6.

4 Specific Purposes

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

I. Understand the process of extending a general purpose into a specific

purpose.
2. Integrate the seven tips for creating specificpurposes.

Once you have chosen your general purpose and your

topic, it's time to take your speech to the next phase and
develop your specific purpose, A specific purpose 16
starts with one of the three general purposes and then
specifies the actual topic you have chosen and the basic
objective you hope to accomplish with your speech.
Basically, the specific purpose answers the who,what,
when, where, and why questions for your speech.
O Thinkstock

Getting Specific

When attempting to get at the core of your speech (the

specific purpose), you need to know a few basic things about your speech. First. you
need to have a general purpose. Onceyou know whether your goal is to inform,
persuade, or entertain, picking an appropriate topic is easier. Obviously,depending
on the general purpose, you will have a range of different types of topics. For
example, let's say you want to give a speech about hygiene. You could still give a
speech about hygiene no matter what your general purpose is, but the specific
purpose would vary depending on whether the general purpose is to inform
(discussing hygiene practices around the globe), to persuade (discussing why people
need to adopt a specific hygiene practice), or to entertain (discussing some of the
strange and unique hygiene practices that people have used historically). Notice
that in each of these cases, the genera) purpose alters the topic, but all three are
still fundamentallyabout hygiene.
6.Astatement starting with one
of the three general purposes
(to inform, to persuade, or to Now, when discussing specific purposes, we are concerned with who, what, when,
entertain), but is then followed where, why, and how questions for your speech. I.ees examine each of these
by a specification of one's separately. First, you want to know who is going to be in your audience. Different
audience,the actual topic a audiences, as discussed in the chapter on audience analysis, have differing desires,
speakerhas chosen, and the
basicobjective the speaker backgrounds, and needs. Keeping your audience first and foremost in your thoughts
hopesto accomplish with the
speech.

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 your audience
when choosing a specificpurpose will increase the likelihood that
will find your speech meaningful.

topic. When picking

Second is the ' 'what" question, or the basic description of your
for a variety
an effective topic, you need to make sure that the topic is appropriate
of constraints or limitations within a speaking context.

speeches may
Third, ycu need to consider when your speech will be given. Different
of
be better for different times of the day. For example, explaining the importance
eating breakfast and providing people with cereal bars may be a great topic at 9:()()
a.m. but may not have the same impact if you're giving it at 4:00p.m.

Fourth, you need to consider where your speech will be given. Are you giving a
speech in front of a classroom?A church? An executive meeting? Depending on the
location of your speech, different topics may or may not be appropriate.

The last question you need to answer within your speech is why. Why does your
audience need to hear your speech? If your audience doesn't care about your
specific purpose, they are less likely to attend to your speech. If it's a topic that's a
little more off-the-wall,you'll really need to think about why they should care.

Once you've determined the who,what, when, where, and why aspects of your topic,
it's time to start creating your actual specific purpose. First, a specific purpose, in
its written form, should be a short, declarative sentence that emphasizes the main
topic of your speech. Let's look at an example:

Topic The military

Narrower
The military's use of embedded journalists
Topic

Narrowed The death of British reporter Rupert Hamer in 2010in a roadside

Topic bombing in Nawa,Afghanistan, along with five US Marines

In this example, we've quickly narrowed a topic from a more general topic te a
more specific topic. Let's now look at that topic in terms of a general purpose and
specific purpose:

General
To inform
Purpose

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 Specific To inform my audience about the danger of embeddedjournalism
Purpose by focusing on the death of British reporter Rupert Hamer
General
To persuade
Purpose
as
To persuade a group of journalism students to avoid jobs
Specific
embeddedjournalists by using the death of British reporter
Purpose
s as an example of what can happen
Rupert blarney

ror the purpose of this example, we used the same general topic area, but
demonstrated how you could easily turn the topic into either an informative speech
or a persuasive speech. In the first example, the speaker is going to talk about the
danger embeddedjournalists face. In this case, the speaker isn't attempting to alter
people's ideas about embeddedjournalists, just make them more aware of the
dangers. In the second case, the specificpurpose is to persuade a group of
journalism students (the audience) to avoidjobs as embeddedjournalists.

Your Specific Statement of Purpose

To form a clear and succinct statement of the specific purpose of your speech, start
by naming your genera) purpose (to inform, to persuade, or to entertain). Follow
this by a capsule description of your audience (my peers in class, a group of
kindergarten teachers, etc.). Then completeyour statement of purpose with a
prepositional phrase (a phrase using ' 'to," "about," "by," or another preposition)
that summarizes your topic. As an example, "My specific purpose is to persuade the
students in my residence hall to protest the proposed housing cost increase" is a
specific statement of purpose, while ' 'My speech will be about why we should
protest the proposed housing cost increase" is not.

Specific purposes should be statements, not questions. If you find yourself starting
to phrase your specific purpose as a question, ask yourself how you can reword it as
a statement. Table "MySpecificPurpose Is..."provides several more examples of
good specific purpose statements.

'lable 6.1bMy Specific Purpose 1<...

Generat Audience Topic

Purpose
about the usefulness of scrapbooking to save
To inform my audience a family's memories.

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 General "V'opic
udience
Purpose
To a group of kindergarten to adopt a new disciplinary method for their
persuade teachers classrooms.
To by describing the lighter side of life in
a group of executives
entertain "cubicle-ville."

To inform about the newly proposed swimmingpool

cornnuunitymembers
plans that have been adopted.
To
persuade
my peers in class to vote for me for class president.

To the guests attending my by telling a humorous story followedby a

entertain mother's birthday party toast.

Basic Tips for Creating Specific Purposes

Nowthat we've examined what specificpurposes are, we are going to focus on a

series of tips to help you write specificpurposes that are appropriate for a range of
speeches.

Audience, Audience, Audience

First and foremost,you always need to think about your intended audience when
choosing your specificpurpose. In the previous section, we talked about a speech
where a speaker is attempting to persuade a group ofjournalism students to not
takejobs dSembeddedjournalists. Wouldthe same speech be successful, or even
appropriate, if given in your public speaking class? Probably not. As a speaker, you
may think your topic is great, but you always need to make sure you think about
your audience when selectingyour specificpurpose. For this reason, when
writing
your specific purpose, start off your sentence by including the words '
'my audience"
or actually listing the name ofyour audience: a group of journalism
students, the
people in my congregation, my peers in class, and so on. When
you place your
audience first, you're a lot more likely to have a successful
speech.

Matching the Rhetorical Situation

After your audience, the second most important

consideration about your specific
purpose pertains to the rhetorical situation of your
speech. The rhetorical
situation! 7 is the set of circumstances surrounding
your speech (e.g., speaker,
audience, text, and context). When thinking about
your specific purpose, you want
to ensure that all these components go together.
You want to make sure that you
are the appropriate speaker for a topic, the topic
is appropriate for your audience,

169
the text of your speech is appropriate, and the speech is appropriate for the
context. For example, speeches that you give in a classroom may not be appropriate
in a religious context and vice versa.

Make It Clear

The specific purpose statement for any speech should be direct and not too broad,
general, or vague. Consider the lack of clarity in the following specific purpose: "To
persuade the students in my class to drink more." Obviously,we have no idea what
the speaker wants the audience to drink: water, milk, orange juice? Alcoholic
beverages? Furthermore, we have no way to quantify or rnake sense of the word
' 'more." "More" assumes that the students are already drinking a certain amount,
and the speaker wants them to increase their intake. If you want to persuade your
listeners to drink eight 8-ounce glasses of water per day, you need to say so clearly
in your specific purpose.

Another way in which purpose statements are sometimes unclear comes from the
use of colloquial language. While we often use colloquialisms in everyday life, they
are often understood only by a limited number of people. It may sound like fun to
have a specificpurpose like, ' 'To persuade my audience to get jiggy," but if you state
this as your purpose, many people probably won't know what you're talking about
at all.

Don't Double Up

You cannot hope to solve the entire world's problems in one speech, so don't even
I-ry.At the same time, you also want to make sure that you stick to one specific
purpose. Chances are it will be challenging enough to inform your audience about
one topic or persuade them to change one behavior or opinion. Don't put extra
stress on yourself by adding topics. If you find yourself using the word "and" in
your specific topic statement, you're probably doubling up on topics.

Can I Really Do This in Five to Seven Minutes?

When choosing your specific purpose, it's important to determine whether it can be
realistically covered in the amount of time you have. Time limits are among the
most common constraints for students in a public speaking course. Usually
speeches early in the term have shorter time limits (three te five minutes), and
speeches later in the term have longer time limits (five to eight minutes). While
eight minutes may sound like an eternity to be standing up in front of the class, it's
actually a very short period of time in which to cover a topic. To determine whether
you think you can accomplishyour speech's purpose in the time slot, ask yourself

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 Chapter 6 Finding a Purpose and Selecting a Topic

your chosen topic or to

how long it would take to make you an informed person on
persuade you to change your behavior or attitudes.

If you cannot reasonably see yourself becoming informed or persuaded during the
allotted amount of time, chances are you aren't going to inforrn or persuade your
audience either. The solution, of course, is to make your topic narrower so that you
can fully cover a limited aspect of it.

KEV TAKEAWAYS

• Movingfrom a general to specificpurpose requires you to identify the

who, what, when, where, and why of your speech,
State your specificpurpose in a sentence that includes the general
purpose, a description of the intended audience, and a prepositional
phrase summarizing the topic.
When creating a specificpurpose for your speech, first, consider your
audience. Second,consider the rhetorical situation. Make sure your
specificpurpose statement uses clear language, and that it does not try
to cover more than one topic.
Make sure you can realistically accomplishyour specific purpose within
the allotted time.

3.4Specific Purposes
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