INFO DUMP

TYPES OF INFORMATIVE SPEECHES

Imagine you're the sommelier (a.k.a. professional wine snob) at a fine dining restaurant. Your general manager has asked you to give the front-of-the-house staff a lecture on wine.

"Sure," you say, because the jerk at table five is snapping his fingers at you and you don't really have time to clarify your boss' request right now.

Later, when you start preparing for the lecture, you realize you have no idea what your boss wants the staff to actually learn from your speech. What kind of information do they need?

Here's where we interrupt this incredibly dramatic scenario to lay out the four categories of informative speeches based on what the information is supposed to do:

• Define: Informs the audience of the meaning of an unfamiliar concept, theory, philosophy, or issue. This doesn't mean cracking open a dictionary in front of your audience and reading definitions aloud or starting your speech with "Webster's defines "wine" as…"

If the content of your speech could be summed up in a dictionary definition, it probably means your audience is better off reading the dictionary themselves instead of listening to you talk. What this type of speech does do is define relevant terminology and provide background on the subject. This means classifying it, describing its essential features or attributes, and providing relevant comparisons to ensure understanding.

• • Example from intro: I want my audience to know what agrostology is. Sure, I could say that the dictionary defines agrostology as "the branch of botany concerned with grasses," but I better go into a bit more detail than that.

• Describe: Provides the audience with a detailed description of something tangible, such as a person or place. Descriptions using all five senses can help the audience visualize and vicariously meet, visit, or experience the subject.

  • Example from intro: I want my audience to know what I did over summer vacation. Please make sure that you're describing something that's worth experiencing vicariously. For example, "having tea with my grandma in her living room" probably doesn't merit involving all five senses. But "participating in a traditional Japanese tea ceremony" definitely would, especially for an audience who has no idea what a traditional Japanese tea ceremony is like.

• Explain: Informs the audience of the how or why behind an issue, such as current events, policies, products, options, and that sort of thing. This type of speech goes beyond providing a basic definition or description of the subject and provides the audience with a deeper understanding.

  • Example from intro: I want my audience to know how social media marketing can help their small business. This doesn't include showing your audience how to create an Instagram account (that would be the next kind of speech), but it could include discussing why a business might want to use Instagram versus Twitter or Facebook—or how to use all three.

• Demonstrate: Provides the audience with a step-by-step "how-to" guide that illustrates some sort of process.

  • Example from intro: I want my audience to know how to remodel a home using only a steak knife and some two-by-fours. This kind of speech is often requires props—which is why we'll caution against giving speeches that involve completing risky procedures (like sawing two-by-fours with steak knives) in front of an audience. Showing an audience how to do something is great. Showering an audience with your own blood is not. (Source)

Let's go back to our sommelier scenario. How would you (the sommelier, remember) adapt your lecture for each category? Here are some possibilities:

• Define: I want my audience to know some basic wine terms, such as "varietal," "corked" and "decant" and how to use them correctly so they don't sound like total wine-idiots when speaking with customers.

• Describe: I want my audience to know how to describe the taste and "mouthfeel" of every wine on the menu.

• Explain: I want my audience to know why each wine on the menu was selected, what dishes they pair best with, and how to make recommendations when a customer asks for their help selecting a glass.

• Demonstrate: I want my audience to know the exact steps to take when presenting, opening, and pouring a bottle of wine for their customers (with an emphasis on how to not spill red wine down the front of a customer's shirt).

No matter which type of informative speech you're giving, you should always strive to make the information relevant to the particular audience you're addressing.

As the expert sommelier you are, you might give a super detailed speech about your favorite Bordeaux to a group of wine enthusiasts, but you'd probably go a little more general if you were speaking in front of an audience made up of the general public. If your audience was made up of a bunch of brats who aren't legally allowed to drink, then you'd probably decide not to give a speech about wine in the first place.

LET'S HAVE SOME LAUGHS

Even though the main purpose of an informative speech is to inform in one of the four ways we just discussed, that doesn't mean persuasion plays no part in an informative speech. It just means that the speaker uses persuasive techniques to different ends.

TED Talks are a great example of this. Most of them aim primarily to inform the audience, but they also use persuasion to convince the audience that the subject is significant and, in TED parlance, "worth spreading."

Witness this in action by watching a whole TED Talk—this one is called "Why we laugh," and was given by Dr. Sophie Scott, a cognitive neuroscientist.

As you watch, try to answer these two questions:

• What type of informative speech is it?

• What persuasive (a.k.a. rhetorical) techniques is Dr. Scott using?

We hope you came up with your own answers to those questions. Here are ours:

What type of informative speech is it?

Since Dr. Scott was speaking about a subject that would certainly be familiar to her audience (laughter), she didn't need to do much defining. Although she does spend a little time demonstrating the process of what happens to your ribcage when you laugh, this isn't the main point of her talk. Likewise, her main point isn't to describe in detail what people sound or look like when they laugh.

Ultimately, Dr. Scott wants her audience to understand not just how, but also why we laugh. (The name of the speech, "Why we laugh" is kind of a giveaway in that regard.) Because of that, her speech falls into "explain" category.

What persuasive (a.k.a. rhetorical) techniques is Dr. Scott using?

Sure, the main purpose of the speech is to inform the audience of the results of Dr. Scott's research into laughter. But beyond just informing them, Dr. Scott also wants to persuade them that they're mostly wrong about the reasons why they (and all humans) laugh—and that she knows the real reasons.

Let's look at some of the rhetorical techniques on display here, within the bounds of ethos, pathos, and logos:

• Ethos:

  • Decorum: Before she even starts speaking, it's clear that Dr. Scott has done her best to "fit in" to her audience's expectations. TED Talks are high profile and hip, so her audience would expect her to dress well, which is why she's wearing a stylish (but still very respectable) dress. Maybe she chose to wear glasses instead of contacts to meet her audience's expectations of what a neuroscientist should look like—stylish to a point, but a little bit nerdy, too.

  • Character: After telling the story about watching her parents laugh as a girl, Dr. Scott establishes her character as an expert and authority when she transitioned with this line: "At the time I didn't understand any of that—I just cared about the laughter. And actually, as a neuroscientist I've come to care about it again."

• Pathos:

  • Storytelling: Dr. Scott starts her talk with a story about when she was a girl and watched her parents laugh over the rules about using public toilets.

  • Humor: not only does she tell a funny story at the beginning of her talk, but she keeps the audience laughing and in a generally fun, boisterous mood by throwing in jokes throughout the talk. (She also gets the audience to actually laugh involuntarily when she plays clips of super weird-sounding laughs.)

  • The advantageous: Dr. Scott is aware she's giving this speech to an audience of people who, despite being generally intelligent, are not cognitive neuroscientists. She focuses her speech on information that will benefit this audience the most: she gives them general insight into their own behavior.

• Logos:

  • Diagrams and data: Dr. Scott shows the logic behind all her conclusions by sharing diagrams and data from her own (and others') scientific research.

In the end, you could be un-persuaded by Dr. Scott's claims, but unless you weren't really listening, you can't say you haven't been informed of them.