The Art of Persuasion: Audience Demographics and Public Forum
This article was originally published in the September 2012 edition of the Rostrum.
Reflecting on my years of forensic involvement, both as a competitor and coach, I have had many experiences that could inspire an article for Rostrum. One constant experience has been the divide between coaches and competitors, with each choosing to speak negatively about another speech or debate event in order to support the notion that their event is the most beneficial, the coolest, the best.
Every event is uniquely different and offers something special to our students. Different events teach different skill sets and attract different groups of students. We offer a broad array of events to ensure that every student can find a niche in the forensic community and learn the skills of presentation and persuasion. However, this isn’t going to be a tirade on how we should all just learn to get along (although we should), but rather an examination of one event and how we can use the judge base of this event to both maintain the unique skills it teaches while maximizing the educational opportunity for our students.
I believe it is vital that Public Forum continue to attract a mixed audience from which to draw judges. Judges from a variety of backgrounds provide our students with realistic communication models, which force them to make welldeveloped arguments in a slow and clear fashion. Judges with debate experience can help make a debater’s technical arguments stronger while judges without this background force debaters to find ways to make these arguments publicly persuasive. It becomes problematic when a tournament administration selectively eliminates either pool of judges because it not only allows for the event to be altered but also hinders the educational outcomes.
When teaching my students about judge adaptation, I refer to judges with terminology that helps to frame each group with a level of respect I think the entire judging community deserves. My lesson plan incorporates discussions of the jury system in America, per descriptions used by the National Forensic League to describe Public Forum. Judges who have no experience in debate are referenced as citizen judges. This is a move away from terminology that deems non-debate judges as being less-experienced and reframes this body of judges as uniquely special. When you convince a jury, you don’t convince 12 lawyers who all practice law, but rather a body of judges drawn from the community at large.
In order to draw from the community at-large, I recommend reaching out first to your parent base for volunteers. Many parents work at companies that encourage volunteerism, and I have witnessed multiple tournaments draw large numbers of citizen judges in this way. Additionally, in order to bring in another demographic, reach out to the faculty at your local university or community college. Public speaking instructors in many parts of the country will offer credits to students who judge at local tournaments, and these students can be a valuable addition to your tournament pool. Finally, ask your local civic organizations and speaking clubs, like Rotary and Toastmasters, if they can share the information with their memberships. Although many of your volunteers won’t be able to stay for the duration of a tournament, even bringing these citizen judges in for a smaller time block can help to diversify your judge pool.
When examining the educational value of our activity, I think an important component of persuasion is understanding your audience. It is here where I propose something more controversial than ensuring a PF judge pool that is as diverse as your local community. Every major public speaking textbook, when addressing persuasive speaking, focuses on an important component that I feel goes missing in most high school tournaments. Learning the demographics of your audience is a key component of persuasive speaking. Understanding the background of those you are trying to persuade allows the speakers to focus their craft and amend their strategies.
At the top of this article, I mentioned how each event has evolved and has become something unique, offering students opportunities to focus on more specific skills and find a part of the forensic community that engages them. Before I continue, I want to note that what I propose is different than judge philosophy cards, because the focus of audience analysis for Public Forum ought to be different than its counterparts and not intimidating to citizen judges. However, based on conversations with coaches from throughout the country who take a step away from competition to focus on the educational component of the activity, I have heard many versions of what I propose here.
At tournaments, when picking up ballots, judges should also pick up a brief form that includes two or three basic demographic questions. These could include occupation or state of residency. Without specific questions that require lengthy answers, this form could be brought to rounds and the students could have one or two minutes to read the answers before beginning the debate. This prevents a logistical nightmare of having to collect information in advance from community volunteers, while teaching our students the value of a brief audience analysis demographic survey.
One of the important components of persuasion I teach students about is a person’s perceptual filter. While it is still nearly impossible to understand each judge’s worldview without lengthy conversation or essay-writing (both of which I do not propose), I do think some collection of basic demographic information can help students to learn about this key component of communication. As an educator first and competitive coach second, I believe it is crucial for us, while respecting the sanctity of a diverse judge pool, to allow our students to engage in this component of persuasion.
Public Forum continues to offer students an opportunity to speak persuasively and engage in argumentation strategy in a unique form that differs from other events. However, it is up to the coaching and tournament administrator communities to ensure a judge pool that doesn’t narrow the activity while maximizing educational opportunities for our students.
Carol Green is a one-diamond coach from The Harker School in California.