Like a lesson plan, a speech must have specific purposes. It must be achieved as soon as the speaker finishes his speech. The speaker must know the type of speech he must develop for the occasion in order to note down his purpose. The very purpose of the speech gives the listeners what the speaker wants his listeners react or do.
There are five purposes of public speaking:
I. To Entertain
The speaker's task is to amuse and to give his listeners pleasure. There is an assurance of listenership. If the speech is not entertaining, it bores the audience. The idea is to please the listener, meaning to make the listener like the speech, which doesn't have to be hilarious or comical. Entertainment does not imply hilarity. An entertainment speak is not a comedian. One doesn't have to make faces at the audience to draw laughter. He may elicit laughter by well contrive joke, a humorous story or a funny anecdote. The thing to remember, is that no public speaker can hold the attention of his audience if he doesn't know how to entertain.
II. To Persuade
To persuade is to get the audience's sympathy and as sent, to appeal to the audience's feelings, emotions and heart. A persuasive speech is a highly emotional speech, without the use of reasoning or logic. In other words, to persuade is to appeal to the heart, not to the mind or intellect; through he may use knowledge or understanding as a means to achieve it.
III. To Inform
A speaker's purpose is to inform when he principally intends to supply his audience with facts, statistics, new body of knowledge, concepts, precepts, and ideas, especially with facts new to them. To inform is the primary purpose of public speaking and the primary job of a public speaker if he wants to be successful in informing, enlightening and educating his audience must be the product of research, not merely a collection of assorted ideas.
IV. To Convince
Another purpose of public speaking is to convince which is to win the audience by force of logic, reason and argument. A public speaker in order to convince his audience must observe the rules of logic and must posses all the necessary facts.
V. To Actuate
The most important purpose of public speaking is to actuate, which means to move the audience to action either at the time of the speech or very soon after. The purpose sums up the combined impact of the four other purposes. Thus, if the public speaker has succeeded in entertaining, persuading, informing and convincing the audience, he will certainly succeed in actuating them. Thus, to actuate implies the summation of all the assets of the speech and the speaker which is finally brought to bear the audience.
Open to the Public
But more, an oral communication must also be open to the knowledge of all or most of the people or to an audience. The oral communication of a boy, expressing his love to a girl not public speaking although such oral communication has all the specific purposes of public speaking. This is so because such oral communication is limited only to that girl - it is not meant to be known by all or most of the people. This is private speaking not public speaking. All oral communications in private even if invested with all the specific objectives of public speaking remain private, they are meant for the ears of the few, They do not constitute public speaking.
