Ethical Public Speaking

Ethics is the responsibility we have toward the audience and ourselves.

O’Hair, Stewart, Rubentein (2009)

                                 

Chapter Five

Today’s Agenda

• Learn how to take responsibility for your words!

• Explain how to avoid plagiarism.• Share Your Community Moments

Ethics and Public Speaking

• Ethics is derived from the Greek word ethos which means character.

• Little has changed since Aristotle’s day; audience members still expect speakers to be honest, respectful, knowledgeable, and to have organized delivery of reasonable thoughts.

Take Responsibility For Your Words!

1. Earn your listener’s trust

2. Respect your listener’s value

3. Bring your own value’s into focus

1. Earn your listener’s trust

• Have competence

• Have good moral character

• Demonstrate goodwill

• Show credibility• Solid grasp of subject

• Sound reasoning skills

• Honest and straightforward

• Genuinely interested in the welfare of listener’s

2. Respect your listener’s value

• Values can conflict or clash

• Conflicting values lies at the heart of many controversies

• Anticipate the audience will hold a range of values. Be sensitive!

3. Bring your own values into focus

Your Values Audience Values

Overlapping Values

O’Hair, Stewart, Rubentein (2009)

• Are there any laws that govern whether or not it is acceptable to lie?

• What message does society send about lying?

• What did your cultural upbringing (family training) teach you about lying?

O’Hair, Stewart, Rubentein (2009)

To tell a lie:

An Ethical Dilemma

Is this an acceptable lie to you?

Free Speech

• Protected by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution

• Limitations: speech that provokes the audience to violence, that defames another person’s character, or that invades another person’s privacy.

• Some legally protected speech is still unethical.

O’Hair, Stewart, Rubentein (2009)

Virtual Slander

Online discussion groups have created new and

anonymous ways to defame another person’s character.

• Facebook

• MySpace

• Ratemyprofessor.com

• Blogs

• You-tube video clips

• Personal websites

Ground Rules for Ethical Speaking1. Maintain the dignity of your audience members.2. Maintain your integrity by not compromising the

truth.3. Be trustworthy by not manipulating data, hiding

relevant information, or forgetting to reveal sources.4. Respect the audience by refraining from verbally

attacking them. Avoid ethnocentric remarks, making stereotypes, and using hate speech.

O’Hair, et al (2009)

PLAIGERISM

Discussion

• If a student gives a speech in which he/she did research and presents information based on that research, should the student cite the sources of such information in the speech?

• If the student does not cite the sources of the information presented in the speech, what grade does the student deserve?

Types of Plagiarism• Global, or wholesale plagiarism: take entire sections

from the source and insert into your speech. • Example: Each of your three main ideas is a

section from a source where every line comes from the same source.

• Patchwrite plagiarism (also called Patchwork): change a few words here and there to make the material appear like your own.

• Example: Creating your own outline of a single article and presenting it.

Copyright and Fair Use

• Copyright laws protect intellectual property, the creator’s right to own his/her own creative works.

• In the classroom, a teacher or student speaker has limited rights to use someone else’s work as long as credit is given to the creator.

Bibliography

O’ Hair, Dan, Stewart, Rob, Rubenstein, Hannah, A Speaker’s Guidebook, Bedford St. Martin (2009)