What was important in this reading, that really stuck out to me was tailoring the argument to the audience. This is extremely important and its actually something that I believe can make or break a speech or argument. You have to know your audience. You have to know your audience to even begin and try to "get them on your side".
With tailoring to your audience comes the term, 'Presumption". Presumption, is something that almost everyone, if not everyone, does. Presumption can sometimes be a good thing and sometimes can be a bad thing depending on the context.
If you're meeting someone for the first time and you don't have any presumptions then it gives that person the ability to show you who they are. But if you meet a person and you already have a presumption in your head about them, it's harder for that person to change your mind. See when we have pre-percieved ideas about someone or something, a person has to work that much harder to change our thoughts. Whereas if we don't know much about a topic or come in with no presumptions, it's easier to persuade. That's important when talking about arguments. When making an argument, if you know your audience, you can some what put together what their presumptions of your topic might already be.. and therefore you can tailor your speech around their presumptions.
For example, If I was giving a speech in the 1800's on anti-slavery and I was speaking to a bunch of white people.. I can make a presumption that they probably are for slavery or at least not super against it. Therefore making my argument harder to get across to them. That would mean I would probably want to wait a bit into my speech before I make my claim and use the beginning of my speech to already back up my claim I would be making later in the speech. By me doing that, it will hopefully cause for less rebuttel.
With tailoring to your audience comes the term, 'Presumption". Presumption, is something that almost everyone, if not everyone, does. Presumption can sometimes be a good thing and sometimes can be a bad thing depending on the context.
If you're meeting someone for the first time and you don't have any presumptions then it gives that person the ability to show you who they are. But if you meet a person and you already have a presumption in your head about them, it's harder for that person to change your mind. See when we have pre-percieved ideas about someone or something, a person has to work that much harder to change our thoughts. Whereas if we don't know much about a topic or come in with no presumptions, it's easier to persuade. That's important when talking about arguments. When making an argument, if you know your audience, you can some what put together what their presumptions of your topic might already be.. and therefore you can tailor your speech around their presumptions.
For example, If I was giving a speech in the 1800's on anti-slavery and I was speaking to a bunch of white people.. I can make a presumption that they probably are for slavery or at least not super against it. Therefore making my argument harder to get across to them. That would mean I would probably want to wait a bit into my speech before I make my claim and use the beginning of my speech to already back up my claim I would be making later in the speech. By me doing that, it will hopefully cause for less rebuttel.
Hey Brooke!
ReplyDeleteI also wrote my blog post this week focusing on the term "presumption." However, my analysis of the term seemed to be a bit different from yours. That being said, I went onto dictionary.com to see if I could find the definition of the term outside our textbook's concepts. Dictionary.com defined "presumption" as, "an idea that is taken to be true, and often used as the basis for other ideas, although it is not known for certain." That being said, I think that both of our interpretations would be correct, I just took a different route.
While you focused on presumptions as being a preconceived truth in relation to meeting someone for the first time and already having an idea of who they are or how you think they are, or a shared belief of the audience, I looked at it from a mildly different angle. I viewed presumptions as preconceived base understanding that an audience may share. For example, that a man is innocent until proven guilty; there is a presumption that the man is innocent, and if it can't be heavily proven the other way, that is what the decision will fall back on. I agree that this concept does vary by audience, and it is important to know your audience's presumptions to form a strong enough argument for your side (especially if you are against the presumption).