Week 7 Post 1

The information in this week comes from the Institute for Speech and Debate Summer 2018 session and the George Mason Institute of Forensics Summer 2018 and Summer 2019 sessions. Material is taken from lectures by Ashley Mason, Caleb Newman, Karon Cox, and Brian Anderson.

Agency in Speeches

Definition of Agency: The capability of an individual to accurately reflect the issue they're talking                                            about, especially related to social issues.

E.g. a LGBT person has more agency to talk about advertisements at pride than a straight person

Why agency is important:
     If you're more emotionally connected to a speech, you'll be more passionate about it
     If you're not directly impacted by an issue, you may accidentally misrepresent its impacts
     Not getting an accurate point of view from people who are impacted by the issue may result in                 unintentional exploitation of their problems for sympathy from your audience.
     It can be offensive to pretend you're impacted by certain issues if you aren't
          E.g. pretending to have a mental illness
     You may be losing the opportunity to tell your own story if you're too busy telling someone else's

How to be a good steward of agency
     1) Don't give speeches that you don't have the agency for
     2) If you can't avoid giving a speech you don't have agency for, make sure the voices of people                    who do have agency to talk about the issue are heard (interviews, polls, and surveys are                        great ways to get people's point of views on their own issues).
     3) If you see someone giving a speech they don't have agency for, call them out
     4) Educate the people around you about the importance of agency in speeches

Comments

  1. Ms. Dunley4 December 2019 at 11:28

    Agency should be the key in writing as well as speaking. That is why I like GT ELS. By selecting the topic to cover, you are more connected to it so you will want to more accurately share the information with the audience.

    ReplyDelete

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