September Blog Post

Throughout all of the chapters we have read thus far in the semester, there was one sentence that stood out to me the most in the book Communication: A Critical Cultural Introduction. Authors John T. Warren and Deanna L. Fassett state, “how you share your ideas with a given group of people is shaped by how you think you can impress those ideas most effectively upon those particular people” (34). This sentence came from the voice section of chapter two where the authors were discussing how a speaker’s voice, or word choices, is essential in tailoring their message to their audience. To me, this means that we as speakers can manipulate our audience response by the way we present our information.

I think we can see a lot of the sentence I chose being put to work in class. The lectures have been planned each day so that we come away with certain ideas and an understanding of the information being taught. For example, the other day when we were talking about identity and perception, Christina showed a video of the woman dressing according to high school dress codes. She wanted us to understand identity and perception effectively so instead of telling us about it, she showed us the video to provide a real life example. That in turn would impress the ideas on us that she wanted us to understand because we got to see someone’s first hand experience. She tailored her delivery to and for the audience.

As someone who has finally accomplished her fear of public speaking, this sentence I picked is really important for me to remember in my future public speaking career. This coming December my sorority has elections for the upcoming executive year. I’m planning on running for VP of PR and Recruitment and I have to give a speech to my sorority sisters, while possibly running against another sister for the same job. Because I want my sisters to vote for me over my other possible candidates, the speech I give is only going to have information in it that is positive and reflects on how I can be a successful VP. I want them to have a good impression of me so I’m going to present my information in a way that sheds light on my most valuable qualities so that they are more persuaded to vote for me.

We can see a real life example of speakers tailoring their messages and deliveries to how they best believe the audience will effectively grasp them when walking through the quad everyday. There are always people handing out flyers and practicing their freedom of speech. Particularly, this week the abortion folks have been a prevalent force in the quad. They believe having posters with large pictures of aborted fetuses and aggressively pushing pamphlets into peoples’ faces is the most effectively way to get their message across to the audience. Whether or not these abortion folks realize that people have strong, possibly unchangeable opinions on this subject, they believe that this in-your-face approach is the most effective so they’ve tailored their delivery in a way that shocks people and makes them talk about it.