By Logan Scisco
Of all of the techniques speakers use in extemporaneous speaking, I would argue that one that nearly half of extempers fail to employ is the significance statement. I will admit that for the first two years that I competed in the event I had no idea what a significance statement was and it was only by competing at CFL and NFL Nationals that I saw speakers using it. However, a significance statement is arguably the most important piece of the introduction as it gives your speech a sense of urgency and can establish as powerful a connection with the audience as an effective attention getting device (AGD).
A significance statement is simply a statement in the introduction that comes after you have given some background information on your question. This statement, which is only a sentence (although sometimes it can be stressed to two) describes why your topic is so important that we must find an answer to it. As a judge, one of the questions that always lingers in my mind when an extemper starts speaking on an issue is why they chose the question. After all, in draw they had three questions to choose from so why did they choose this topic to speak on? What made this issue so relevant/urgent that they needed to give a speech on it for their audience? These are the questions that the significance statement needs to answer.
Before I clarify further I need to debunk one myth about the significance statement. The significance statement does not always need to be a source in the introduction. Sometimes it can be analytic based (without a source). Similarly, all sources in the introduction is not a significance statement. You may have a source that identifies the rate of U.S. employment, how fast the U.S. economy grew last quarter, or how many Democrats voted against the healthcare bill but if you do not tell the audience why those issues are relevant to your question they cease to have meaning. Also, if you fail to explain why they are important in the “big picture” and why the audience should care about them they cease to have meaning.
So what is an example of a significance statement? Consider the question “What lesson should the GOP learn from NY-23?” Your speech would start off with your AGD, its “bridge” sentence to the question, and then a few bits of background the audience needs to know about the question. For example, for background you would want to mention the candidates involved in the NY-23 race, briefly explain the controversy around the race, and maybe have source that described the outcome of the race. After this your significance statement might be “Considering that the GOP needs to have a unified front in order to win seats in the 2010 elections and become once again become a relevant national political force (we must ask the question)…” This statement shows that we should care about the NY-23 outcome because it shows that the GOP has to be unified in order to win elections and if it not unified then it ceases to be a relevant forces in national politics. Ultimately, a strategy that can help you remember to use a significance statement is to ask yourself the question “What is at stake?” when looking at a particular question. Whatever your answer is to the “what is at stake?” is usually suffice for a significance statement.
In the end, significance statements are not hard to pick up. In fact, some people use them without even knowing that they are using them. However, having them properly structured can add a more natural flow to your speech and set up the relevance of your speech well before you get to the “meat” of it within your points.