While communication can be challenging, successful communication offers so many rewards that it deserves our commitment to improve our public speaking skills. Such communication can go beyond personal achievement and the sharing of vital information, ideas, and advice.
At some basic level, successful communication also implies the creation and sharing of selves. In the introduction to Bridges Not Walls, John Stewart, an interpersonal communication scholar, notes: “Every time persons communicate, they are continually offering definitions of themselves and responding to definitions of the other(s).” Therefore, Stewart suggests, communication is an ongoing transaction “in which who we are. . . emerges out of the event itself.” We agree: Public speaking is often a self-creative event in which we discover ourselves as we communicate with others. We can grow and expand when we communicate ethically with others. On the other hand, deceitful and dishonest communication will thwart the process of growth.
This is no more than what Plato told us long ago in the Phaedrus. Indeed, Plato went beyond the idea of communication as transaction to communication as transformation. Transformation is the dynamic effect of successful communication on the identities of speaker and listener, and on public knowledge as well. Plato realized that ethical communication that respects the humanity of listeners and nourishes it with responsible knowledge encourages the spiritual growth of both speaker and listeners. As you develop in your public speaking class, you may notice the phenomenon of personal growth. Like Mary in our opening vignette, you may discover the public speaker in you! You may also see your classmates change in response to the good speeches you give throughout the term. The transformative effect of successful public speaking on listeners can be quite dramatic.
Finally, as rhetorical scholar Lloyd Bitzer has noted, successful communication builds public knowledge, what we as a community decide is worth knowing.2° Public speaking expands and builds this knowledge base. It develops the scope and accuracy of our public awareness.
In these fundamental ways, then, for the speaker, the listener, and the state of public knowledge, public speaking can be transformative. This is why Figure 1.3 shows the speaker and the listener as having drawn closer together and grown larger during their climb to the top of Interference Mountain. They both can also see farther, and their horizons of knowledge have expanded.

Public Speaking as Communication, Public speaking builds upon the basic communication skills that we originally develop as we acquire language and learn how to converse with others. As expanded conversation, public speaking preserves the natural directness and spontaneity and the colorful and compelling qualities of good conversation. Like conversation, public speaking is tuned to the reactions of listeners and makes adjustments to this feedback. Speeches are also designed with the reactions of listeners in mind.
In contrast with conversation, public speaking defines the roles of speaker and listener more clearly. Public speaking gives prominence to the speaker. The ethos of the speaker, based upon audience perceptions of that speaker’s competence and integrity, likableness and forcefulness, can be crucial to the success of a speech. A successful speech is carefully planned to be internally consistent and complete. The speaker encodes the message; the listener decodes its meaning. Misunderstandings arise when message and meaning are far apart. The communication environment can promote or impede understanding. To achieve effective communication, the speaker must overcome interference that can block or distort the message. Successful communication can result in the transformation of speaker, audience, and the knowledge they share.