‘The end is near’: Effects of announcing the closure of a speech

Abstract

ldquoAnd so, in conclusion... rdquo. Speakers often use a textual cue to announce that they are going to finish their presentation. Is the use of such a textual cue a sound ploy to signal the end? Rhetoricians and other writers of textbooks on oral communication do not agree on this issue. Some state that such a signaling device increases the attention of the listener in the last minutes of the speech. Other authors point out that it is a cue to the audience to stop listening and head for the exit and the coffee. There is little experimental evidence for either of the two positions. Does the closing of a speech result in a better remembrance of the last words of the speaker and/or in a higher appreciation of the speech itself? To explore these questions two mini-lectures (length approx. 17 minutes) were constructed and videotaped. From each of these lectures two versions were constructed: one version with an explicit announcement of the closing section and one version without. The tapes were digitally edited in order to obtain 2X2 exactly similar presentations (differing only in a few lines of text: the announcement of the closure). The lectures were shown to four comparable groups of listeners (Ntotal=350). The dependent variables were a mc-question list (covering the closing of the speech) to measure the retention of the listeners and a questionnaire to measure the attitude of the listeners towards the speech. The outcome of the experiment suggests that the attentional stimulus of announcing the closure of a speech could be working in cases where listeners have a rather low interest in the subject of the speech. Referring to the introduction as rhetorical technique helps to add relish to the experience of listening to the speech.