7.2 Using Research as Support

7.2 Using Research as Support

In public speaking, support refers to the strategies you use to back up your central idea and specific purpose. Whether you’re informing, persuading, or entertaining, support helps make your speech stronger, clearer, and more credible.

We often use the terms support and evidence interchangeably, but evidence is more commonly associated with persuasive speeches. In this chapter, we’ll stick with the broader term support to cover all types of speeches.

Up next, we’ll explore why support matters and how to use it effectively in your presentations.

Why Support Matters in a Speech

Support is what gives your speech structure and substance. Think of it like the legs of a table—without it, your message has no foundation and won’t stand up. A speech without support can feel empty, leaving your audience unconvinced or uninterested. Using support helps clarify your ideas, boosts your credibility, and makes your message more vivid and memorable. Whether you’re informing, persuading, or entertaining, strong support turns your speech from surface-level talk into something meaningful and impactful.

To Clarify Content

Speakers often choose a piece of support because a previous writer or speaker has phrased something in a way that evokes a clear mental picture of the point they want to make. For example, suppose you’re preparing a speech about hazing in college fraternities. You may read your school’s code of student conduct to find out how your campus defines hazing. You could use this definition to make sure your audience understands what hazing is and what types of behaviors your campus identifies as hazing.

To Add Credibility

Another important reason to use support is because it adds to your credibility as a speaker. The less an audience perceives you as an expert on a given topic, the more important it is to use a range of support from authoritative sources. By doing so, you let your audience know that you’ve done your homework on the topic.

Inadequate support or support from questionable sources diminishes your credibility as a speaker, as does distorting the intent of a source to try to force it to support a point. For example, the famous 1798 publication by Thomas Malthus, “An Essay on the Principle of Population,” has been used as support for various arguments far beyond what Malthus could have intended. Malthus’s thesis was that as the human population increases at a greater rate than food production, societies will go to war over scarce food resources (Malthus, 1798). Some modern writers have suggested that, according to the Malthusian line of thinking, almost anything that leads to a food shortage could lead to nuclear war. For example, better health care leads to longer life spans, which leads to an increased need for food, leading to food shortages, which using this flawed line of reasoning, would lead to nuclear war. Clearly, this argument makes some giant leaps of logic that would be hard for an audience to accept.

For this reason, it is important to evaluate your support to ensure that it will not detract from your credibility as a speaker. Use the CRAAP method (currency, relevance, authority, accuracy, and purpose) found in Chapter 8 of this book to evaluate the quality of your sources.

To Add Vividness

Support doesn’t just clarify your message or boost your credibility—it also makes your speech more vivid and memorable. Vividness is your ability to present ideas in a striking, engaging way that sticks with your audience.

For example, instead of simply stating that seat belts save lives, one student illustrated the impact of a crash by comparing it to falling face-first from a second-story classroom window. Because the audience was familiar with that exact location, the image was powerful and easy to visualize.

Using vivid support like this helps your audience connect emotionally and mentally with your message, making your speech not just informative—but unforgettable.