Ceremonial speeches involve a type of argumentation, it's value argumentation.
And as arguments, we still understand them in terms of claim and support.
So you're making a value claim when you say,
"We should think about this event in terms of
this value and then you provide that support."
So it's important to remember what good support typically does,
it proves and shows, proves and/or shows.
If you're demonstrating validity, you're proving.
If you're providing details, you're showing.
And I typically want to do both in a speech.
So in a persuasive argument about housing prices,
I'm going to provide statistics to show increase prices,
maybe testimony from economists,
that's going to be there to prove my claims.
Then I'm going to want to maybe include some testimony and
stories from homeowners to show the human impacts,
so I'm proving and showing there.
Ceremonial support should also show and prove.
Now, the genre might skew this a little bit,
so keynote speech might skew more towards proving,
a commencement address might skew more towards showing,
but both are probably in there.
Alright, so how do we do this?
Well, typically, we classify support into four types: facts,
statistics, testimony, and examples and stories.
Now, we're going to spend a lot of time talking about crafting stories.
That's a key part of this course.
But for now, let's think a little bit about
these other forms of support that we're going to be using to make value claims.
So we start with facts and statistics.
So these are just things that we generally believed to be correct.
It's something that's verifiable.
So if your awarding a top salesperson for earning $1 million in sales,
she either did or she didn't. That's a fact.
A ceremonial speech should use facts and statistics,
not simply as a way of informing,
but as a way of supporting the value claims.
So let's go and take a look at this.
This is an example from the then CEO of the Girl Scouts of America,
and she's delivering a keynote address at a ceremonial dinner,
and she's talking about the impact of selling cookies.
So if you don't know,
the Girl Scouts have a nationwide cookie selling program and
they use that money for their projects.
So let's go and take a look at this example.
Did you realize when you sold cookies or you bought cookies,
you were actually invested in
the largest entrepreneur program for girls in this country if not this world?
Yes. And the girls,
my bosses, are not shy when they state their outcomes of their business.
So you can smile,
and you can say, "How cute,
girl scout," but these girls scouts in less than five months raise $800 million.
Okay?
Which by the way,
which why I don't get a penny of it at national,
it stays in their local community because guess what they do?
They reinvest it back in their local communities. They do.
Their funding your homeless shelters,
your congregate meal sites, your animal shelters.
They're rebuilding your local parks, your local libraries.
They're funding their community service projects and the rewards through our revenue.
And they're learning critical business skills.
So she weaves in procedural facts and hard earning numbers,
but they're all they're in service of the value of the cookie program.
Right? So this is a value program that helps young girls and their communities.
That's what that evidence is there to prove.
And I worry sometimes,
that people think facts and statistics don't belong in ceremonial speaking,
that it should only be about what you feel, and I disagree.
I think hard evidence works great in
a value speech but so long as it's kept in its support role.
Alright, so we have facts and statistics,
and we have testimony.
And testimonies just support from a third party.
And typically, we distinguish between expert testimony and lay testimony.
So expert testimony usually tilts more towards proving.
Next week, for example,
we're going to look at a speech commemorating an early civil rights leader,
and the speaker includes testimony from Martin Luther King saying that,
this person was a key thinker in the civil rights movement,
or a key thinker in civil rights.
Okay, that's the expert testimony.
If Martin Luther King says that this is an important thinker on civil rights,
then, okay, he was.
That's expert testimony.
Okay, but we also have lay testimony,
this would more like lived experience.
Now, this tends, generally I think,
to more towards showing.
So Melanie Schultz van Haegen is the Minister
of Infrastructure and the Environment in the Netherlands.
And this is a bit from her keynote speech for
the 2015 Amsterdam International Water Week,
and she's talking about water crises around the globe.
We take the Philippines,
where just two weeks ago,
Typhoon Lando caused enormous damage and severe floodings.
"It's the worst flood I've seen in my entire life.
I've never seen anything like this," said the farmer named Reynaldo Ramos,
who lives close to the capital of Manila,
the city of two and a half million people.
So there's a short bit of late testimony there,
but she's able to pull in someone else's words as
a way of proving the idea of countries in crisis.
It feeds into the speeches overall thing
of asking the attendees to become agents of change.
So you should aim for a variety of support types,
and that gives the audience multiple ways of approaching and understanding your topic.
A ceremonial speech still probably calls for research.
You're still showing and proving value claims.
But having discussed facts, statistics, and testimony,
we now turn to stories,
which is a vitally important form of support for your value claims.
Dr. Matt McGarrityPrincipal Lecturer
