Best/Worst Speaker

1). Have you ever been influenced by a speaker? Think of the best speaker you've ever heard. What was it about that speaker that made his or her communication memorable? Think of the worst speaker you've ever heard. What do you remember about his or her message?

The best speaker I have ever heard was actually a professor at San Jose State. Professor Stephen Corio not only has a distinctive speaking style, but his credentials make anything he says credible.

He has over 25 years of experience in marketing, sales and consulting, but his biggest passion is helping young people advance in their careers and teach them everything he knows.

What set him apart from any other speaker I've heard is that he often uses his experiences in order to get his point across, rather than dry facts. In addition to that, he has great charisma when speaking which makes his speeches very fun to listen to.

Worst speaker I've heard is one of my former managers. Her speaking style was very different than anything I have ever experienced. She didn't know the right way to criticize somebody, which made employees feel unappreciated and unmotivated. I remember all her messages were somehow always centered around her which was odd.

What makes a great speaker?

2). Consider a well-known speaker, for example, the current President of the United States. What is the speaker's strongest characteristics as a speaker? Is it credibility, attractiveness, power or all three? In what ways could the speaker build ethos in these areas?

A great speaker once famously said, "If you observe nature at work, you will marvel at the intelligence contained within it. Fish don't try and swim, they just swim. Flowers don't try and bloom, they just bloom. Birds don't try to fly, they just fly."

This is the same with great speakers; they don't try to give a great speech, they just do. Simply put, a great speaker is not shy or ashamed to use his/her qualities to their benefit in order to capture the audience's full attention.

President Barack Obama has great memory along with great self-esteem when he is speaking to a large audience. One can easily tell that Barack Obama fully believes in what he is saying and then that makes you a believer as well.

Liberman, a linguistics professor at the University of Pennsylvania says, "the most distinctive thing about Obama’s speeches isn’t the delivery, but the lyricism in the writing."

Like John F. Kennedy and Dr. King, Obama has a way of making a point of his speech hit home with every member in the audience. All three speakers are very articulate, have good voice and are effective at delivering their respected messages.

Great speakers can use credibility and that way create ethos, because by them delivering messages that are facts and truth, they will also be moral speakers.

Feb. 15-21

3.) Pick one concept from the assigned reading that you found useful or interesting and discuss it. (Choose a topic that has not already been covered in this weeks discussion).

One concept that I found rather intriguing was that "attractiveness" of a speaker makes a huge difference whether the audience will respond in a positive way.

McGuide divides attractiveness into four major dimensions: familiarity, similarity, physical attractiveness, and liking. A perfect example of this was when during the presidential campaign, political and psychological experts were saying that Obama's looks and likability played a major advantage over John McCain who looked rather dull and non-attractive to the younger audience.

This concept also shattered my longtime beliefs that repeating something often will get an audience bored and turned off. Robert Zajonc talks about mere-exposure hypothesis, which basically is an idea of "simple repeated exposure to a stimulus" results in an attraction. In other words, the more times something is exposed to an audience, the better chances of them liking or accepting it.

The findings also suggest that since it takes time for new ideas to get comfortable with the audience, it is better then to let know about it frequently so it gets embedded in their brain.

Social constructionist perspective

This particular perspective puts the most emphasis on the importance of context as well as culture and understanding what occurs in society as well as getting knowledge about the society.

The author speaks of building "worlds" through communication and that statement is absolutely true. There are so many different cultures and languages and by gaining common ground with people from different cultures, we build relationships which in turn helps make the planet better by making business deals and having people connect with each other.

The best example of different languages in different cultures would be the teenagers and the language of "slang." A kid in Boston speaks English just like I do, but he/she will recite some of their slang, and I might not know a word they just said, where as I might do the same and they might or might not understand me. Another example would be my father and how he uses different type of language in different type of situations. When he is in situations that need focus and his undivided attention, he can come off as very strict to a point where he should teach military, but when one gets to know him outside of his professional realm, he is very charismatic and very open to new ideas and or things.

The only thing I will have to disagree with in this view is that the author said that our life is shaped through world communication, and not our life experiences. Personally, everything that I have experienced good and bad has directly shaped who I am. Yes, communication had a big part in terms of knowing how and when to communicate to different people and in different situations, but the life experiences that a person goes through is something that shapes him/her.

In addition to that, in United States people are though that it's perfectly okay to question authority and if one doesn't, he/she is lacking a skill. In a continent like Europe, younger generation especially is thought not to ever question authority, but rather try to work together towards achieving whatever that might be.

Pragmatic perspective

2.)

Consider the pragmatic perspective. Does it make sense to think of communication as patterned interaction? How is communication like a game? How is it different from a game?

I definitively agree with the author as to think of communication as a chess game or a patterned interaction between people. For instance he says, "Each player is affected by what another player does. Players need each other if they are to play." (Pg. 34)

It is the same in the world of communication; a person simply cannot be a sender, without someone to be a receiver, therefore it is impossible for one person to receive the message without the other person sending the message.

According to the pragmatic perspective, "We cannot not communicate." If somebody promises to do something for you, and he/she fails to do that then their actions speak louder than their words to so speak. You then realize that that person does not want to have a healthy relationship.

The author says, "Communication resembles a game in that both result in interdependent outcomes, or payoffs." To further explain this, in a game of basketball for instance, the payoff is the thrill of winning or the agony of defeat. Communication has payoffs as well and they range in categories from: competitive or cooperative. Being mean to people or putting them down usually is a competitive communication that is not healthy, but getting to know somebody is a cooperative communication. A game can also be played as a team working together to achieve a goal, or when the communication s competitive, the game is usually filled with a group of individuals trying to get their name to shine.

It is also far different than a game, because of several important factors. The author says, "What happens outside the world o fthe game is never considered. Who the players are, where the game is played, and what other players are doing are all irrelevant questions." Most of us know that knowing the answers to these questions is very crucial in any type of game. Knowing the location and or who your opponents are will solve many problems before they happen.

Ch 2 Responses

3) Pick one concept from the assigned reading that you found useful or interesting and discuss it.

I found elements of a psychological model to be really interesting. Part of the reason is that we use this model on daily basis and trying to perfect it is a life-long process.

I send out an encoded message that travels along a channel, its medium of transmission, until it reaches its destination. Upon receiving the message, my friend then decodes it and decides how he will reply. The fascinating part about this model is that the messages that are being transmitted back and forth travel through mental sets. A mental set is person's beliefs, values and morals, thus is the reason we often have mis-understandings in real-life.

The example that the book gave was really funny, yet very insightful. Professor Smith is trying very hard to give an intelligent lecture that sometimes does seem filled with noise distractions. He struggles to find a medium, meaning he wants all of his students to be excited by the lecture and understand it, but so far only the prepared students understand the words, while the less-prepared pupils are cruising along and the words fly over their heads.

Like most of us, sometimes we succeed in getting our point across and sometimes no matter how hard we try to make what we say perfectly understandable, the other person is not able to decode it.

Interesting Concept

*3). Pick one concept from the reading assignment this week (Ch.1) that you found interesting or useful and and discuss it.

The styles that each picker can choose to have was very interesting. One has to select proper words to speak his/her message to their audience. The vigorous style for instance was based on pathos, because it literally "pulled out all stops."

This type of speech delivery is emotional and eloquent at the same time. This style was often mistrusted and speakers or students of communication were advised not to use this style without elements of other two styles which are plain and middle style.

Style is only 1/5th of elements of a rhetoric and that makes the thought of giving an amazing speech that much harder. Speaker has to have invention, style, arrangement, memory and the great delivery in order to express his ideas to the audience.

I definitively will start developing my own unique style when making presentations/speeches in front of an audience. It is a great way to be remembered and stand out from the crowd.

Orator and morals.

*2). The Greeks believed that to be an orator, an individual had to be morally good. Comment on whether you agree or disagree. What, if any, is the connection between goodness, truth, and public communication?

Orators tend to have special power when it comes to influencing people into action, thus it only makes sense that in order to be an orator one has to have good morals. With this power comes big responsibility, and a good orator has to know how to use his/her abilities.

If an individual is immoral, the audience will receive false information along with immoral unethical thoughts and or ideas.

For example, German's leader Adolf Hitler was an amazing speaker as he had an uncanny ability to get a rise out of people like nobody else. People trusted him, because they thought he was leading them into the right direction. The individual has to have good moral intentions in order for the audience to be influenced by an ethical person.

There is an absolute connection between goodness, truth and public communication as all three follow each other and if one is out of place, the speaker along with the speech is no longer credible. If a speaker has goodness, but yet he/she lies while on the stage that speaker is longer commanding of attention. It only takes one time to say something morally wrong or lie to the audience and usually the relationship is over between the speaker and audience.

Let's talk about great speakers.

*1). Think of a speaker you admire. Does his or her power to persuade come from ethos, pathos, or logos? Think about your own ability to persuade others. What personal qualities do you have that make you persuasive? Does Aristotle's classification scheme work for them, or do they fit into another category?


After pondering for quite some time thinking of one person that really stood out in my eyes, I decided that one speaker that I admire is my mother. Her power to persuade everyone in our family and people that she comes in contact daily comes from power of Pathos.

She has this amazing ability to create an emotional bond with the person she is sharing a conversation with. She is always herself no matter who she speaks to and people love that. My mother also has a different style than most people when she speaks. She's very bold, yet funny and then finishes the conversation by challenging the other person. Case in example: I had a rough day in school and she sat there and listened to about 15 minutes of rambling and frustration. She then said something hillarious and then she challenged me to think about what I will do different the next time a similar situation arises, but not to dwell on it too much because the greatest thing about being alive is that we have a brand new day tomorrow to start new.

My mother is naturally a very positive person and she radiates that whenever one is around her. I read somewhere that people rarely listen to instructions when the plane is ready to take off, but they are all ears when the plane is about to crash. My mother has that rare ability to have people pay attention to the solutions that she proposes.

Both of my parents are very passionate people, especially when they speak. I'd like to think that I inherited some of their qualities as I have a pretty good ability to make people follow my lead when situations to lead arise. Having arguments with people is actually healthy, but it is also very important not to put people down during arguments. The adrenaline is already high and it's not a great idea to over-heat it. I try to stay patient during arguments and then offer a logical and positive solution to a question. It is much easier to be persuasive if one is engaging, positive and logical.

Aristotle's classification definitively fits my mother and she identifies with his "Rhetoric triangle." We always tell her that she would've made a great adveristing manager since commercials play to people's emotions.