where he recounted a story of his interaction with a local sheriff who was getting help for Hurricane Katrina victims. Later, it was discovered that Jindal hadn’t actually been present when the sheriff was getting help for Katrina victims; he had only heard the sheriff tell the story after it happened (Finch, 2009). Jindal had misrepresented someone else’s narrative as his own.

Informative Narratives

Informative narratives provide information or explanations about a speaker’s topic (Jaffe, 2010). Informative narratives can help audiences understand nature and natural phenomena, for example. Often the most complicated science and mathematical issues in our world can be understood through the use of story. While many people may not know all the mathematics behind gravity, most of us have grown up with the story of how Sir Isaac Newton developed the theory of gravity after he was sitting under a tree and hit on the head by a falling apple. Even if the story is not precisely accurate, it serves as a way to help people grasp the basic concept of gravity.

Persuasive Narratives

Persuasive narratives are stories used to persuade people to accept or reject a specific attitude, value, belief, or behavior. Religious texts are filled with persuasive narratives designed to teach followers various attitudes, values, beliefs, and behaviors. Parables or fables and fairy tales are designed to teach people basic lessons about life. For example, Aesop’s fable “The Farmer and the Snake” warns people that just because they help someone in need doesn’t mean the other person will respond in kind (“The Farmer and the Snake”).

Entertaining Narratives

Entertaining narratives are stories designed purely to delight an audience and transport them from their daily concerns. Some professional speakers make a very good career by telling their own stories of success or how they overcame life’s adversities. Comedians such as Jeff Foxworthy tell stories that are ostensibly about their own lives in a manner designed to make the audience laugh. While entertaining narratives may be a lot of fun, people should use them sparingly as support for a more serious topic or for a traditional informative or persuasive speech.

Testimony

Another form of support you may employ during a speech is testimony. When we use the word “testimony” in this text, we are specifically referring to expert opinion or direct accounts of witnesses to provide support for your speech. Notice that within this definition, we refer to both expert and eyewitness testimony.

Expert Testimony

Expert testimony expresses the attitudes, values, beliefs, or behaviors recommended by someone who is an acknowledged expert on a topic. For example, imagine that you’re going to give a speech on why physical education should be mandatory for all grades K–12 in public schools. During the course of your research, you come across The Surgeon General’s Vision for a Fit and Healthy Nation (http://www.surgeongeneral.gov/library/obesityvision/obesityvision2010.pdf). You might decide to cite information from within the report written by US Surgeon General Dr. Regina Benjamin about her strategies for combating the problem of childhood obesity within the United States. If so, you are using the words from Dr. Benjamin, as a noted expert on the subject, to support your speech’s basic premise. Her expertise is being used to give credibility to your claims.

Eyewitness Testimony

Eyewitness testimony, on the other hand, is given by someone who was present at an event. Imagine that you are giving a speech on the effects of the 2010 “Deepwater Horizon” disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. Perhaps one of your friends happened to be on a flight that passed over the Gulf of Mexico and the pilot pointed out where the platform was. You could tell your listeners about your friend’s testimony of what she saw as she was flying over the spill.

However, understand the limitations of eyewitness testimony as supporting evidence. Eyewitness testimony is someone’s firsthand account of the event, which may not always be reliable. Always evaluate the credibility of your witness and the recency of the testimony. Consider how you received the testimony. Did you ask the person for the testimony, or did he or she give you the information without being asked? Also, does the witness have anything to gain from his or her testimony that might make the account biased? Finally, consider how much time has passed between the event and when the eyewitness recalls what happened. Testimony given soon after the event provides immediate impressions based on the witness’s subjective experience. For example, someone on the ground in Manhattan during 9/11 who saw the first plane fly into one of the World Trade Center’s towers might report that a terrible accident had just taken place. Testimony given long after the event, on the other hand, might lack clear, immediate impressions and be shaped by the witness having put the event into a broader historical context. So that same witness to the first plane hitting the World Trade Center, twenty years later, might have forgotten some of the details of her experience, but would now realize that she was watching 9/11 unfold in front of her.

Overall, the more detail you can give about the witness and when the witness made his or her observation, the more useful that witness testimony will be when attempting to create a solid argument. However, never rely completely on eyewitness testimony because this form of support is not always reliable and may still be perceived as biased by a segment of your audience. Defense attorneys and prosecutors, for example, are beginning to realize that eyewitness testimony as a method of identifying suspects is faulty given the number of people behind bars in recent years who have been exonerated by DNA evidence.

Analogies

An analogy is a figure of speech that compares two ideas or objects, showing how they are similar in some way. Analogies, for public speaking purposes, can also be based in logic. The logical notion of analogies starts with the idea that two ideas or objects are similar, and because of this similarity, the two ideas or objects must be similar in other ways as well. There are two different types of analogies that speakers can employ: figurative and literal.

Figurative Analogies

Figurative analogies compare two ideas or objects from two different classes. For the purposes of understanding analogies, a “class” refers to a group that has common attributes, characteristics, qualities, or traits. For example, you can compare a new airplane to an eagle. In this case, airplanes and eagles clearly are not the same type of objects. While both may have the ability to fly, airplanes are made by humans and eagles exist in nature.

Figurative analogies are innately problematic because people often hear them and immediately dismiss them as far-fetched. For example, during the Covid-19 pandemic, some people compared having to abide by city and state masking requirements as like living in Nazi Germany.  In fact, having to abide by state and city masking requirements is not like living through the Holocaust.

While figurative analogies may be very vivid and help a listener create a mental picture, they do not really help a listener determine the validity of the information being presented. Furthermore, speakers often overly rely on figurative analogies when they really don’t have any other solid evidence. Overall, while figurative analogies may be useful, we recommend solidifying them with other, more tangible support.

Literal Analogies

Literal analogies, on the other hand, compare two objects or ideas that clearly belong to the same class. The goal of the literal analogy is to demonstrate that the two objects or ideas are similar; therefore, they should have further similarities that support your argument. For example, maybe you’re giving a speech on a new fast-food brand that you think will be a great investment. You could easily compare that new fast-food brand to preexisting brands like McDonald’s, Subway, or Taco Bell. If you can show that the new start-up brand functions similarly to other brands, you can use that logic to suggest that the new brand will also have the same kind of success as the existing brands.

When using literal analogies, make sure that the ideas are closely related and that the audience can see a reasonable connection between the two ideas or objects being compared. If your audience sees your new fast-food brand as very different from McDonald’s or Subway, then they will not accept your analogy. You are basically asking your audience to confirm the logic of your comparison, so if they don’t see the comparison as valid, it won’t help to support your message.