5: Speaker Credibility and Ethics
- Page ID
- 109947
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- 5.1: Credibility and Ethics
- Modern scholars of communication and persuasion speak more about “credibility” as an attitude the audience has toward the speaker, based on both reality and perception, rather than an innate trait of the speaker. Audience members trust the speaker to varying degrees, based on the evidence and knowledge they have about the speaker and how that lines up with certain factors.
- 5.2: Plagiarism
- Although there are many ways that you could undermine your ethical stance before an audience, the one that stands out and is committed most commonly in academic contexts is plagiarism. A dictionary definition of plagiarism would be “the act of using another person’s words or ideas without giving credit to that person” (Merriam-Webster, 2015).
- 5.3: Logical Fallacies
- The second part of achieving a logical speech is to avoid logical fallacies. Logical fallacies are mistakes in reasoning–getting one of the formulas, inductive or deductive, wrong. There are actually dozens upon dozens of fallacies, some of which have complicated Latin names. This chapter will deal with eighteen of the most common ones that you should know to avoid poor logic in your speech and to become a critical thinker.
- 5.4: Other Resources and Chapter Activities
- Students and faculty can find additional resources and learning activities to supplement the chapter's reading material.