Unit 8 Conclusion
Section outline
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In Unit 8, we discuss the complexities of persuasive speaking. Persuasive speaking moves beyond information sharing to actively influencing the beliefs, values, and behaviors of our audience. In persuasive speaking that audience analysis that we conducted early in the speech creation process becomes most valuable for crafting a message that will move our listeners to take action on our message. Persuasion is not a simple process; change is a slow process. As persuasive speakers, we play a role in ethically advocating for topics that are important to us. Crafting our message requires attending to motivational language and organizational patterns to capitalize on the research and resources we have collected to move our audience to action. We end our exploration of public speaking by talking about persuasion because it is the most powerful form of public discourse.