Statistics and How to Use Them

Many of the facts that speakers cite are based on statistics. Statistics is the mathematical subfield that gathers, analyzes, and makes inferences about collected data. Data can come in a wide range of forms—the number of people who buy a certain magazine, the average number of telephone calls made in a month, the incidence of a certain disease. Though few people realize it, much of our daily lives are governed by statistics. Everything from seat-belt laws, to the food we eat, to the amount of money public schools receive, to the medications you are prescribed are based on the collection and interpretation of numerical data. The Table below provides a list of some websites where you can find a range of statistical information that may be useful for your speeches.

Statistics-Oriented Websites

Website	Type of Information
us Bureau of Labor Statistics	Bureau of Labor Statistics provides links to websites for labor issues related to numerous countries.
Bureau of Justice Statistics	Bureau of Justice Statistics provides information on US crime statistics.
United States' Census Bureau	United States’ Census Bureau provides much information about people living in the United States.
National Center for Health Statistics	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.
STATS PERFORM	STATS PERFORM is a nonprofit organization that helps people understand quantitative data. It provides data, sports research, news and video content.
Roper Center for Public Opinion Research	Roper Center for Public Opinion Research provides data related to a range of issues in the United States.
Nielsen Media Data	Nielsen Media Data provides data on how consumers use various media forms.
Gallup	Gallup provides public opinion data on a range of social and political issues in the United States and around the world.
Pew Research Center	Pew Research Center provides public opinion data on a range of social and political issues in the United States and around the world.

Unfortunately, there are many speakers who do not know how to interpret statistics and data or who intentionally manipulate them to mislead their listeners. As a popular Mark Twain saying goes, “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics” (Twain, 1924).

To avoid misusing statistics when publicly speaking, do three things:

1. 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.
2. 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 such as, “increased by 50 percent” may conflict with data showing an increase of 100 percent.
3. Evaluate sources according to the criteria discussed earlier in the chapter: accuracy, authority, currency, and objectivity.

Types of Definitions, Examples, Testimony, and Analogies

Definitions

Imagine that you gave a speech about how presidential vetoes are used, and your audience did not know the meaning of the word veto. For your speech to be effective, define what a veto is and what it does. Making sure everyone is on the same page is a fundamental communication task. As speakers, we often need to clearly define what we are talking about to make sure that our audience understands our meaning. By using clear definitions, speakers communicate a word or idea in a manner that makes it understandable for their audiences. For public speaking purposes, there are four different types of definitions that may be used as support: lexical, persuasive, stipulative, and theoretical.

Lexical definitions specifically state how a word is used within a specific language. Lexical definitions are useful when a word may be unfamiliar to an audience, and you want to ensure that the audience has 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 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 are persuasive. Linguist and political strategist Frank Luntz is widely regarded as one of the most effective creators of persuasive definitions (Luntz, 2007). Luntz has the ability to take terms that political groups don’t like and repackage them into politically persuasive definitions. 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

Stipulative definitions are assigned to a word or term by the person who coins that word or term for the first time. For example, 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.

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.

Definitions are important to provide clarity for your audience. Effective speakers strike a balance between using definitions to increase an audience’s understanding and leaving definitions out that an 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 defining those terms. Patients may then walk away not really understanding what their health situation is or what needs to be done about it.

Examples

Other often-used support types are 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 example types used as support: positive, negative, nonexamples, and best examples.

Positive examples are used to clarify or to clearly illustrate a positive principle, method, or phenomenon. For example, 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. This positive example type provides a model for how a politician should behave in crisis management. Using a positive example shows a desirable solution, decision, or course of action.

Negative examples, by contrast, are used to illustrate what not to do. On the same theme of crisis management, a speaker could discuss the many problems with how the US government responded to Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Using a negative example shows an undesirable solution, decision, or course of action.

Nonexamples are used to explain what something is not. 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 show the best way someone should behave within a specific context. For example, a speaker could show a clip of a CEO speaking during a press conference to show how effectively one should behave both verbally and nonverbally during a crisis. While positive examples show appropriate ways to behave, best examples illustrate the best way to behave in a specific context.

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 help you be thrown from a car and save you from fire or other hazards in the wrecked automobile. 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 considers how the audience will respond to the example and how the example fits with what else the audience knows.

Testimony

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

Expert testimony expresses the attitudes, values, beliefs, or behaviors recommended by someone who is an acknowledged topic expert. Expert testimony accompanies the discussion we had earlier relating to what qualifies someone as an expert. For example, imagine that you’re going to give a speech on why physical education should be mandatory for all public school grades K–12. During your research, you come across The Surgeon General’s Vision for a Fit and Healthy Nation. If you cite information from within the report written by US Surgeon General Dr. Regina Benjamin about her strategies for combating the US childhood obesity problem, you are using Dr. Benjamin’s words as a noted expert on the subject to support your speech’s basic premise. Her expertise gives credibility to your claims.

Eyewitness testimony, on the other hand, is given by someone who has direct contact with your speech topic. Imagine that you are giving a speech on the Gulf of Mexico’s 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill disaster. 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 oil platform was. You could tell your listeners about your friend’s testimony of what she saw as she was flying over the spill. However, using eyewitness testimony as support can be a little tricky because you are relying on someone’s firsthand account, and firsthand accounts may not always be reliable. As such, evaluate your witness’s credibility and the testimony’s recency. Overall, the more detail you can give about the witness and when the witness made his or her observation, the more useful that witness’s testimony will be when attempting to create a solid argument. However, never rely completely on eyewitness testimony because this support type is not always the most reliable, and your audience may still perceive it as biased.

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 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, if you compare a new airplane to an eagle, they clearly are not the same class. 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.

While figurative analogies may be very vivid and help a listener create a mental picture, they do not really help a listener determine the information’s validity. 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, on the other hand, compare two objects or ideas that clearly belong to the same class. Your goal in using a 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, 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 such as McDonald’s, Subway, or Taco Bell. If you 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 success as the existing brands.

As with figurative analogies, make sure that the audience can see a reasonable connection between the two compared ideas or objects. If your audience sees your new fast-food brand as very different from McDonald’s or Subway, 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.

Narratives

A fourth support type is a narrative or story that helps an audience understand the speaker’s message. Narratives are similar to examples except that they are generally longer and take on a story form with a clear arc—a beginning, middle, and end. 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). Obviously, we are advocating that you select truthful narratives when you use this speech support type. Clella Jaffe explains that narratives are fundamental to public speaking and can be used for support in all three general speaking purposes: informative, persuasive, and entertaining (Jaffe, 2010).

Informative narratives, as Jaffe describes, are those that provide information or explanations about a speaker’s topic (Jaffe, 2010). For example, informative narratives can help audiences understand nature and natural phenomena. Often, the most complicated science and mathematical issues in our world can be understood through storytelling. 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 was hit on the head by an apple and subsequently developed the gravity theory. Even if the story is not precisely accurate, it serves as a way to help people grasp gravity’s basic concept.

Persuasive narratives are stories used to persuade people to accept or reject a specific attitude, value, belief, or behavior. For example, religious texts are filled with persuasive narratives. He had compassion on it, and taking it up, placed it in his bosom. The snake was quickly revived by the warmth, and resuming its natural instincts, bit its benefactor, inflicting on him a mortal wound. ‘Oh,’ cried the Farmer with his last breath, ‘I am rightly served for pitying a scoundrel.’” This persuasive narrative is designed to warn people that just because you help someone in need doesn’t mean the other person will respond in kind.

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 success stories 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 are much fun, use them sparingly as support for a more serious topic or for a traditional informative or persuasive speech.

How do I use support in a speech?

The following sections are adapted from section 8.3 of Stand up, Speak out: The Practice and Ethics of Public Speaking, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.

Using Support in a Speech

When researching a topic, you’ll find a range of supporting evidence types. You may find examples of all six types of support: facts and statistics, definitions, examples, narratives, testimony, and analogies. Sooner or later, you are going to have to make some decisions as to which support types you will use and which you won’t. While there is no one way to select your support, here are some helpful suggestions.

Use a Variety of Support Types

Variety is most important in using support. Nothing will kill a speech faster than if you use the same support type over and over again. Try to use as much support as needed to make your point without going overboard. You might begin with a few definitions and then rely on a gripping eyewitness testimony as your other major support. Or, you might use a combination of facts, examples, and narratives. In another case, statistics and examples might be most effective. Audience members are likely to have different preferences for support; some like statistics, while others find narratives compelling. By using various support types, you’ll appeal to a broad audience range, and thus, effectively adapt to your audience. Even if your audience members prefer a specific support type, providing multiple support types is important to keep them interested. To use an analogy, even people who love ice cream would get tired of it if they ate only ice cream every day for a week, so variety is important.

Choose Appropriate Support Types

Depending on your speech’s type, context, and audience, different support types may or may not be appropriate. While speeches using precise lexical definitions may be useful for the courtroom, they may not be useful in an entertaining after-dinner speech. At the same time, entertaining narratives may be great for a speech in which the general purpose is to entertain, but may decrease a speaker’s credibility if the goal is to persuade an audience about a serious topic.

Check for Relevance

Another concept to consider about potential support is whether or not it is relevant. Select supporting material that supports your speech’s specific purpose. You may find the coolest quotation, but if that quotation doesn’t really help your speech’s core argument, leave it out. If you use too many irrelevant support sources, your audience will quickly catch on, and your credibility will drop through the floor.

Your support materials should be relevant not only to your topic but also to your audience. If you are giving a speech to sixty-year-olds, you may be able to begin with, “Think back to where you were when you heard that President Kennedy was shot.” But this image would be meaningless to twenty-five-year-olds. Similarly, references to music-download sites or the latest popular band may not be effective with audiences who are not interested in music.

Don’t Go Overboard

In addition to being relevant, supporting materials need to help you support your speech’s specific purpose without interfering with your speech. If you find three different sources that support your speech’s purpose in the same way, don’t include all three support types. Instead, pick the support type that most benefits your speech. Remember, the goal is to support your speech, not to have the support become your speech.

Don’t Manipulate Your Support

The last factor related to sifting through your support involves a very important ethical concept called support-manipulation. Often, speakers attempt to find support that says exactly what they want it to say despite the fact that the overwhelming majority of evidence says the exact opposite. When you go out of your way to pull the wool over your audience’s eyes, you are being unethical and not treating your audience with respect.

Using a Reverse Outline

One recommendation for selecting the appropriate speech support type is what we call a reverse outline. A reverse outline is a tool you can use to determine your speech support’s adequacy by starting with your conclusion and logically working backward through your speech to determine if the support you provided is appropriate and comprehensive. In essence, we recommend that you think of your speech’s conclusion first and then work your way backward showing how you get to the conclusion. By forcing yourself to think about logic in reverse, you’ll find any missteps along the way. This technique is not only helpful for analyzing your speech’s overall flow, it can also let you see if different speech sections are not completely supported individually.

In-Speech Support Types

Let’s begin by examining in-speech support types: quotations, paraphrases, summaries, numerical support, and pictographic support.

Quotations

The first common in-speech support types are direct quotations. Direct quotations occur when a speaker uses the exact wording of another speaker or writer within his or her new speech. Quotations are very helpful and can definitely provide a supporting tool for your speech’s specific purpose. Here are five tips for using in-speech quotations:

1. Use a direct quotation if the original author’s words are witty, engaging, distinct, or particularly vivid.
2. Use a direct quotation if you want to highlight a specific expert and his or her expertise within your speech.
3. Use a direct quotation if you are going to specifically analyze something that is said within the quotation. If your analysis depends on the quotation’s exact wording, then it is important to use the quotation.
4. Keep quotations to a minimum. One of the biggest mistakes some speakers make is stringing together a series of quotations and calling it a speech. Remember, a speech is your unique insight into a topic, not a series of quotations.
5. Keep quotations short. Long quotations lose an audience; and therefore, the connection between your support and your argument gets lost.

Paraphrases

The second in-speech support type is paraphrasing. Paraphrasing involves taking the general idea or theme from another speaker or author and condensing the idea or theme into your own words. A mistake that some speakers make is dropping a few words or rearranging some words within a direct quotation and thinking that is a paraphrase. When paraphrasing, understand the other speaker or author’s ideas well enough to relate them without looking back at the original. Here are four tips for using in-speech paraphrases:

1. Paraphrase when you can say it more concisely than the original speaker or author.
2. Paraphrase when the exact wording from the original speaker or author won’t improve your audience’s understanding of the support.
3. Paraphrase when you want to adapt an example, analogy, or narrative by another speaker or author to make its relevance more evident.
4. Paraphrase information that is not likely to be questioned by your audience. If you think your audience may question your support, then relying on a direct quotation may be more effective.

Summaries

Whereas quotations and paraphrases are taking a whole text and singling out a few lines or a section, a summary involves condensing or encapsulating the entire text as a support type. Summaries are helpful when you want to clearly spell out the speaker or author’s intent behind a text. Here are three suggestions for using in-speech summaries.

1. Summarize when you need another speaker or author’s complete argument to help your audience understand the argument within your speech.
2. Summarize when explaining possible counterarguments to the one posed within your speech.
3. Summarize when you need to cite several different sources effectively and efficiently to support a specific argument.

Numerical Support

Speakers often need to use numerical support or to cite data and numbers within a speech. The most common reason for using numerical support comes when citing statistics. When using data to support your speech, make sure that your audience can accurately interpret the numbers in the same way you are doing. Here are three tips for using in-speech numerical support:

1. Clearly state the numbers used and where they came from.
2. Make sure you explain what the numbers mean and how you think they should be interpreted.
3. If the numbers are overly complicated or if you use a variety of numbers within a speech, consider turning this support into a visual aid to enhance your audience’s understanding of the numerical support.

Pictographic Support

The last commonly used in-speech support type is pictographic support, which is also commonly referred to as visual aids. For this chapter’s purpose, we will use the term pictographic support to mean any drawn or visual representation of an object or process and stress that we are using source images as a support type. For example, if you’re giving a speech on how to swing a golf club, you could bring in a golf club and demonstrate exactly how to use the golf club. While the golf club in this instance is a visual aid, it is not pictographic support. If you showed a diagram illustrating the steps for an effective golf swing, the diagram is an example of pictographic support. So, while all pictographic support types are visual aids, not all visual aids are pictographic support. Here are five suggestions for effectively using in-speech pictographic support.

1. Use pictographic support when it would be easier and shorter than orally explaining an object or process.
2. Use pictographic support when you really want to emphasize the importance of the support. Audiences recall information more readily when they both see and hear it rather than if they only see or only hear the information.
3. Make sure that pictographic support is aesthetically pleasing.
4. Pictographic support should be easy to understand, and it should take less time to use than words alone.
5. Make sure everyone in your audience can easily see your pictographic support. If listeners cannot see it, then it will not help them understand how it is supposed to help your speech’s specific purpose.

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

Pixel Fantasy. (2012, March 10). Support [Image]. Flickr. https://www.flickr.com/photos/techthis/6822635210/