DeLaWho? DeLaWhat? DeLaWhere?

When composing a deliberative speech, you should take a hint from the instructions found on the back of a bottle of shampoo: “Rinse and Repeat”. The most important part in composing a deliberative speech is the constant revising, tinkering, and even “tweaking” which you must do to your speech in order to achieve your goal: to persuade your audience on the merit of your position. In order to gain the support of your constituents and colleagues, you should follow a tedious, but necessary series of steps. At the core of a deliberative speech are the principles of Rhetoric defined by Aristotle and provided by Silva Rhetoricae. Aristotle defined rhetoric as the available means of persuasion and described those means of persuasion with Logos, Ethos, and Pathos. Logos or logical proof comes from the line of argument in the speech. Ethos or ethical proof is the way the speaker’s character is revealed through the message. While Pathos is the feeling the speech draws from the hearers. These three parts of speech are essential to writing and presenting a deliberative speech.

My group and I wrote our speech about the controversial issue of censorship in broadcast television. With the “accidental” exposure of Janet Jackson’s breast at this past Super Bowl, the FCC has been coming down hard on obscene broadcasts with increased fines. The FCC’s actions signaled that a “one-size fits all” solution was being applied to our country. It was our feeling that there needed to be a better solution for the regulation of broadcast television. We followed this sequence of steps when writing our speech. The first task is the research of the topic from every plausible viewpoint possible. One of the most valuable resources is the Congress’ website, Thomas. Thomas allows you to freely access Federal legislative information. The amount of research that you do will allow you to put into practice Social Judgment Theory. Social Judgment Theory provides a framework for you and/or your group to approach the issue with your audiences’ reaction in mind. The framework of SJT allows the speech to have a positive effect on as many of your constituents as possible, while offending as few people as possible. Once you complete the research, map those positions from one extreme to another and place the other positions in between. After your initial SJT spectrum has been created, the spectrum is divided into three “latitudes”:

1. The Latitude of Acceptance: zone of positions that audience supports
2. The Latitude of Indifference: zone of positions that audience neither accepts nor rejects
3. The Latitude of Rejection: zone of positions that audience rejects.

Those people who hold the positions within the latitude of rejection are not your target for this speech. You will not be able to use your POWERS of PERSUASION on them. However, the goal of the speech is to use Aristotelian rhetorical techniques and the art of persuasion to, as Allison wrote, “seduce” those people who are located in the latitude of indifference. A great example of Social Judgment Theory in practice is the spectrum created by Big Tymers. With this in mind, the next step is to develop a strategy for the speech that will play to those people within the latitude of indifference. This process is aided by taking the concepts of Ethos (appeals to logic) and Pathos (appeals to emotion) that Aristotle set out. Examples of speech strategy include referring back to past experiences and the emotions associated with those events, or telling personable stories, regional pride, etc. Our group, G.7 used a Bob Dole approach of sorts by harking back to the days of “our” childhood when “a television set had only one knob with a handful of channels to choose from.”

With your ingenious strategy in hand, you can start writing your first draft. Your first draft will be the first of many drafts you must be concerned with not only content but also form or delivery. You can have good ideas but if you cannot express them in a convincing fashion, you will gain no support from your audience. Therefore, every syllable, word, and sentence (tricolon) becomes important. A thin line is taken when writing the speech. It is the line between talking over your audience’s heads and talking down to your audience. If you can find the careful balance between the two sides and have a solid strategy, then a great deliberative speech can be written. Of course, that careful balance can only be found after countless revisions of your speech. Each sentence should be taken apart and evaluated. This is a tedious and sometimes frustrating process, but it is a necessary one. Of course, the final element of your speech is composed of the actual delivery. This part requires the speaker to practice their delivery using inflections, emphasis, and other McGuffey techniques. Once the speaker has become comfortable with the speech, the only thing left to do is to deliver it to the unsuspecting masses. If you follow these steps and the steps outlined by fellow classmates like Allison, Ethan, and Scott, you should be able to construct an excellent and successful deliberative speech.