This chapter is adapted from Stand up, Speak out: The Practice and Ethics of Public Speaking, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.

What are the general purposes of speaking and forms of topics?

What do you think of when you hear the word purpose? Technically speaking, purpose can be defined as the reason for which something exists or is created or intended. For public speaking, all definitions apply. For example, why does the speech exist—how is the audience to use the information? Why do we personally create a speech? What is our intention for giving a specific speech? For this chapter, we focus on why we give speeches.

Ever since scholars started writing about public speaking as a distinct phenomenon, they began creating different systems to classify speech types. For example, Aristotle discussed three types: deliberative—political speech; forensic—courtroom speech; and epideictic—praise or blame speech. Cicero also discussed three types: judicial—courtroom speech; deliberative—political speech; and demonstrative—ceremonial speech, which is similar to Aristotle’s epideictic. More recently, St. Augustine of Hippo wrote about three specific speech types: to teach—provide people with information; to delight—entertain or show people false ideas; and to sway—persuade people to a religious ideology. All these speech types help people determine their speech’s general purpose. A general purpose refers to your broad goal in creating and delivering a speech.

These typologies or public speaking classification systems serve to demonstrate that general speech purposes have remained consistent throughout public speaking’s history. Modern public speaking scholars use three general purpose types: to inform, to persuade, and to entertain.

To Inform

The first general purpose type is to inform. Simply put, to inform means to help audience members acquire information that they do not already possess. Audience members can then use this information to understand something, such as a new technology or a new virus, or to perform a new task, or improve a skill such as how to swing a golf club, or how to assemble a layer cake. The most important goal of speaking to inform is that your audience gains knowledge. However, notice that the goal is not to encourage people to use that knowledge in any specific way. When you speak to encourage people to use knowledge in a specific way, you are no longer informing, you are persuading.

Let’s look at an example of how an you can accidentally go from informing to persuading. Say you are assigned to inform an audience about a new vaccination program. In an informative speech, your purpose is to explain to the audience what the program is and how it works. If, however, you start encouraging your audience to participate in the vaccination program, you are no longer informing them about the program, but rather persuading them to become involved in the program. One of the most common mistakes new public speaking students make is to blur the line between informing and persuading.

Why We Share Knowledge

Knowledge sharing is the process of delivering information, skills, or expertise in some form to people who could benefit from it. In fact, understanding and exchanging knowledge is so important that an entire field of study called knowledge management has been created to help people—especially businesspeople—to become more effective at harnessing and exchanging knowledge. In the professional world, sharing knowledge is becoming increasingly important. Every year, millions of people attend knowledge sharing conference or convention in hopes of learning new information or skills that will help them in their personal or professional lives (Atwood, 2009).

People are motivated to share their knowledge with other people for a variety of reasons (Hendriks, 1999). For some, the personal sense of achievement or of responsibility drives them to share their knowledge, which are internal motivational factors. Others are driven to share knowledge because they desire recognition or possibly to enhance their job, which are external motivational factors. Knowledge sharing is an important part of every society, so learning how to deliver informative speeches is a valuable skill.

Common Types of Informative Topics

Informative Topics fall into six general types as identified by O’Hair, Stewart, and Rubenstein: objects, people, events, concepts, processes, and issues (O’Hair, et al., 2007). The first informative speech type relates to objects, which can include how objects are designed, how they function, and what they mean. For example, one student gave a speech on how to design corsets and used a mannequin to demonstrate how corsets were placed on women and the amount of force necessary to lace one up.

The second informative speech type focuses on people. People-based speeches tend to be biography-oriented. Such topics include recounting an individual’s achievements and explaining why he or she is important in history. Some speakers, who are famous themselves, will focus on their own lives and how various events shaped who they ultimately became. Dottie Walters is most noted as being the first female in the United States to run an advertising agency. In addition to her work in advertising, Dottie spent much time as a professional speaker. She often told the story about her early years in advertising when she pushed around a stroller with her daughter inside as she went from business to business trying to generate interest in her copywriting abilities. You don’t have to be famous, however, to give a people-based speech. Instead, inform your audience about a historical or contemporary hero whose achievements are not widely known.

The third informative speech type involves explaining the significance of specific events, either historical or contemporary. For example, deliver a speech on a specific World War II battle or a specific presidential administration. If you’re a history buff, event-oriented speeches may be right up your alley. There are countless historical events that many people aren’t familiar with and will find interesting. Also, inform your audience about a more recent or contemporary event. Some examples include concerts, plays, and art festivals; athletic competitions; and natural phenomena, such as storms, eclipses, and earthquakes. The point is to make sure that in your informative speech, you talk about the event—who, what, when, where, why—and do not attempt to persuade people to pass judgment upon the event or its effects.

The fourth informative speech type involves concepts or abstract and difficult ideas or theories (O’Hair, et al., 2007). This speech type is very useful in helping people to understand complex ideas. Some include theories related to business, sociology, psychology, religion, politics, art, or any other major study area. For examples, see E. M. Griffin’s excellent list of communication theories on his website.

The fifth informative speech type involves processes, which are divided into two unique types: how-it-works and how-to-do-it. The first process speech type helps audience members understand how a specific object or system works. For example, explain how a bill becomes a law in the United States. There are very specific steps that a bill must go through before it becomes a law, so there is a very clear process to explain to an audience. The how-to-do-it speech, on the other hand, is designed to help people come to an end result. For example, give a speech on how to quilt, how to change a tire, how to write a résumé, or millions of other how-to oriented topics. In our experience, the how-to speech is probably the most commonly delivered informative speech in public speaking classes.

The sixth and final informative speech type involves issues, problems, or dispute matters (O’Hair, et al., 2007). This informative speech topic is probably the most difficult for novice public speakers because it requires walking a fine line between informing and persuading. If you deliver this speech type, remember the goal is to balance how you discuss both sides of the issue. To see an example of how you can take a very divisive topic and make it informative, check out the series Point/Counterpoint published by Chelsea House. This book series covers everything from blogging’s pros and cons to whether the United States should have mandatory military service.

Informative Speech: How Walt Disney Changed Animation, by BelmontSpeechLab, Standard YouTube License. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SfbzG2l1v8g

Keep in mind that the example above is not perfect, but it does give you another example of an informative speech.

To Persuade

The second general purpose type is to persuade. When we speak to persuade, we attempt to get listeners to embrace a view point or to adopt a behavior that they would not have done otherwise. A persuasive speech is distinguished from an informative speech by the fact that it includes a call for action for the audience to make some change in their behavior or thinking.

Why We Persuade

Persuasive speech fall into two main categories: pure persuasion and manipulative persuasion. Pure persuasion occurs when a speaker urges listeners to engage in a specific behavior or to change a view point because the speaker truly believes that the change is in the audience members’ best interest. For example, you give a speech on the importance of practicing good oral hygiene because you truly believe that oral hygiene is important and that bad oral hygiene can lead to many physical, social, and psychological problems. In this case, the speaker has no ulterior or hidden motive, such as you are not a toothpaste salesperson.

Manipulative persuasion, on the other hand, occurs when a speaker urges listeners to engage in a specific behavior or to change a view point by misleading them, often to fulfill an ulterior motive beyond the persuasive attempt’s face value. We call this manipulative persuasion because the speaker is not being honest about the real purpose for attempting to persuade the audience. Ultimately, this persuasion form is perceived as highly dishonest when audience members discover the ulterior motive. For example, suppose a physician who also owns much stock in a pharmaceutical company is asked to speak before a physicians’ group about a specific disease. Instead of informing the group about the disease, the doctor spends his time attempting to persuade the audience that the drug his company manufactures is the best treatment for that specific disease.

Obviously, the key question that a persuasive speaker must answer is what is the intent? Is the speaker intending to persuade the audience because of a sincere belief in a certain behavior or view point’s benefits? Or is the speaker using all possible means—including distorting the truth—to persuade the audience because he or she will derive personal benefits from adopting a certain behavior or view point? Unless your speech assignment specifically calls for a manipulative persuasive speech, the usual and ethical understanding of a persuasive speech assignment is that you use the pure persuasion form.

Persuasion: Behavior versus Attitudes, Values, and Beliefs

As we’ve mentioned in the preceding sections, persuasion can address behaviors— listeners’ observable actions—and it can also address intangible thought processes such as attitudes, values, and beliefs.

When the speaker attempts to persuade an audience to change behavior, often we can observe and even measure how successful the persuasion was. For example, after a speech attempting to persuade the audience to donate money to a charity, the charity can measure how many donations were received. The following is a short list of various behavior-oriented persuasive speeches: washing one’s hands frequently and using hand sanitizer, adapting one’s driving habits to improve gas mileage, using open-source software, or drinking one soft drink or soda over another. In all these cases, the goal is to make a change in audience members’ basic behavior.

The second type of persuasive topic involves a change in attitudes, values, or beliefs. An attitude is defined as an individual’s general predisposition toward something as being good or bad, right or wrong, negative or positive. If you believe that dress codes on college campuses are a good idea, give a speech persuading others to adopt a positive attitude toward campus dress codes.

A speaker can also attempt to persuade listeners to change some value they hold. Value refers to an individual’s perception of something’s usefulness, importance, or worth. We can value a college education, we can value technology, and we can value freedom. Values, as a general concept, are fairly ambiguous and tend to be very lofty ideas. Ultimately, what we value in life actually motivates us to engage in many behaviors. For example, if you value protecting the environment, you may recycle more trash than someone who does not hold this value. If you value family history and heritage, you may be more motivated to spend time with your older relatives and ask them about their early lives than someone who does not hold this value.

Lastly, a speaker can attempt to persuade people to change their personal beliefs. Beliefs are propositions or positions that an individual holds as true or false without positive knowledge or proof. Typically, beliefs are divided into two basic categories: core and dispositional. Core beliefs are beliefs that people have actively engaged in and created over their lives, such as a belief in a higher power or a belief in extraterrestrial life forms. Dispositional beliefs, on the other hand, are beliefs that people have not actively engaged in; they are judgments based on related subjects, which people make when they encounter a proposition. Imagine, for example, that you are asked the question, “Can gorillas speak English?” While you may never have met a gorilla or even seen one in person, you can make instant judgments about your understanding of gorillas and fairly certainly say whether you believe that gorillas can speak English, or not.

When it comes to persuading people to alter beliefs, persuading audiences to change core beliefs is more difficult than persuading audiences to change dispositional beliefs. If you find a topic related to a dispositional belief, using your speech to help listeners alter how they process the belief is a realistic possibility. But, as a novice public speaker, avoid persuading people to change their core beliefs. Although core beliefs often appear to be more exciting and interesting than dispositional ones, you are very unlikely to alter anyone’s core beliefs in a five- to ten-minute classroom speech.

To Entertain

The third and final general purpose type is to entertain. Whereas informative and persuasive speechmaking is focused on the speech process’s end result, entertainment speaking is focused on the speech’s theme and occasion. An entertaining speech can be either informative or persuasive at its root, but the speech’s context or theme requires speakers to think about the speech primarily in terms of audience enjoyment.

Why We Entertain

Entertaining speeches are very common in everyday life. An entertaining speech’s fundamental goal is audience enjoyment, which can come in many forms. Entertaining speeches can be funny or serious. Overall, entertaining speeches are not designed to give an audience a deep understanding of life, but instead, to function as a way to divert an audience from their day-to-day lives for a short time. This is not to say that an entertaining speech cannot have real content that is highly informative or persuasive, but its goal is primarily about the speech’s entertaining aspects and not focused on the speech’s informative or persuasive quality.

Common Forms of Entertainment Topics

There are three basic entertaining speech types: the after-dinner speech, the ceremonial speech, and the inspirational speech. The after-dinner speech is a speaking form where a speaker takes a serious speech topic, either informative or persuasive, and injects humor into the speech to make it entertaining. Some novice speakers attempt to turn an after-dinner speech into a stand-up comedy routine, which doesn’t have the same focus (Roye, 2010). After-dinner speeches are first and foremost simply speeches.

A ceremonial speech is an entertaining speech type where the specific speech context is the driving force. Common ceremonial speech types include introductions, toasts, and eulogies. In each case, there are specific events that drive the speech. Maybe you’re introducing an individual who is about to receive an award, or giving a toast at your best friend’s wedding, or delivering the eulogy at a relative’s funeral. In each case, the speech and the speech’s purpose is determined by the event context, not to inform or persuade.

The final entertaining speech type is designed to inspire the audience. Inspirational speeches are based on emotion, with the goal to motivate listeners to alter their lives in some significant way. Florence Littauer, a famous professional speaker, delivers an emotionally charged speech titled “Silver Boxes.” In the speech, Mrs. Littauer demonstrates how people can use positive comments to encourage others in their daily lives. The title comes from a story she tells at the speech’s beginning, where she was teaching a group of children about using positive speech, and one of the children defined positive speech as giving people little silver boxes with bows on top (speech).

How do I select a speech topic and a specific purpose?

Primary Speech Constraints

One of the most common stumbling blocks for novice public speakers is selecting their first speech topic. Generally, your public speaking instructor will provide you with some fairly specific parameters to make this a little easier, such as speaking about an event that has shaped your life or demonstrating how to do something. Whatever your basic parameters, at some point, you must settle on a specific topic. In this section, we discuss speaking constraints, picking a broad topic, and narrowing your topic.

Speaking Constraints

When we use the word constraint regarding public speaking, we mean any limitation or restriction imposed on the speaker. Whether in the classroom or in the boardroom, speakers are typically given specific instructions that they must follow. These instructions constrain speakers and limit what they can say. For example, professional public speakers are often hired to speak about a specific topic, such as time management, customer satisfaction, or entrepreneurship. In the workplace, a subordinate is assigned to present certain information in a meeting. In these situations, when speakers are hired or assigned to talk about a specific topic, they cannot decide to talk about something else.

Another constraint may occur when a speaker expects to speak for an hour, only to show up and find that the event is running behind schedule and their speech-time is reduced to thirty minutes. Having prepared a sixty-minute speech, the speaker now must determine what stays in and what must go. Both instances illustrate speaker constraint. Typically, we refer to four primary constraints: purpose, audience, context, and time.

Purpose

The first major constraint involves the speech’s general purpose. As mentioned earlier, there are three general purposes: to inform, to persuade, and to entertain. If you’ve been assigned to give an informative speech, you are automatically constrained from delivering a persuasive or entertaining speech. In most public speaking classes, this is the first constraint students will encounter because generally teachers assign you your exact speech purpose.

Audience

The second major constraint to consider is audience type. As discussed in the audience analysis chapter, different audiences have different political, religious, and ideological leanings. As such, choosing a speech topic for an audience that has a specific mindset is tricky, so don’t generalize. For example, you’re going to speak at a local Democratic leaders’ meeting. You may think that all Democrats are liberal or progressive, so you craft your topic to this group. But if you make this generalization, you will offend the conservative Democrats in your audience. Obviously, the best way to prevent yourself from picking a topic that is inappropriate for a specific audience is to really know your audience, which is why we recommend conducting an audience analysis.

Context

The third major constraint relates to context. For speaking purposes, context means the set of circumstances surrounding a particular speech. There are countless different contexts in which we may speak: in a college classroom, to a religious congregation, to corporate board members, in a retirement village, or in a political convention. In these different contexts, the speaker expectations are unique and different. Topics appropriate for a religious group may not be appropriate for corporate board members. And appropriate corporate boardroom topics may not be appropriate at a political convention.

Time Frame

The fourth major constraint is your speech’s’ time frame. For speeches given under ten minutes, you must narrowly focus your topic to one major idea. For example, in a ten-minute speech, you cannot realistically discuss the entire US Social Security program. There are countless books, research articles, websites, and other media forms on this topic, so trying to crystallize all that information into ten minutes is not realistic.

Instead, narrow your topic to something that is more realistically manageable within your allotted time. For example, speak about Social Security disability benefits using one disabled person as an example. By focusing on information that can be covered within your time frame, you will accomplish your speech’s goal.

Selecting a Broad Subject Area

Once you know your speech’s basic constraints, think about a topic. The first aspect to consider is what subject area you are interested in examining. A subject area is a broad knowledge area. Art, business, history, physical sciences, social sciences, humanities, and education are all broad subject-area examples. When selecting a topic, first pick a broad subject area because each area has a range of subtopics, which will help you quickly limit and weed out topics. For example, if we take art as a broad subject area, break it down further into broad subtopics such as art galleries and how to create art. Then, break down these broad subtopics into narrower subtopics such as prehistoric art, Egyptian art, Grecian art, Roman art, Middle Eastern art, medieval art, Asian art, Renaissance art, modern art. As you can see, topic selection is a narrowing process.

Narrowing Your Topic

Narrowing your topic to something manageable for your speech’s constraints takes time, patience, and experience. One of the biggest mistakes that new public speakers make is not narrowing their topics sufficiently. In the previous section, we demonstrated how the narrowing process works, but even in those examples, we only narrowed subtopics down to still broad areas. Think of narrowing as a funnel. At the wide funnel top are the broad subject areas, and your goal is to narrow your topic further and further down until just one topic can come out the funnel’s small end. The more you narrow your topic, the easier it will be for you to research, write, and deliver your speech.

So, let’s take one of the broad art subject areas and keep narrowing it down to a manageable speech topic. For example, for your constraints, let’s say that your general purpose is to inform; you are delivering the speech in class to your peers; and you have five to seven minutes. Now, let’s start narrowing our topic. The broad area to narrow in this example is Middle Eastern art. When examining the Middle Eastern art category, the first thing you’ll find is that Middle Eastern art is generally grouped into four distinct categories: Anatolian, Arabian, Mesopotamian, and Syro-Palestinian. We’ll select the subtopic Anatolian art, or the art of what is now modern Turkey.

You may think that your topic is now sufficiently narrow, but even within the Anatolian art subtopic, there are smaller categories: pre-Hittite, Hittite, Uratu, and Phrygian art periods. So, let’s narrow our topic again to the Phrygian art period (1200–700 BCE). Although we have now selected a specific art history period in Anatolia, we are still looking at a five-hundred-year period in which much art was created. One famous Phrygian king was King Midas, who according to myth, was given donkey ears and the power of a golden touch by the Greek gods. As such, there is an interesting array of art from the Midas period and its Greek counterparts representing Midas. At this point, we could create a topic about how Phrygian and Grecian art differed in their King Midas portrayals. We now have a topic that is unique, interesting, and definitely manageable in five to seven minutes. You may be wondering how we narrowed down the topic. We just started doing a little research on the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s website.

Overall, when narrowing your topic, start by asking yourself four basic questions based on the constraints discussed earlier in this section:

1. Does the topic match my intended general purpose?
2. Is the topic appropriate for my audience?
3. Is the topic appropriate for the given speaking context?
4. Can I reasonably hope to inform, persuade, or entertain my audience in my allotted speech time?

Approaches to Finding and Developing a Topic

Uh-oh, what if you have no clue what to speak about at all? Thankfully, there are many places where you can get help finding a good topic. In this section, we discuss various ways to find the best topic.

Conduct a Personal Inventory

The first way to find the best topic is to conduct a personal inventory. A personal inventory is a detailed and descriptive list about an individual. In this case, we want you to think about you. Ask your family and friends to help you. They are a great resource, and they know you well! Here are some basic questions to get you started:

• What’s your major?
• What are your hobbies?
• What jobs have you had?
• What extracurricular activities have you engaged in?
• What clubs or groups do you belong to?
• What political issues interest you?
• Where have you traveled?
• What type of volunteer work have you done?
• What are your goals?
• What social issues interest you?
• What books do you read?
• What movies do you watch?
• What games do you play?
• What unique skills do you possess?

After responding to these questions, you now have a list of many interests that are unique to you and that you can realistically develop into a speech. If you’re still quite stumped after conducting a personal inventory, the next recommendation we have is to use a finding aid. A finding aid is a tool that will help you find possible topic lists. Three finding aids include polling organizations that tally information, media outlets, and the Internet.

Polling Organizations

There are several polling organizations that regularly conduct American public research. Not only are these organizations good for finding interesting research, the most recent polls indicate what people are interested in understanding today. For example, The Gallup Organization regularly conducts polls to discover Americans’ perceptions of current political issues, business issues, social issues, and other great interesting information. Browsing their website can help you find very interesting speech topics. The following is a list of websites that offer tallied information:

• The Gallup Organization
• US Census Bureau
• Polling Report
• Rasmussen Reports
• Zogby International
• Pew Research Center

Media Outlets

The next great way to find interesting speech topics is to watch television and listen to the radio. The evening news, the History Channel, and the National Geographic channel all provide numerous speech topic ideas. There are even a host of television shows that broadcast the latest and most interesting weekly topics, such as Dateline, 20/20, and 60 Minutes. Here are some recent 20/20 segment examples to use for interesting speech topics: former Tarzan actor, Steve Sipek, has lived with tigers for forty years; the science behind the Bachelor phenomenon; the world of childhood schizophrenia; and a girl born with a rare “mermaid” condition.

Also, talk radio is full of interesting speech topic possibilities. Prominent talk radio shows must fill two to three hours airtime, five days a week, so show producers are always looking for interesting topics. Let those producers do the investigative work for you! If you’re listening to talk radio and hear an interesting topic, write it down and think about using it for your next speech.

It’s important to understand that your goal is not to use a given television or radio program as the basis for your speech, nor do you want to repeat the exact arguments that a talk radio host or caller has made. We are not advocating stealing someone’s ideas—do your own thinking to hone in on your speech topic. You can certainly use ideas from the media as contributions to your speech; however, if you do this, it is only ethical to make sure that you correctly cite the show from which you heard the topic by telling your audience the title, station, and air date.

The Internet

You can, of course, look for interesting speech topics online. While the Internet may not always provide the most reliable information, it provides a rich source of interesting topics. For example, to browse many interesting blogs, check out blogcatalog.com or findblogs.com. Both websites link to hundreds of blogs you could peruse, searching for a topic that inspires you.

If you find yourself really stumped, there are even a handful of websites that specialize in helping people find speech topics. Yes, that’s right! Some insightful individuals have posted long lists of possible speech topics right on the Internet. Here are some we recommend:

• Topic Selection Helper for Informative Speeches
• 509 Informative Speech Ideas and Topics
• Term Paper or Speech Topics

Using the Internet is a great way to find a topic, but you’ll still need to put in the time and do your own thinking to really investigate your topic once you’ve found one that inspires you.

Poll Your Audience for Interests and Needs

The last way you can find a great topic is to poll your audience. For the first poll type, you can research audience interests and needs by either formally handing people a questionnaire or just asking people casually. When you ask potential audience members about their interests, it’s not hard to quickly find that interest patterns exist in every group. Suppose it’s your turn to speak at your business club’s next meeting. If you start asking your fellow club members and other local business owners if there are any specific problems their businesses are currently facing, you will probably see a pattern develop. While you may not be an expert on the topic initially, do some research to see what experts have said on the topic, and pull together a speech using that research.

For the second poll type, conduct what we call a needs analysis. A needs analysis involves a set of activities designed to determine your audience’s needs, wants, wishes, or desires. The purpose of a needs analysis is to find a gap in information that you can fill as a speaker. Again, you can use either informal or formal methods to determine where a need is. Informally, ask people if they have problems with something specific like writing a business plan or cooking in a wok. The only problem that can occur with the informal method is that you often find out that people overestimate their own knowledge about a topic. Someone may think they know how to use a wok even though they’ve never owned one and never cooked in one. For that reason, we often recommend conducting a more formal needs analysis method.

The formal method for conducting a needs analysis is threefold: (1) find a gap in knowledge, (2) figure out the cause, and (3) identify solutions. First, find that a gap in knowledge actually exists. Overall, this isn’t very hard to do. You can have people try to accomplish a task or just orally have them explain a task to you. If you find that they are lacking, you’ll know that a possible need exists. Second, figure out what is causing the gap. One of the mistakes that people make is assuming that all gaps exist because people lack information. This is not necessarily true—it can also be because people lack experience. For example, people may have learned how to drive a car in a driver education class, but if they’ve never been behind the steering wheel, they’re not really going to know how to drive. Would giving a speech on how to drive a car at this point be useful? No. Instead, these people need practice, not another speech. Lastly, when you determine that the major need is informational, it’s time to determine the best way to deliver that information.

Stating the Specific Purpose

Once you have chosen your general purpose and topic, it’s time to take your speech to the next phase and develop your specific purpose. A specific purpose starts with the following: one general purpose, your specific chosen topic, and your objective—what you hope to accomplish with your speech. Basically, answer the who, what, when, where, and why questions to find your speech’s specific purpose.

Getting Specific

To get at your speech’s core—the specific purpose—know whether your general purpose is to inform, persuade, or entertain, which will make picking an appropriate topic easier. Obviously, depending on the general purpose, you will have various topic types. For example, let’s say you want to give a speech about hygiene. You could still give a speech about hygiene despite your general purpose, but the specific purpose would vary depending on whether the general purpose is to inform—discussing hygiene practices around the globe; to persuade—discussing why people need to adopt a specific hygiene practice; or to entertain—discussing some strange and unique hygiene practices that people have used historically. Notice that in each case, the general purpose alters the specific topic, but all three are still fundamentally about hygiene.

Now, when discussing your speech’s specific purpose, you must answer who, what, when, where, why, and how questions. Let’s examine each separately. First, know who is going to be in your audience. Different audiences, as discussed in the audience analysis chapter, have differing desires, backgrounds, and needs. Keeping your audience first and foremost in your thoughts when choosing a specific purpose will increase the likelihood that you create a speech that your audience will find meaningful.

Second you must answer the what question, which is the topic description. When picking an effective topic, make sure that the topic is appropriate for your speech constraints and context limitations.

Third, you must answer the when question, which is when you deliver your speech. Different speeches may be better delivered at different times of the day. For example, explaining the importance of eating breakfast and providing people with cereal bars may be a great topic at 9:00 am, but may not have the same impact if you’re speaking at 4:00 p.m.

Fourth, you must answer the where question, which is the speech’s location. Are you giving a speech in a classroom? At a church? In an executive boardroom? Depending on your speech’s location, different topics may or may not be appropriate.

Fifth, you must answer the why question, which is the reason your audience needs to hear your speech? If your audience doesn’t care about your specific purpose, they are less likely to attend to your speech. If it’s a topic that’s a little more off-the-wall, you’ll really need to think about why they should care.

Once you’ve answered your who, what, when, where, and why questions, it’s time to create your actual specific purpose. First, a specific purpose, in its written form, should be a short, declarative sentence that emphasizes your main speech topic. Let’s look at an example:

In this example, we’ve quickly narrowed a topic from a more general topic to a more specific topic. Let’s now look at that topic in terms of a general purpose and specific purpose:

For the purpose of this example, we used the same general topic area, but demonstrated how you could easily turn the topic into either an informative speech or a persuasive speech. In the first example, the speaker is going to talk about the danger embedded journalists face. In this case, the speaker isn’t attempting to alter people’s ideas about embedded journalists, just make them more aware of the dangers. In the second case, the specific purpose is to persuade a group of journalism students (the audience) to avoid jobs as embedded journalists.

Your Specific Statement of Purpose

To form a clear and succinct statement of the specific purpose of your speech, start by naming your general purpose (to inform, to persuade, or to entertain). Follow this by a capsule description of your audience (my peers in class, a group of kindergarten teachers, etc.). Then complete your statement of purpose with a prepositional phrase (a phrase using “to,” “about,” “by,” or another preposition) that summarizes your topic. As an example, “My specific purpose is to persuade the students in my residence hall to protest the proposed housing cost increase” is a specific statement of purpose, while “My speech will be about why we should protest the proposed housing cost increase” is not.

Specific purposes should be statements, not questions. If you find yourself starting to phrase your specific purpose as a question, ask yourself how you can reword it as a statement. Table 6.3 “My Specific Purpose Is…” provides several more examples of good specific purpose statements.

My Specific Purpose Is...

Now that we’ve examined what specific purposes are, we are going to focus on a series of tips to help you write specific purposes that are appropriate for a range of speeches.

Audience, Audience, Audience

First and foremost, you always need to think about your intended audience when choosing your specific purpose. In the previous section, we talked about a speech where a speaker is attempting to persuade a group of journalism students to not take jobs as embedded journalists. Would the same speech be successful, or even appropriate, if given in your public speaking class? Probably not. As a speaker, you may think your topic is great, but you always need to make sure you think about your audience when selecting your specific purpose. For this reason, when writing your specific purpose, start off your sentence by including the words “my audience” or actually listing the name of your audience: a group of journalism students, the people in my congregation, my peers in class, and so on. When you place your audience first, you’re a lot more likely to have a successful speech.

Matching the Rhetorical Situation

After your audience, the second most important consideration about your specific purpose pertains to the rhetorical situation of your speech. The rhetorical situation is the set of circumstances surrounding your speech (e.g., speaker, audience, text, and context). When thinking about your specific purpose, you want to ensure that all these components go together. You want to make sure that you are the appropriate speaker for a topic, the topic is appropriate for your audience, the text of your speech is appropriate, and the speech is appropriate for the context. For example, speeches that you give in a classroom may not be appropriate in a religious context and vice versa.

Make It Clear

The specific purpose statement for any speech should be direct and not too broad, general, or vague. Consider the lack of clarity in the following specific purpose: “To persuade the students in my class to drink more.” Obviously, we have no idea what the speaker wants the audience to drink: water, milk, orange juice? Alcoholic beverages? Furthermore, we have no way to quantify or make sense of the word “more.” “More” assumes that the students are already drinking a certain amount, and the speaker wants them to increase their intake. If you want to persuade your listeners to drink eight 8-ounce glasses of water per day, you need to say so clearly in your specific purpose.

Another way in which purpose statements are sometimes unclear comes from the use of colloquial language. While we often use colloquialisms in everyday life, they are often understood only by a limited number of people. It may sound like fun to have a specific purpose like, “To persuade my audience to get jiggy,” but if you state this as your purpose, many people probably won’t know what you’re talking about at all.

Don’t Double Up

You cannot hope to solve the entire world’s problems in one speech, so don’t even try. At the same time, you also want to make sure that you stick to one specific purpose. Chances are it will be challenging enough to inform your audience about one topic or persuade them to change one behavior or opinion. Don’t put extra stress on yourself by adding topics. If you find yourself using the word “and” in your specific topic statement, you’re probably doubling up on topics.

Can I Really Do This in Five Minutes?

When choosing your specific purpose, it’s important to determine whether it can be realistically covered in the amount of time you have. Time limits are among the most common constraints for students in a public speaking course. Usually speeches early in the term have shorter time limits, and speeches later in the term have longer time limits (five to seven minutes). While eight seven may sound like an eternity to be standing up in front of the class, it’s actually a very short period of time in which to cover a topic. To determine whether you think you can accomplish your speech’s purpose in the time slot, ask yourself how long it would take to make you an informed person on your chosen topic or to persuade you to change your behavior or attitudes. If you cannot reasonably see yourself becoming informed or persuaded during the allotted amount of time, chances are you aren’t going to inform or persuade your audience either. The solution, of course, is to make your topic narrower so that you can fully cover a limited aspect of it.

References

University of Minnesota. (2011). Stand up, Speak out: The Practice and Ethics of Public Speaking. University of Minnesota Libraries Publishing. https://open.lib.umn.edu/publicspeaking/. CC BY-SA 4.0.

Media References

Beall, Jeffrey. (2008, June 8). Search! [Image]. Flickr. https://www.flickr.com/photos/denverjeffrey/2561885967/

BelmontSpeechLab. (2016, April 1). Informative Speech: How Walt Disney Changed Animation [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SfbzG2l1v8g

Sutherland, A. (2014, March 28). Roma Street Steps [Image]. Flickr. https://www.flickr.com/photos/fishyone1/13657234165/