Saturday, September 22, 2012
Facts And Statistics
I feel that facts and statistics can be very useful in speech that is meant to be informative or persuasive. If one can find the right statistics to support their point of view then those facts may be able to persuade others to feel the same way. A lot of times statistics can be useful when wanting to use fear to persuade people to change their point of view. Like when people talk about teenage sex and use statistics of pregnancy and STD's to convince teens of all the horrible things that can happen when engaging in sexual activity. However statistics and facts may not be a useful when giving a speech that is meant to be more personal or a speech that is being presented in a story fashion. I feel like statistics are great but take the personal attributes of a event out of the equation. Statistics and facts can sound cold and harsh at times and unless these facts are things that people really are concerned with they can sound boring and dry. If the presenter isn't sure about statistics and is spouting out facts that are not properly researched then the speaker looses all credibility, and therefore the audience is not going to value anything the presenter has to say. In addition if a speech is nothing but facts and statistics then the audience could become bored or overwhelmed by all of the information and therefore will stop listening. Facts and statistics are a great way to add validity to a speech and demonstrate to an audience that one knows what they are talking about and took the time to research a topic, but not presented correctly I feel that facts can hurt just as much as they can help a speech.
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Hey Babs,
ReplyDeleteI totally agree with you when you say that statistics and facts can support a speech just as much as they can damage it. I too think that they are most appropriate for persuasive and informative speeches, not so much personal-type speeches (e.g. the cultural speeches we did not too long ago). The speaker must know their information and stats well in order to be credible, as well as having valid information because like you said, they can lose all their credibility and people will not listen to them. That's a danger in preparing a cheap speech or paper. Anyway, awesome post and hope the upcoming speech goes well for you!
I mostly agree with your post. Facts and statistics are good for an informative speech. They are somethimes boring and would tend to let those internal noise distractions in that we learned about earlier this semester. I do believe they can be used very effectively in a speech meant to persuade others. We've all seen the current political adds. These are ALL emant to persuade and they are full of facts and statistics. Most of them are all spun in a way to try and make others think in a certain direction. It's very frustrating when all we ever want is the truth. However, when it comes to the facts and statistics of other speeches, I like them. I'm a numbers guy. Just don't bore me with them.
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