Responsibility for Your Statements
A public speaker makes claims on the audience, and so you must take responsibility
for the accuracy and integrity of your statements. This is every bit as important
in speaking as it is in writing, and similar guidelines apply.
Particularly in speaking (because listeners cannot see the printed word), you
need to distinguish between fact and opinion, being careful not to misrepresent
one as the other. Additionally, whether you are presenting fact or opinion,
a statement is made in a particular context, and you must represent that correctly;
if not, you will mislead or deceive the audience. The film critic who writes,
“Nothing could be better than this film if you are looking for a cure for insomnia,”
does not want to be quoted as saying, “Nothing could be better than this film.”
Likewise, stating that military spending has declined as a percentage of the gross
domestic product over the past five years is not fair to the context unless you tell
listeners that the source also said that actual military spending has increased
by
several billion dollars but that the economy grew at an even faster rate.
As in writing, one of the most irresponsible things you can do as a speaker is
to present another person’s words or ideas as though they were your own. Such
plagiarism
is nothing less than theft. Usually it results from carelessness rather
than malice, but the problem is the same.
To avoid plagiarism:
1. Never present someone else’s unique ideas or words without acknowledging it.
2. Specify who developed the ideas or said the words that you present (“As discovered
by Professor Jones,” “Socrates said,” and so forth).
3. Paraphrase statements in your own words rather than
quoting them directly, unless the exact wording of a statement
is crucial to your speech.
4. Draw on several sources rather than on a single source.
Remember that it is also a form of plagiarism to present another
student’s speech as your own or to use the same speech in
two different classes. Every speech you present should be your
own original work.