Answer:
To persuade.
Explanation:
The general purpose of a speech is, as the name suggests, the overall goal you wish to achieve with it. There can be three types of general purposes: to entertain, to inform, and to persuade. When you seek to change, reinforce, modify beliefs, attitudes, opinions, values, and behaviors, your general purpose is to persuade.
Suppose you're writing a speech in which you describe how quitting smoking can be beneficial to people's health. You want to convince your audience that, if they quit smoking as soon as possible, they will decrease the likelihood of cancer and their general quality of life will greatly increase. Your general purpose is to persuade. Your specific purpose is clearly to persuade people to stop smoking. You want to change their beliefs and behaviors.
