What do ceremonial speeches do?

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From the course by University of Washington

Speaking to Inspire: Ceremonial and Motivational Speeches

15 ratings

University of Washington

Speaking to Inspire: Ceremonial and Motivational Speeches

15 ratings

Course 4 of 4 in the Specialization Dynamic Public Speaking

The most memorable speeches inspire, entertain, and praise. By blending stories and eloquence, great speeches highlight the core values motivating an audience. You might need to do this in a keynote address, a eulogy, or simply a business meeting. Inspiring audiences is a common, but difficult writing challenge. You want a speech that elevates the topic and the audience. This course gives you a method for preparing and delivering speeches that inspire and entertain. By the end of this course, you should be able to compose and deliver moving speeches that praise core audience values through evidence, storytelling, and humor. You should be able to write eloquent passages in tones appropriate to the audience and occasion and speak fluidly from either a well-prepared manuscript or from memory. Learners will record speeches, providing and receiving peer feedback.

From the lesson

Week 1. Using values and storytelling to develop a great speech

Welcome! We begin this week with an overview of the course: What it is and what we’ll be doing. With a sense for the topic, we can then get to know each other with an introductory speech. It’s a fun and easy speech that allows you to get to know some of your classmates. From there we can start preparing our speeches. We’ll start by finding the core values that will drive the speech. Values that speak to the topic and inspire your audience. We’ll then explore how to discuss those values through evidence and storytelling. By the end of the week, you’ll have a list of values and stories to write a speech. If you want, you can end the week by telling us a story and getting some feedback on it. This is a longer week. The storytelling material goes better in week one than week two. If you feel a bit overwhelmed, just know that this week will have a bit more content than the other weeks.

What do ceremonial speeches do?4:48

How to find your fit5:54

A process for preparing speeches3:27

Meet the Instructors

Dr. Matt McGarrity
Principal Lecturer
UW Department of Communication

So before we get into the course material,

I think we should reflect on what it is that ceremonial speeches actually do.

Now, like many questions in rhetoric we start with Aristotle.

He defined three basic types of speeches, deliberative, forensic and epideictic.

Now deliberative speeches generally took place in the assembly and

they dealt with policy persuasion.

Forensic speeches took place in courts and they dealt with legal accusation and

defense.

And epideitic speeches, he argued, took place at festivals and

dealt with value based praise and blame.

Now, we've updated these categories but we still pretty much use them.

Most public speaking courses have three main speeches.

Informative, persuasive and ceremonial.

And hey, what do you know,

that's the basic organization of this public speaking specialization.

So in persuasive speeches we use agreement to persuade audiences, great, okay.

Informative, we use explanations to inform the audience, okay that makes sense.

Then we get to ceremonial, well what does this one mean now?

We ceremonialize the audience?

That doesn't sound right.

Ceremonial indicates a place rather than an action, and

that place varies greatly, right?

We do ceremonial speeches at awards ceremonies, funerals, weddings,

keynote addresses, introductory speeches, and so on and so forth.

So if place isn't the determining factor, what is?

Well, the rhetorician Celeste Condit suggested that epideictic rhetoric,

which is our ceremonial speaking, can be understood as performing three basic

functions for audiences and speakers.

And that's a good place to start.

So what are these three functions?

Defining and understanding, creating and sharing community,

and displaying and entertaining.

So let's go ahead and move through each one of these.

So to begin with, speakers define values and

help the audience better understand those values.

So commencement speakers do this all the time.

The talk show host Oprah Winfrey had a famous commencement speech back

in 2007 and the key theme was find your calling.

Her speech walked through examples and ideas to explain what that meant.

Now as a community we see self determination and fulfillment,

which were in the speech, as common values.

Her speech was successful insofar as it helped people better understand those

values.

And I would say not cognitively understand those values,

but better understanding them emotionally.

Okay, so that's one.

Next, speakers can create community that the audiences can share.

So a conferences keynote speech or a business awards ceremony gives

speakers the chance to identify the key values driving a community.

So Allen Pearlman was a speech writer at Kraft Foods.

And he had this great example in his book on public speaking and

he was talking about a dedication ceremony.

So the speaker in this case was dedicating a new greenhouse.

But really the greenhouse was just a reflection of the corporate communities

commitment to food safety.

That was the aspect of the community that the speaker was highlighting.

Hey, we're a food safety community.

So the speech is successful insofar as the audience sees that as a good

reflection of their community.

So then finally, speakers engage in display rhetoric in a ceremonial

speech for the enjoyment of the audience.

Well that raises the question, what are we enjoying in these moments?

Condit would suggest eloquence, okay?

It doesn't mean that every speech has to have grandiose language.

But the most moving ceremonial speeches typically involve some type of eloquence.

Martin Luther King's I Have a Dream speech is display rhetoric.

It's moving for its message, but it's enjoyable as well as a work of eloquence.

Now, these three functions are not mutually exclusive, a speech isn't one or

the other of these functions, they often coincide.

One of history's most famous speeches is Pericles' funeral oration.

Delivered during the Peloponnesian war, the speech defines the unique traits of

Athens, encourages an Athenian aesthetic community and does so in an eloquent way.

That's all three functions in that one speech.

So an informative speech might explain new information.

A persuasive speech might develop a new argument.

But ceremonial speaking often takes existing values and beliefs and

helps us renew our commitment to them.

Now, that requires an appreciation for

how our speech will fit into the rhetorical situation that we step into.

And we are going to take that up in the next lecture.

[MUSIC]

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