Malubay, Ria Ricci D.

Purposive Communications
BS Arch 1-2 07/12/2020

Principles, Theories in Understanding Effective Communication

Communication is an incredibly essential and important part of our daily lives. It

is something that we all do and experience since it allows us to interact and take part in
society by sharing and receiving information and knowledge from others.
Communication also helps us in conveying our thoughts and emotions and is an
important tool for greater purposes. To fulfill those purposes effectively, different
methods, principles, and theories are used.

In Catriona Gray’s farewell speech in Binibining Pilipinas, she delivered a very

inspiring story and insight on her experience as Miss Universe. It has effectively
captured the hearts of many because of her beautiful and powerful words. This is
because she applied the five main steps of Monroe’s Motivation Sequence (attention
step, need step, satisfaction, visualization step, and action step) to her speech that
helped in making her speech more impactful to the audience.

In the first part of her speech, she calls out the name of the Philippines. With this,
she acknowledges an important aspect of her career. The Philippines being the country
she represented in Miss Universe, as well as the country and the people that have
supported her. Then she mentions how she is currently standing on the exact stage that
gave her the chance to pursue and reach her dream. It seems like everything has come
full circle for her. From this, Catriona was able to capture the attention of her audience
because she acknowledged them, thanked them, and let them know they were a part of
her success. She lets her audience feel welcome and accepted. This is called the
attention step in Monroe’s motivated sequence.

She then mentions “surmounting three mountains” and “three Mayon volcanoes”,
which are metaphors for three hurdles or problems she had to overcome throughout her
journey as Miss Universe. This marks the need step where she reveals the problems
that exists which will eventually be what the purpose of her speech will revolve on.
Catriona then elaborates on those what those three “mountains” are, giving us more
insight on what she experienced. Conquering herself, conquering others, and
conquering with a purpose. She talked about how those fears affected her. But despite
the hardships, she found a way to successfully conquer those difficulties, finally giving
us a sense of satisfaction knowing that there are solutions that can be done in order to
overcome all these problems.

Catriona says she now has “the opportunity to serve 104 million Filipinos,” and
this becomes the visualization step as she is able to see and show the audience what
she can do after surmounting her own mountains and solving the problems she faced.
This can give a sort of inspiration for the audience that they, too, can have a purpose
and do something meaningful by persevering through difficulties in life. Her next words
offer even more motivation when she tells the audience that they also have the ability to
conquer the universe, but before that they must be able to conquer themselves, others,
and with a purpose, similar to what she had gone through. She urges the audience to
take action, and this becomes very effective especially since she showed that it was
possible for her, making it possible for others as well.

In her final words, she mentions the Philippines again. She reiterates how
grateful she is to her audience, letting them feel welcome once more, and introducing
herself as
“Catriona Gray, your Miss Universe 2018” so she can make a final stamp into the minds
of the people to what her identity and her legacy is.

Using the power of words and effective communication methods, Catriona was
able to deliver such a beautiful speech. Now her purpose of giving the Filipinos
inspiration and motivation to believe in themselves and take action has been fulfilled
thanks to the use of Monroe’s motivated sequence.