Speech Writing

Speech Writing is an art of conveying a message to your audience. Either through oral communication or through other means, such as power point slides, speech writing has the same function as normal writing. The reasons for writing are to inform, to explain or to persuade.

In a speech, typically the main purpose is to persuade the listener/reader to take up and support your views. What can differentiate a speech from a normal essay is that your audience can be from all sorts of backgrounds. In academic writing the readers usually know at a minimum something about your topic. In a speech, you need to carefully craft your introduction to develop interest in the audience.

It has been said that people only remember the beginning and the end of speeches. “I have a dream…” is significant and monumental because it was at the beginning and unexpected. The middle is where you convince and persuade the rapt listeners to your perspective whereas the beginning and end are aimed at the audience in general to convey your value, confidence and true message.

For these introductions and conclusions, the orator needs to be slow spoken, use simple vocabulary and straight forward arguments to convince people who were listening the whole time and those who just tuned in towards the end. In addition, speeches need to be positive to bring listeners a positive vibe about your topic.

Use motivational words and anecdotes to connect the speaker to the average joe so that they can be in orator’s ‘shoes’ and understand why they feel the way they do about the subject in the speech.

Transitional words, such as on the other hand, even though, etc., can diminish the significance of certain aspects of a subject that the writer does not want the audience to fully understand or question it through correct phrasing “Rhetoric,” wrote Aristotle, “is the power of determining in a particular case what are the available means of persuasion.”

This course reviews some effective means for the rhetoric of persuasive communication in speeches written. By speeches, this course means draft statements prepared for oral delivery by Members. Such speeches are often prepared under the pressure of deadlines that leave minimal time for extensive revision.

Moreover, they must often be drafted in whole or part for Members who may have little opportunity to edit and amend them. The burdens of public office (as well as of campaigning) and the insistent demand for speeches of every kind for a variety of occasions require some degree of reliance on speechwriters, a reliance that is heightened by the limitations of time and the urgencies of the media.

A speech thus “ghostwritten” should nevertheless reflect the intention and even the style of the speaker. The best ghostwriters are properly invisible; they subordinate themselves to the speaker in such a way that the final product is effectively personalized in the process of actual communication.

The only ways to achieve or even approach this ideal are practice and experience.

This course focuses on some basic principles of communication. Speech is subsumed under communication. Therefore, we need to be familiar with the peculiarities of these concepts in order to rightly situate this course.

Upon completion of this course, students should be able to:

• Define language
• Highlight the functions of language
• Define speech
• Identify the features of a good speech
• Identify the qualities of a good speechwriter.

Course Curriculum