Using Evidence in Speeches

There is a classic Western starring Clint Eastwood called A Fistful of Dollars. People across the world love the movie except for Akira Kurosawa, a Japanese filmmaker that produced the samurai movie Yojimbo. It turns out that the Clint Eastwood movie is a shot-for-shot remake of Yojimbo and they had to pay Kurosawa hundreds of thousands of dollars because of it. Giving credit to original authors is something that people take very seriously whether it’s in the film industry or academia. When it comes to giving speeches the same rules apply. Including evidence is how one avoids plagiarism and it is fundamental to any academic work. So in this lesson we’re going to discuss Using Evidence in Speeches by 1) discussing plagiarism 2) citing sources and 3) finally how to quote content.

Many students conclude that just because they say something that is factually correct they don’t need to cite the source from where they got it. This couldn’t be farther from the truth. You have to consider ethics and credibility when including sources. First on ethics people put a significant amount of work into their publications and plagiarism is fundamentally claiming that some of the else’s work is your own which is dishonest. People deserve recognition for the work that they do. Some academic studies take months or even years to compile so ignoring the
person’s effort is kind of unethical. But beyond the ethical concerns you also have to consider how credible you appear to your audience. Purposeful plagiarism seems like the author isn’t skilled enough to do their own work but even accidental plagiarism appears as if the offending author is ignorant of writing conventions and expectations. So even if you don’t intend to steal somebody’s work you really want to show that you understand what it means to be a credible speaker by including authorship for the original work. Luckily avoiding plagiarism is exceptionally easy all you have to do is cite your source in the speech. This information is also covered in the research lesson.

You need to know when to cite sources and what to include. It’s understandable if people don’t know when to cite sources because it really is something that you have to learn through experience. But a short list of things that you ought to consider avoid citing sources for common knowledge information, things that people know readily. Also sources are not a numbers game. Don’t just try to increase the amount of times that you cite a source. You want to have sources that actually mean something and support what you are saying. Consider that you state as a fact that isn’t common knowledge or isn’t intuitive. Those are the things that you want to have a source citation for. For instance, Christmas is on December 25th does not need a source citation. That is commonly known in not only Western societies but worldwide it’s not something that you actually need to research and verify. Now the story behind Christmas and its origins in other religions might be something that you need to cite your sources for because many people aren’t aware of those long histories that have made up this holiday. But beyond knowing when to cite sources, you need to know what to include. One thing that’s not optional is the publication and the date. If the only information you have about the date is the year then just include the year. But you want to have a date all the way down to the day that it was published considering the information age that we live in right now. This is usually available on the publication itself. The publication name isn’t necessarily the author and sometimes the publication name takes the place of the author especially in government reports which has multiple authors. So you wouldn’t necessarily cite the writer on the New York Times, you would cite the New York Times on December 25th 2015.Use your judgment. If you want to include the author’s qualifications this is usually only when the author has some sort of credentials that help to boost the credibility of your evidence and your speech.

Mini Glossary

Paraphrase – Putting evidence into your own words.

The final thing we’re going to cover is how to quote content and the important distinction that you need to understand is the difference between quoting versus paraphrasing. Quoting is a word-for-word representation of evidence. You need to be careful about not quoting out of context. Sometimes people include words and phrases that change the meaning of a particular sentence that you are extracting from their speech or their work. So make sure you understand the intent of the material that you are quoting and include the context. You also want to be careful about how much material you are quoting at one time. If you include a lot of information and it takes up the majority of your speech it looks like you don’t really have a voice in your speech and basically you’re just reciting somebody else’s work. This goes back to credibility again. In contrast to quoting we have paraphrasing which is putting evidence into your own words. The thing about paraphrasing is that it maintains the essence of the meeting of the original author. Some reasons why you would paraphrase is perhaps the quoted material is far too long. You can’t just read an entire book for somebody if you only have 10 minutes to give a speech in front of an audience. This is a great tool when evidence is really long or complicated. So don’t be afraid to paraphrase as long as you are confident that the information that you are representing is an accurate portrayal of the author’s original intent.

Make conscious decisions when using evidence in speeches. Don’t plagiarize. Include all the necessary publication information and accurately quote or paraphrase your source. It’s incredibly important to include evidence in your speeches. So whether you’re writing a speech or producing a classic western film don’t forget it is important to give credit where credit is due.