Dressing the Part

One of my mom's favorite mottos is "clothes make the man". She reminds me of this saying whenever I have an interview or a public presentation.  I always laugh it off as an old adage, but lately I have noticed the effect that a speaker's appearance has on both the speaker's confidence in delivery, and the audience's perception of the speaker and response to their message.

To relate the correlation between a speaker's confidence and their appearance I would like to recall some of the beautiful weather we had Thursday of this week!  When I woke up with sun shining and warm air blowing through my dorm window, I was lifted from the gloomy mood the beginning of the week carried, and I couldn't help but feel great about myself.  Even though I woke up late for class, I took some time and wore an outfit that I felt good in. On my walk to class I realized I wasn't the only one in this mood. The sidewalks looked like pages from a JCPenny's catalogue. All of the girls were sporting their cutest spring outfits and even some guys were breaking out their polos and cargo shorts. Everyone felt good, so they dressed well.

This relationship works the same way in reverse. We recently held elections in the College of Democrats, and some of the members took it much more seriously than others.  About half of the members running for office arrived in suits and the other half arrived in jeans. With the exception of one person, the members who presented their platforms in suits won, and the members that presented their platforms in jeans lost.  This is a great example of the effect a speaker's appearance has on both the speaker and the audience's perception of the speaker.

The members that presented their speeches in suits spoke with refined authority, and they dressed the part as a future leader of the organization.  The members that presented in jeans may have been equally qualified, but they did not present themselves in that manner. Their speeches were not as coherent and their platforms were not as developed as the members in suits.  The members that presented in suits may have done so because they cared more about getting the position and invested more time in their presentation, but isolating all other variables, the members in suits delivered better speeches than the members in jeans.

The audience was much more responsive to the speeches of the candidates in suits. This was compelling evidence of the effect of appearance on the perceptions of the ethos of speakers. It was especially significant because the club is very close and most of the members already know the credibility of the other members of the club. In this case, the audience held more respect for the speaker because the speaker expressed respect for the audience through their formal appearance.

In the end the rhetoric of delivery comes back to what my mom always says, "clothes make the man".  Professional appearance is one of the easiest ways that a rhetor can command the audience's attention and respect before they open their mouth to speak.  The rest of the speaker's delivery is up to their knowledge and preparation on the subject, but seeming like you care and respect your audience by your appearance is a crucial step to gaining the your audience's respect and conveying your message effectively.

Setting the Mood

As my group members and I were scrolling through the video of our multimedia presentation, we were happy with the way it looked, but we felt something was missing. It was silent.

We had not added the music yet and we could tell the difference.  The images were compelling without the music but they didn't the same heart-gripping and mind-engaging effect.

After adding the music and watching the other groups use of music in their projects I decided to devote this blog to the effectiveness of music in creating a tone for the message a rhetor is trying to send through this type of multimedia medium.

The best way I can think of to analyze the changes in moods and tones different types of music can make is to reflect back on the changes of music themes our group went through.  The tone of our project went from ironic, to intense, and finally we settled on contemplative.

Originally, our group wanted to use the theme music from "Always Sunny" to set a light mood against a heavy controversy and create a sense of irony in the audience.  We loved the music, but we were afraid our infringing on the show's copyrights on the songs, and we felt that a different tone would be more effective in conveying the growing seriousness of the controversy of Adderall use in a college setting.

So next we decided to use alternative rock music to create a more intense mood.  We scanned the creative commons far and wide searching for the perfect "I hate the world" song to enhance the intensity of our controversy, but we couldn't seem to find one that fit. We realized that we couldn't find a song that fit because the theme didn't fit the message of our topic.

As we were scanning the creative commons, we stumbled on the piece that would be the main song and the theme behind our music.  Everyone in the group knew if fit upon hearing the song.  The song was contemplative and plotting and moved forward with  repetitive percussion that reminded me of at ticking of a clock.  This gave our project the contemplative feel it needed and the message we were trying to send to our audience.  We wanted to present the controversy as something still unclear to many people, and with alot of uncertainty surrounding the ethics of its use.  This song was most effective because it instilled that same thoughtful mood into our audience.

We knew we had found the right song when the mood it created matched the message we were trying to send, and that is a good guideline to follow when searching for compelling music to set your audiences' mood.

Knowing your Audience

My blog group and I entered into a healthy rhetorical debate after class on Thursday about what originally was the scope of our thesis for our multimedia presentation. Ironically, our own discussion's scope broadened  and we began to discuss the importance of knowing your audience and the dangers that are associated with assuming to much about your audience. Though by the end of the debate we began to focus back in on discussion on the scope of our thesis, my mind was left pondering the idea of knowing your audience and what that meant to a rhetor when presenting a rhetorical argument.

We have learned from our RCL book [yeah Im citing it :) lol] that the more you know about the audience you are presenting to the better, but where do you draw between knowing your audience, and making assumptions about commonly held beliefs?

I will use the example from our group to explain the question I posed. As we began to discuss our thesis which was originally "The ethics of using adderall in a university setting", I had the assumption that we were only talking about the illegal use of adderall. My thinking was based off of my belief that taking drugs that are prescribed to you by a doctor is ethical. I believed this to be a common belief held by most Americans, and most university students.  However, Devron brought up a different viewpoint. He said that he assumed that when we said adderall we were discussing the use of adderall both legally and illegally and discussing the ethics of taking a prescribed drug to make students who are naturally disadvantaged at their ability to focus, perform above their natural levels.

This is the point where the knowledge of our specific audience diverged. I assumed the audience would understand taking prescribed drugs as ethical, and Devron countered saying that some members of the audience may not have this assumption.  Sadly, just as our entire group was entering into the debate class ended.  However, Devron and I were not done with our discussion about our audience and continued for a few minutes after class. As we both began to head off in different directions towards our next class, we decided that we both needed to do more research on our topic and our audience. This would ensure that we were properly unwrapping our controversy in a way that would not bias our audience by assuming commonly held beliefs. However, we needed to also find a way to limit our thesis to make a direct a strong presentation of our controversy.  For today, the conversation will hopefully come to a conclusion as we nail down our thesis and move forward on our multimedia project, but I do not think my personal contemplations of knowing your audience or discussion surrounding this issue is quite over...

(P.S. Shout out to my blog group!! Sophia, Katharine, and Devron!!)