Sleep Persuasive Speech

The topic of my persuasive speech is the lack of sleep in a student's life, the harm it causes, the solutions to this problem and the positive effects of sufficient sleep. My goal as a speaker will be to change my audience’s attitudes and receive the reaction of a change in sleeping habits. Since “trying to change an audience’s attitudes is easier than attempting to change their values” (Beebe & Beebe, 139), my goal will be achieved in five minutes using a variety of persuasive methods.

My main method of persuasion will be ethos. Part of developing ethos is keeping well-being of the audience in mind and in message, and my goal of helping my classmates get the optimal level of sleep is ethical and promotes a positive message (140). There is still a possibility that a few people will be defensive and believe that one can be productive with

One may believe this due to their past experiences with getting less sleep and being relatively “ok”. Debunking this will require the use of logos on my part. My speech will begin with credible facts and statistics from credible sources like peer reviewed journals relating to the effects of not getting enough sleep. This will give my audience negative motivation. Later on, I also plan on providing positive motivation to keep my presentation balanced and leave a larger impact. The use of facts and statistics leads to sound reasoning and the logical part of logos. In terms of elaboration likelihood model, this is the direct method of persuasion. Once I get the audience to believe me, my next step will be to give solutions to my classmates. Since I am focusing on my audience's needs to motivate them, it will be important to put emphasis on that by clearly expressing the link between my topic and Maslow’s hierarchy of needs (physiological). Another method I may use is cognitive dissonance, “the sense of mental discomfort that prompts a person to change” (143). I can accomplish this by asking my