Page 277 - Essentials of Human Communication

256 Chapter 12 Public Speaking Preparation and Delivery (Steps 7–10)

Right now, most people don’t have prenups and yet somewhere around The fact that 50 percent of the marriages fail seems to be the more telling
50 percent of marriages last. That would be equivalent to a baseball statistic, yet the speaker treats a 50 percent success rate as good—some-
player batting 500. If we had prenups that number would go up—I mean thing the audience is likely to see very differently. And the baseball anal-
down—I mean the number of marriages that last will go up if we had ogy seems weak at best. The speaker also betrays a lack of preparation in
prenups, I mean if we didn’t. confusing up with down.
Poor people are going to be discriminated against. Poor people won’t be This argument just doesn’t seem logical and the speaker would have been
able to marry rich people because rich people will want a prenup and if a better served by omitting this entirely. For this argument to be useful in
poor person doesn’t want a prenup they wouldn’t get married. advancing the speaker’s purpose, the speaker would have had to show
that in fact poor people suffer in, say,
divorce proceedings because of prenups.
These agreements are difficult to discuss. I mean, how do you tell some- This argument too doesn’t seem important or logical. The fact that some-
one you’ve told you love that you now want a prenup just in case the mar- thing is difficult to discuss doesn’t mean you shouldn’t discuss it; it merely
riage gets screwed up? I guess you can say something like, “By the way, means it’s difficult to discuss. The speaker seems to be implying that if
how about signing a prenup?” something is difficult to discuss it should be abandoned—clearly a poor
communication strategy.
And they’re expensive. I mean you need a lawyer and all. I don’t know This argument also seems weak simply because if there is enough money
what a lawyer charges but I’d guess it’s a lot. So it’s expensive and a young involved to warrant a prenup, there’s probably enough money to hire a
couple could use the money on other things. lawyer. If the speaker wanted to make this argument, specific costs should
have been cited.
I had a prenup two years ago. And when we got divorced, I got nothing. If Here the audience is likely thinking that there was a personal and emo-
we didn’t have a prenup I’d be rich and I’d be at some private college in- tional reason for arguing against prenups and not any logical reasons.
stead of here. And yet, the audience is probably asking itself, what were the specifics of
the prenup and how much money was involved. The speaker probably
should have disclosed this earlier in the speech and assured the audience
that this personal experience led to a thorough study of the subject. And
if a personal experience is going to be used—and there’s no reason it
shouldn’t—then it needs to be discussed more fully and, at the least, an-
swer the audience’s obvious questions.

conclusIon

My conclusions. So you can see that prenups are not a good thing. Like Using the word “conclusion” is not a bad idea but it stands out like a
they’re unfair to poor people. And it creates a lot of stress for the couple, heading in a textbook. This speech also needed a more detailed
especially for the one who didn’t want the prenup in the first place, like conclusion, reiterating the main points in the speech. This speaker
myself. also commits one of the common faults of conclusions—that is, to
introduce new material. Notice that we hadn’t heard of the stress factor
before. The speaker might have said something like: “In conclusion, we
can see there are three main arguments against prenups. First, . . . ”
Any questions? This seems too abrupt. A good pause should preface this request for ques-
tions and perhaps a more inviting request could be offered— something
like, “If anyone has any questions, I’d be happy to respond.”