Chapter 6 Summary

In order to accomplish your speech goals, you need to have the attention of your audience. While an attention getter at the beginning of your speech is good, it has little value if your audience is bored for the rest of the speech.

The nature of attention is a transactional process. Both speaker and listener must work together, the speaker working to make their message clear and captivating, the listener to listen mindfully. For a speaker, maintaining the attention of the audience means keeping the audience focused, as much as possible, on a single stimulus: the speech. Listeners can be mindful and attentive by coming prepared to listen to speakers, avoiding distractions, being an active listener, taking notes, listening critically, and being ethical.

In order to gain and maintain the attention of the audience, speakers can use strategies like making a personalized, meaningful appeal to the audience, drawing upon novelty by speaking on an unusual topic or using unusual examples, stories, phrasing, or presentation. Speakers can also use humor to keep the audience’s interesting, but there are several important considerations for humor, like not forcing humor that doesn’t fit you as a speaker, making sure that the humor is relevant and focused to the topic, being sensitive to the audience and the occasion, and using self-deprecating humor without overdoing it. Another way to gain the attention of your audience is to shake them up by using startling statements, facts, or statistics, being careful not to venture into bizarre behavior.

Movement is also important for a speaker, but too much or too little movement can be distracting, so speakers should strive for balance in movement. Speakers should also practice good judgment when it comes to intense unpleasant examples that may in fact jar the audience, but sometimes not in a good way.