Virtual Insistence:

Constructing Compelling Claims.

As important as the General and Specific Purposes and the Central Idea are, they are all for you the speaker, not for the audience.  Their combined function is to focus your attention to a specific enough intent that you will have a clear idea of the destination of your audience member. Only having done so are you prepared to plot a course.

Let us assume you are now prepared.  The "course plotting analogy" from Virtual Reality (You are now entering the Great State of Missouri.) sufficiently informs your task that we should extend it.

Main ideas, claims, whatever at any given moment we decide to call them, are the building blocks of your argument.  They define steps that you want the audience member to take to get from where they are to where you want them to be.

A Claim has two characteristics:

1. It is a declarative sentence. It is not a topic or a question. It claims territory (hence the term). It asserts a truth.
2. It can be defended with evidence.

Main Idea Exercise.   If you haven't already, see if, based on these distinctions, you can tell a good claim from a bad one.

In addition to its form, four elements determine the likely effectiveness of your claim. Every claim that might go into a speech--including the Central Idea--should be tested against them.
 

1. A Good Claim is Clear.

The reason you assert a claim and develop a claim is to get the listener to accept it as true. The listener cannot make that determination if the listener cannot be certain of what you are asking him or her to accept. The content or area of controversy needs to be immediately clear to the audience member.

Main Idea I:  Dental hygiene is important.

Discussion:  Okay, what else is new?  This claim will be ineffective, because almost everyone who hears it will wonder why.  The point lacks clarity, because it is so obvious.

Main Idea I:  The deconstructive agenda ultimately falls victim to its own cynicism.

Discussion: To the average audience, this sentence is too jargon filled and self referential to be available.

Main Idea I:  There are reasons why having an IRA is a good idea.

Discussion: This sentence tells me I am about to hear a claim. It fails to make one.

Main Idea I:  It is no coincidence that the home run record fell so soon after the strike eroded fan interest in the game.

Discussion:  This sentence is closer, but it is too long and insufficiently straightforward. Say what you mean.  "Major League baseball manipulated the ball to make home runs easier to hit."

Main Idea I: Dukes has never repudiate the Klan.

Discussion. This sentence is a good claim. I know what I am supposed to accept, a nd I can focus instead on your evidence that it is true.
 
 

2. A Good Claim is Sensible.

George Santayana once said: "Habit is stronger than truth."

Implicit in Santayana's observation is the reality that we often see what we wish or expect to see rather than what is there.  As fledgling speakers, we operate on the somewhat naive assumption that people (ourselves included) live in the rational world of evidence and support. Such is simply not the case. As often as not, we generate assumptions about the way the world works and live according to them, even in the face of massive amounts of evidence that those assumptions are false, if doing so keeps us comfortable and secure.

Smokers do this every time they invoke the spirit of that relative who smoked three packs a day, yet lived eighty years.  If you drink alcohol when you are pregnant, can give blood but don't, actually believe you might win the lottery, or check your horoscope you are among the finest living examples of people who choose the simplicity of avoidance over the rationality of evidence.

If you are one of the people who just read the preceding paragraph and feel even a little superior to those listed, think about your own daily life. How often do you make often profound decisions on the basis of superstition, blind leaps of faith, or deliberate ignorance.

We all need to recognize that we all embody, to some degree, Santayana's notion of the preference for habit over truth. There are probably many reasons for this, but three stand out:

• What we believe to be true is often provided by and related to people and/or institutions that we depend on for some measure of our self-images.
• 
  They are bad, because they have chemical weapons (implying its corollary: We are good, because we don't.).
• Accepting uncomfortable truths would be too disruptive of our daily lives.
• 
  Air conditioners contribute to the depletion of the ozone layer.
• Having to abandon one belief might create a domino effect challenging several others.
• 
  Of course she still loves me; she just needs some space for a while.

So What?

The point is that when we construct claims, we must do so with an eye toward how the individual will react to the claim the first time he or she hears it.

In simple words, a claim is SENSIBLE if it makes sense.

And what determines whether a claim will make sense?  Most likely, conclusions about sensibility derive from a combination of two factors--what I call Vertical and Horizontal Consistency.
 

Vertical Consistency--

Individuals make assumptions on the basis of experiences they have had--firsthand experiences. A claim is vertically consistent if it resonates with my own experience.

We don't need seat belts.
The homeless are homeless owing to some fault of their own.
Fat people lack discipline.
 

We often base our conclusions on the lack of evidence that we are wrong, as opposed to evidence that we are right. Hence, assumptions like these are somewhat resistant to contrary evidence until the individual has had some taste of the experience to which they allude.

Horizontal Consistency--

At any given point in these "vertical" lives, we have also been influenced by the reported experiences of others, or vicarious experiences.  A claim is horizontally consistent, if it resonates with what I have been "educated" to believe.

My then two-year-old son spent days in abject fear of his own house, because dad had explained how electricity worked, and in so doing inadvertently convinced him that "the electric people" could come and go as they pleased through those little holes in the wall.

Having read the poem  "Jesus Packed a Sidearm." posted on my home page, a woman wrote to me to assure me that I would burn in everlasting torment (She may be right.). Within the context of our future correspondence, she asserted as a matter of obvious fact that the federal government of the United States has itself blown up the Federal Office Building in Oklahoma City, in order to divert public opinion from the disaster in Waco, Texas.   One can assume that the woman had not derived this conclusion from first hand experience. It is safer to assume that she had been "assured" by sources on whom she had come to rely--having decided that "mainstream" media could not be trusted--that such was the case.

Almost ninety percent of Americans believe in the God described in the Holy Bible, but only a little over half of them believe in the devil described in the same "inspired" text.

Consider the tabloid headlines:

"Famed Scientist's Head Explodes."
"Space Aliens Posing as House pets Kidnap Elderly Couple."
"I'm Having Satan's Baby."

from the Weekly World News, and before you collapse into spasms of self-righteous hilarity at the expense of the hundreds of thousands of people who buy that particular newspaper every week to find out what is going on in the world,  consider headlines you could have laughed at in our past:

"J. Edgar Hoover Wears Dresses."
"F.B.I. Wiretaps Martin Luther King."
"Itinerant Minister Executed by Government Comes Back to Life and Walks out of Crypt."

There is no tactical benefit to feeling superior to those who fail to view the world through your hard edged, finely honed prism. There is however a great deal of tactical benefit in learning how to empathize with people who fail to see the world in exactly the way you do--and even more in the ability and willingness to fashion arguments that speak to them with the respect that they feel they deserve.

Why not take a little quiz to see how good you are at spotting sensible vs. nonsensical claims.
 

Take the Sense-Nonsense Quiz.

3. A Good Claim is Demonstrable.

You will probably find that this claim is a better Central Idea, than the one you have already written. Feel free (in fact, feel compelled) to change it!

Now return to the navigation analogy. You know where you want the audience member to BE. You have some sense of where the audience member is. What set of conditions do you have to create to move them from where they are to where they need to be?

The Best first step is to ask questions about the assumptions you make in your Central Idea:

• What kind of issue is this?
  • Are you addressing a personal problem?
  • A social injustice?
  • A mystery?
• Are you addressing a generality or a specific application? 
  • What categories of values and beliefs apply?
  • What "facts" apply?
  • What presumptions apply?
• What specific assumptions and/or implications exist in the Central Idea itself?

Examples: Before you get upset, read this note!

The speaker has decided to make the case that just creating one more artificial political border between peoples who cannot get along will only exacerbate the problem.  The only true path to peace in the Middle East, according to the author, solve the relational problems within the present geo-political circumstance.

Let us apply the questions above.

What kind of issue is this?
It is a political issue with personal overtones.  The position taken indicates that the speaker is not going to assess blame for the present conditions.
 

Are you addressing a generality or a specific application?
While its effects are global, this issue constitutes a specific application of general principles.  To argue a generality is to argue for a broad set of rules or guidelines (e.g. People ought to . . .). To argue a specific case is to apply those generalities in a way that may or may not be universal (e.g. These people ought to . . .).  The speaker is discussing only the Israelis and Palestinians. While comparisons may be drawn, the speaker is not making a universal assertion.
 

What specific assumptions and/or implications exist in the Central Idea itself?
The speaker is assuming that:

• The Israelis and Palestinians eventually have to learn to get along.
• The present problem is inflamed by too much attention to geographical boundaries and territory claims.
• Co-existing within a single Israel has a presents a greater long term possibility for stability than separation. (This assumption is based on the fact that the question os an either-or-dichotomy. The speaker does not present an alternative, he or she simply opposes a present plan. One can assume from that that the speaker favors the status quo. If the speaker has a better policy, the speech should be organized in support of the that policy instead of in opposition to this one.

The Main Ideas into which the speech should be divided should reflect the answers above.
 
 
 

Whether you agree with the argument or not, you should at least be able to recognize that it is specifically focused and preferable to a list of only generally related reasons why no Palestinian homeland should be established.

* * * * * * * *
 

Again, rather than merely shotgunning Bradley's attributes, the speaker has elected (no pun intended) to portray the ex-Senator as supplying a specific need.  The speaker must the defend the existence of that need  and Bradley's ability to fulfill it. Within that context, the speaker should have the opportunity to include a lot of the information the shotgun would have provided without being hamstrung by having to include it all at the organizational level.

In conclusion, this chapter has introduced the notion that an argument is made up of claims:

• specific assertions of truth
• that can be supported by evidence.

A good claim:

• is specific.
• is sensible.
• is demonstrable.
• is logical.

Having read about Virtual Reality, and Virtual Insistence, you are actually ready to construct an effective public address.  The remaining chapters deal with how to organize your claims, how to support them, how to adapt them effectively to an audience, and how to avoid common mistakes (like believing people can turn ones into fives).

You are however, at a significant point in your education as a Public Speaker. You know what to do and what not to do.

Let's get on with it.

[Return to Virtual Reality] |  [Go Ahead to Virtual Clarity] |  [Return to the Table of Contents]

Contact the Author!

Note about topics. My purpose is to provide timely examples of speech construction, not to promote a political agenda. It would be a mistake to assume that I personally espouse any of the beliefs and/or opinions employed.