Speech

Speech Study Guide

microstructure (language and style). Providing feedback on specific points helps a speaker understand how their speech was received and how the audience was affected by it. Delivery critique statements focus on the use of voice and body. When commenting on voice, a speaker might consider intelligibility (understandable rate, volume, pronunciation, and enunciation), conversational style, and emotional expression. When commenting on body language, it is pertinent to consider attire, poise, posture, eye contact, facial expression, gestures, and movement. Not only can listeners critique a speaker, but a speaker can self-critique following the same guidelines as a listener would. Self-critique is a form of cognitive restructuring that can help reduce anxiety because it forces one to temper negative self-talk with positive self-talk immediately. 7.9 Key Terms • Oral style refers to how we convey messages through spoken word. • A speaker needs to adapt to the needs, interests, knowledge, and attitudes of listeners while avoiding the use of language that might alienate anyone. This is referred to as speaking appropriately . • Verbal immediacy describes language used to reduce the psychological distance between a speaker and audience. • Linguistic sensitivity is choosing words that are respectable of others and avoiding potentially offensive language. • Generic language uses words that apply to only one sex, race, or another group to represent a larger portion of everyone. • Non-parallelism denotes when terms are changed due to the sex, race, or other group characteristics of the individual. • Marking is the addition of sex, race, age, or other group designation to a description. • Irrelevant association is the emphasis of one person’s relationship to another when that relationship is irrelevant to the point. • Offensive humor includes, but is not limited to, dirty jokes and racist, sexist, or other “ist” remarks. They may not be intended to be offensive, however, if an audience is offended the speaker may lose their verbal immediacy. • Profanity and vulgarity include expressions that are not considered appropriate language. • Accurate language means using words that convey the speaker’s meaning precisely. • Denotation is a word’s explicit dictionary definition. • Context is the position of a word in a sentence and its relationship to the words around it. • Connotation is the positive, neutral, or negative feelings or evaluations that can be associated with it. • Dialect is a unique form of a more general language spoken by a specific cultural or co-cultural group. • Similes are used when making comparisons.

©2017

Achieve Test Prep

Page 66

of 80

Made with FlippingBook Learn more on our blog