Thomas Paralegal

You involve listeners when you connect them with your message. One of the most frequently used involvement techniques is to offer sincere, well-deserved compliments.
Does the group, the location, the occasion, or an audience member merit praise?
People like to hear good things about themselves and their community. This technique is often used in formal speeches when custom requires a speaker to make such acknowledgments before moving into the actual presentation.
These introductory remarks can be very brief, as illustrated by the opening words of President John F. Kennedy in a speech given at a White House dinner honoring Nobel Prize winners:
I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered together at the White House, with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone.
With this elegant tribute, Kennedy was able to honor his guests without embarrassing them or going overboard with praise. His witty reference to the genius of Thomas Jefferson also paid tribute to the past.
Involvement is especially important if your topic seems distant from the audience’s immediate concerns or experiences. A student at Kutztown University wanted to give an informative speech on the Black Plague of the Middle Ages. He knew that he had to do something dramatic to involve his audience from the outset in order to make the topic interesting and relevant. Here is how he handled it.’
As the students entered the classroom, a confederate gave each a card containing the name of a profession, such as clergyman, sailor, farmer, merchant. The number of cards for each profession was proportional to that profession’s representation in European society at the time of the plague. When the student’s name was called, he entered from the back of the room wearing an over sized black sweatshirt, hood up, cinched around the waist with a length of sash cord. He opened with a rhetorical question, “If the Black Plague were to strike Kutztown today, given the same medical limitations, how many do you think would survive?” He then asked everyone to stand, and after a pause, continued as follows: “Will all of you with a card reading ‘physician’ please sit down. In tending the sick, you have come in contact with the disease and have become one of its victims.” A student took her seat. He followed with “Will all of those identified as ‘sailor’ or ‘merchant’ please be seated. You have traveled about the country or the world and so have also come close to other victims and have sealed your fate.” Five more students sat down. He then called out the clergy, city dwellers, dock workers, soldiers, and others who would have been exposed to the disease.
By the time he finished reading the list of those most susceptible to the disease, only three of his twenty-five classmates were left standing. He then explained that if the plague were to strike Kutztown the way it did many cities during the Middle Ages, those three would have the awesome task of rebuilding society.
Your introduction need not be this dramatic to involve the audience. If you can demonstrate that what you are talking about matters to the audience, your speech will be more effective. You also can involve your listeners by relating your topic to their motivations or attitudes and by using inclusive pronouns such as we and our.

An old adage suggests that people are interested first in themselves, next in other people, then in things, and finally in ideas. This may explain why relating a topic to personal experience heightens audience interest. When speakers have been personally involved with a topic, they gain credibility.
We are more willing to listen to others and take their advice if we know that they have traveled the road themselves. Jason Shafer, a Dean’s List student at Vanderbilt University, related the following personal experience as he began his self-introductory speech:
With a lot of hard work, your son will hopefully make it through a trade school. That heart-gripping statement was what my parents heard when I was in third grade. You see, I was a terrible student in grade school. I was the worst. I’m sure most of you just flew through grade school, getting As and Bs. No problem whatsoever. Me, on the other hand, not at all. I got Cs and Ds. And I had to work for them. All of my teachers tried. They didn’t know what was wrong. They tried different techniques, but nothing really seemed to work. I guess the point of crisis came in third grade when my teacher realized that I couldn’t even read yet. It just about killed my parents. They wanted the best for me. So they had some testing done, and found out I had a learning disability.
Relating your subject to personal experience can be very important if you face an unfriendly audience. Brock Evans, vice president of the Audubon Society, recently addressed the Seattle Rotary Club on the Endangered Species Act. Because this speech was presented amid a controversy concerning logging restrictions in that area, his introduction before this group was especially critical. Evans combined the techniques of involving the audience and relating the topic to personal experience in this introduction:
It is always a distinct honor to be invited to speak before a prestigious group like the Rotary Club of Seattle. I thank you for inviting me to be here today, and not just because of the opportunity to share a few
thoughts about this very important subject. Those of.you who know me know that my roots here run very deep. It was 30 years ago that I moved here from the Midwest, because I wanted to live in what I thought then—and still do now—was the most beautiful part of the country.
And those of you who know me know that my passion for this special Northwest land, its unique blend of mountain and forest and sea, goes even deeper. . . . It caused me to leave a law practice here, in order to devote my life to fight to help keep our way of life, to keep the Northwest the special place it is. It has now become a life’s work that has taken me many places, first all across the Northwest, and finally into “exile” as I now believe—in the nation’s capital—that other
Washington, where for better or worse, so many of the great issues of our time are finally resolved.
In this example, the love of the area and its beauty unites the speaker and his listeners. The fact that the speaker “adopted” the area lends special credence to his passion for it.