LAERADESALLY

The fourth stage in the persuasive process is enactment. It is one thing to get listeners to accept what you say. It is quite another to ask them to act on it. If you invite listeners to sign a petition, raise their hands, or voice agreement, you give them a way to enact agreement. By enacting their agreement, listeners make a commitment.
The student speaker who mobilized his audience against a proposed tuition increase
• Brought a petition to be signed
• Distributed the addresses of local legislators to contact
• Urged listeners to write letters to campus and local newspapers
He channeled their agreement into constructive action. Changing agreement to action often requires the use of emotional appeals. Stirring stories and examples, vivid images, and colourful language can arouse sympathy. As she told the story of Harry Smith, who died an agonizing death because he had not signed a living will, Bonnie Marshall moved her listeners to act on behalf of themselves and their loved ones. Anna Aley’s concluding story of her neighbour’s accident helped motivate her audience to take action against substandard student housing.
The final stage in the persuasive process is the integration of new attitudes and commitments with the listeners’ beliefs and values. For a persuasive speech to have lasting effect, listeners must see the connection between the attitudes and actions you propose and their important values. Your ideas must fit comfortably within their belief system. As she presented her case for living wills, Bonnie Marshall anchored her appeals in the right to control one’s destiny. Anna Aley tied her attack on housing conditions to the values of fair treatment and safe living conditions.
All of us seek some consistency among our values and behaviours. For example, it would be inconsistent for us to march against substandard housing on Monday and contribute to a landlord’s defences fund on Tuesday. This is why people sometimes seem to agree with a persuasive message, then change their minds. It dawns on them that this new commitment means that they must rearrange other cherished beliefs and attitudes.
You are asking a great deal when you invite dramatic changes. You must offer listeners compelling reasons to change—even appealing to their humanity. To provide such reasons, point out how the new position is consistent with their cherished values. Show listeners how the change will benefit them and their1oved ones. Finally, plan responses to objections. Help listeners see a situation in a new way. On some issues this may require an almost biblical conversion—listeners must be “born again.” Obviously, this degree of integration is rarely achieved through a single message. Such dramatic changes may require a campaign of persuasion in which any single speech plays a small but vital role.