Reading through chapter 23, one of the first takeaways was the importance of ethos, pathos, and logos. I have learned about them before in English and philosophy classes, but I have never learned them in the context of public speaking. Which is kind of ironic, considering the ancients like Plato and Aristotle used them specifically for orating rhetoric. So, it was good to finally learn about ethos, pathos, and logos in the application of their original purpose.
To follow this, seeing the application of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs was not something I was expecting to see in a public speaking course, but it was a really clever way to use Maslow’s reasoning as a vessel for effective speech. With this, learning about the importance of motives and audience needs where two things which were unbeknownst to me when it comes to public speaking. So, those will be something to consider while drafting.
In chapter 24, starting out with the core elements of an argument was a helpful way to begin to understand the rest of the content to come. Learning how arguments and pieces of reasoning are founded in a claim, evidence, and a warrant was a big takeaway for me. With this, there are three different types of claims: claims of fact, value, or policy. I had no idea about this terminology to distinguish between different types of claims. However, this makes total sense, and will be useful in understanding the claims of others and claims I come up with myself.
With this, it was useful to learn about the different types of evidence that can be utilized in a speech. Furthermore, it was useful to learn about the different type of warrants to justify claims and evidence. Such as the distinction between motivation, authoritative, and substantive warrants. Finally, a big takeaway for me was on logical fallacies, it’s been a while since I visited and reread all the logical fallacies and it was super useful to have this review. No one wants to be illogical, especially when you’re reasoning and presenting arguments to others.
