Immediacy

Immediacy Whenever it is time to prepare for a speech in class the first thing I think about is how I can connect with the audience. I do this first because I feel that any audience member should feel a connection between them and the speaker whether or not they agree or disagree with the speaker. And the way I display this connection with the audience is through the types of immediacy such as verbal immediacy, nonverbal immediacy, technological influences on immediacy, and cultural influences on immediacy. In my first speech of the class, Any Old Bag Speech, I focused on getting the audience to me and like me for who I am. When I watched the speech on acclaim I realized that I used a form of verbal immediacy. Verbal immediacy directly relates to judgments of a speaker’s competence and character and includes the use of personal examples, humor, addressing others by first name and asking questions that solicit viewpoints or opinions. Using humor and personal examples in the speech certainly helped me relax because I could tell the audience was enjoying my speech instead of nodding off due to boredom. It also gave me confidence in my ability to speak in front of people, which is one of the main purposes of this course. My informative speech was a bit of struggle trying to find the connection with audience because the topic I chose. I could tell by the way that some of the audience were sitting that I was lacking immediacy. The nonverbal immediacy, which describes nonverbal behaviors that communicate liking, a positive evaluation of others, or positive affect to others, made it clear that most of the audience felt no connection. However, I do not feel that there was a lack of connection throughout the whole speech. When I used technology to display immediacy I feel though the audience became more engaged into my speech. I played a video clip that basically summed up what I