Chapter 9: Analyzing the Audience
This chapter is adapted from Stand up, Speak out: The Practice and Ethics of Public Speaking, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.
How do I acknowledge the audience?
The following sections are adapted from section 5.1 of Stand up, Speak out: The Practice and Ethics of Public Speaking, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.
Identify Different Ways to Acknowledge Your Audience
Picture yourself in front of the audience about to deliver your speech. This is the moment when your relationship with your audience begins, and the quality of this relationship will influence how receptive they will be to your ideas, or at least how willing they’ll be to listen to what you have to say. One of the best ways to initiate this relationship is to find a way to acknowledge your audience. This can be as simple as establishing eye contact and thanking them for coming to hear your presentation. If they’ve braved bad weather, are missing a world-class sports event, or are putting up with an inconvenient stuffy conference room, tell them how much you appreciate their presence in spite of the circumstances. These gestures go a long way towards warming them up to hear your message.
For instance, when a political candidate who travels from town to town giving the same campaign speech makes a statement like this, “It’s great to be here in Springfield, and I want to thank the West Valley League of Women Voters and our hosts, the Downtown Senior Center, for the opportunity to be with you today,” it lets the audience know that the candidate has at least taken the trouble to tailor the speech to the present audience.
Be Clear
Next, make sure that you state your topic clearly at the outset, using words that your audience will understand. Letting them know what your speech is about shows that you respect them as listeners and that you value their time and attention. Also, throughout your speech, define your terms clearly and carefully to avoid misleading or alarming people by mistake. Avoid using jargon or language that excludes listeners who aren’t familiar with topic-specific terms. If you have analyzed your audience appropriately, you’ll know to whom you’re speaking and present a clear, decisive message that lets listeners know what you think, and you will avoid making any fear-based or offensive statements. Conversely, if you have hastily approached audience analysis—the process of learning all you reasonably can about your audience—you might find yourself presenting a speech with no clear message.
Adapt Your Speech to the Audience’s Needs
We learn public speaking to inform various audiences and hopefully do some good. In some cases, your audience might consist of young children who are not ready to accept the fact that a whale is not a fish. In other cases, your audience could include fixed-income retirees who might not agree that raising local taxes is a vital future investment.
Even in an audience who appears to be homogeneous—composed of people who are very similar to one another—different listeners will understand the same ideas in different ways. Every member of every audience has his or her own frame of reference—the unique set of perspectives, experiences, knowledge, and values belonging to every individual. For example, an audience member who has been in a car accident caused by a drunk driver might not appreciate a lighthearted joke about barhopping.
These examples illustrate why audience analysis is so centrally important. Audience analysis includes considering your audience’s demographic information, such as the gender, age, marital status, race, and ethnicity. Another less obvious demographic factor is socioeconomic status, which refers to a combination of income, wealth, education level, and occupational prestige. Each dimension gives you some information about which topics and which various topic aspects will be well received.
For example, suppose you are preparing to give an informative speech about early childhood health care. If your audience are couples who have recently had a new baby and live in an affluent suburb, you can expect that they will be young adults with high socioeconomic status and that they are eager to know about the very best available health care for their children. In contrast, if your audience are nurses, they may differ in age but will have similar educational levels and occupational prestige. They will already know much about the topic, so find an interesting aspect that may be new for them, such as community health care resources for families with limited financial resources, or referral services for children with special needs.
Audience analysis also takes into account psychographic information, which is more personal and more difficult to predict than demographics. Psychographic information involves the beliefs, attitudes, and values that your audience members embrace. Respecting your audience means that you avoid offending, excluding, or trivializing the beliefs and values they hold. Returning to the early childhood health care topic, expect new parents to be passionate about wanting the best for their child. The psychographics of nurses would revolve around their professional competence and the need to provide standards-of-care for their patients.
Audience Diversity
Diversity is a key dimension to know about your audience, and therefore, an important part of audience analysis. While the term diversity is often used to refer to racial and ethnic minorities, it is important to realize that audiences can be diverse in many other ways as well. Being mindful of diversity means being respectful of all people and striving to avoid racism, ethnocentrism, sexism, ageism, elitism, and other assumptions. An interesting “ism” that is not often mentioned is chronocentrism, or the assumption that people today are superior to people who lived in earlier eras (Russell, 1991).
Sociologists John R. Logan and Wenquan Zhang analyzed racial and ethnic diversity in US cities and observed a pattern that rewrites the traditional rules of neighborhood change (Logan & Zhang, 2010). For example, in our grandparents’ day, a racially mixed neighborhood included African American and white residents; in recent decades, many more people from a variety of Asian and Latin American countries have immigrated to the United States. As a result, many city neighborhoods are richly diverse, including Asian, Hispanic, and African American cultural influences as well as those of white European Americans. Each cultural group consists of people from many communities and occupations. Each cultural group came to the United States for different reasons and came from different communities and occupations within their original cultures. Even though it can be easy to assume that people from a culture are exactly like each other, we undermine our credibility when we create our message as though members of these cultures are carbon copies of each other.
While race, ethnicity, and culture may be relatively visible aspects of diversity, there are many other aspects that are less obvious, so be aware that your audience is often more diverse than you might initially think. For example, suppose you are going to give a talk on pool safety to very affluent suburban community residents. Ask yourself, will all your audience members be wealthy? No. There might be some who are unemployed, some who are behind on their mortgage payments, some who live in rented rooms, not to mention some who work as babysitters or housekeepers. Furthermore, if your listeners have some characteristic in common, it doesn’t mean that they all think alike. For instance, if your audience consists of military family members, don’t assume that they all have identical beliefs about national security. If there are many business students in your audience, don’t assume they all agree about the relative importance of ethics and profits. Instead, recognize that a range of opinions exists.
This is where the frame of reference we mentioned earlier becomes an important concept. People have a variety of reasons for making the choices they make and for doing the things they do. For instance, a business student, while knowing that profitability is important, might have a strong interest in green lifestyles, low energy use, and alternative energy sources—areas of economic development that might require large investments before profits are realized.
These examples illustrate how important it is to use audience analysis to avoid stereotyping—taking for granted that people with a certain characteristic in common have the same likes, dislikes, values, and beliefs. All our audience members are unique individuals and deserve to receive equal sensitivity and respect. Respecting diversity is not merely a public speaking responsibility; it is a responsibility worthy of embracing in all our human interactions.
Offending Your Audience
It might seem obvious that audience analysis automatically inhibits speakers from making offensive remarks, but even very experienced speakers sometimes forget this basic rule. For example, if you are an Anglo-American elected official addressing a Latino audience, would you make a joke about a Mexican American person’s name sounding similar to the name of a popular tequila brand? We didn’t choose our race, ethnicity, sex, age, sexual orientation, intellectual potential, or appearance. We already know that jokes aimed at people because of their membership in these groups are not just politically incorrect but also ethically wrong.
Not only does insensitive humor offend an audience, be aware of language and nonverbal behaviors that state or imply a negative message about people based on their various membership groups. Examples include language that suggests that all scientists are men, that all relationships are heterosexual, or that all ethnic minorities are unpatriotic. By the same token, avoid embedding assumptions about people in your messages. Even the most subtle suggestion may not go unnoticed. If you alienate your audience, they will stop listening. They will refuse to accept your message, no matter how true or important it is. They might even become hostile. If you fail to recognize your audience members’ complexity and if you treat them as stereotypes, they will resent your assumptions and doubt your credibility.
Ethical Speaking
Ethos is the term Aristotle used to refer to what we now call credibility—the perception that the speaker is honest, knowledgeable, and rightly motivated. Your ethos, or credibility, must be established as you build rapport with your listeners. Have you put forth the effort to learn who they are and what you can offer them in your speech? Do you respect them as individual human beings? Do you respect them enough to serve their needs and interests? Is your topic relevant and appropriate for them? Is your approach honest and sensitive to their preexisting beliefs? Your ability to answer these questions in a constructive way must be based on the best demographic and psychographic information you can use to learn about your listeners. The audience needs to know they can trust the speaker’s motivations, intentions, and knowledge. They must believe that the speaker has no hidden motives, will not manipulate or trick them, and has their best interests at heart.
To convey regard and respect for your audience, be sincere. Examine the motives behind your topic choice, your speech’s true purpose, and your willingness to work to make sure your speech’s content is true and real. This can be difficult for students who face time constraints and multiple demands on their efforts. However, the attitude you assume for this task represents, in part, the kind of professional, citizen, parent, and human being you want to be.
What are ethical appeals and why are they important for getting the audience to listen?
Ethical appeals represent your speech’s content. Properly understanding and using ethical appeals is an element of effective speechmaking and is very beneficial for you in this public speaking class and in your world outside of this class. You can use these appeals to inform, and better yet, to persuade your audience or whoever you are talking to!
It is very important that you learn these appeals and apply them in your speeches. You will notice these appeals throughout this course, and some you have already seen. Let’s look a little more closely at what ethical appeals are, and more importantly, how you can relate each appeal back to your speech.
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Pathos is your passion, the emotional appeal that you write out and present in your speech. You are trying to get your audience to feel something and trying to develop an emotional connection with them. | Examples: telling a story; examples and anecdotes of any kind; use other's stories, images, and vivid language. |
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Ethos is your ethics, the credibility appeal as the speaker to your audience. You are trying to get your audience to see that you are credible when you show and use credible resources. | Examples: credible sources from your research; you as a speaker; your observable and stated knowledge on the topic. |
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Logos is your logic, the logical appeal that you present to your audience in your speech. You are trying to get your audience to understand you by using reasoning. | Examples: statistics, facts, research. |
Watch this video to learn more and see some fun examples:
Ethos, Pathos, and Logos examples, by Chloe Isaac, Standard YouTube License. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuFmFkj3Ofw
Keep in mind when it comes to informing and persuading an audience, it is important to teach the audience by using all three appeals. Everyone connects to information differently, and everyone is persuaded by different appeal combinations. Think about yourself: are you more informed or persuaded by Ethos, Pathos, Logos, or a combination? What makes you take action? What makes you want to listen and understand something? Is it someone’s use of logic-Logos? Is it someone’s emotional plea-Pathos? Or, is it who they are or their credibility-Ethos? Or, a combination?
How do I choose an effective topic?
The following sections are adapted from section 5.1 of Stand up, Speak out: The Practice and Ethics of Public Speaking, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.
How to Choose an Effective Topic
Your topic selection reflects your regard for the audience. There is no universal list of good or bad topics, but you have an ethical responsibility to select a topic that is worth listening to. As a student, you are probably sensitive to how unpleasant it is to listen to a speech on a highly complex or technical topic that you find impossible to understand. Conversely, consider that audiences do not want to waste their time or attention listening to a speech that is too simple. For example, if your speech’s purpose is to inform or persuade students in your public speaking class, a topic such as fitness or drunk driving is unlikely to go very far toward informing your audience, and in all likelihood, it will not persuade them either. Instead, your audience members and your professor will quickly recognize that you are thinking of your own needs rather than your audience’s.
It behooves you to seek a topic that is novel and interesting both for you and for your audience. It is also important to conduct some credible research to ensure that even the most informed audience members learn something from you. There are many topics that could provide a refreshing departure from your usual academic studies. Topics such as the Bermuda Triangle, biopiracy, the environmental niche of sharks, the green lifestyle, and the historic Oneida Community, all provide interesting views of human and natural phenomena not usually provided in public education. Such topics are more likely to hold your classroom audience’s interest than topics they’ve heard about time and time again.
Be aware that your audience will not have the same knowledge set that you do. For instance, if you are speaking about biopiracy, define it and give a clear example. If your speech is on the green lifestyle, frame it as a realistic choice, not a goal so remote as to be hopeless. In each case, use audience analysis to consider how your audience will respond to you, your topic, and your message.
Choosing a Topic
Before you get working on any speech, first, pick a topic.
When choosing your speech’s topic, remember these very important concepts:
- The audience
- Who is your audience?
- How will they receive the topic? Will they be bored? Will they be excited, etc?
- How will you adjust the speech and topic to fit this specific audience?
- The topic is appropriate and adapted for you, the audience, and occasion. If you think you might cry or become overly emotional while speaking on your topic, don’t pick that one!
- The topic is narrowed down, but still has substance and can fit inside the given speech time limit. It is a very important skill to learn how to narrow down your ideas, but still make them substantive, especially in a five-minute presentation.
- The topic is unique and original and not worn out or overdone. Please don’t talk about marijuana, recycling, texting and driving, abortion, health and fitness, being vegetarian or vegan, just to name a few—I am sure you can think of more examples. If you do a Google search and see it returns 81,000,000 results or more, this probably means the topic is overdone! Although, a way you can do one of these topics is only if you take a very unique focus—one that isn’t overdone.
Controversial Topics
Some of the most interesting topics are controversial. They are controversial topics because people have deeply felt values and beliefs on different sides of those topics. For instance, before you choose nuclear energy as your topic, investigate the many voices speaking out both in favor and against increasing its use. Many people perceive nuclear energy as a clean, reliable, and much-needed energy source. Others say that even mining uranium is harmful to the environment, that we lack satisfactory solutions for storing nuclear waste, and that nuclear power plants are vulnerable to errors and attacks. Another group might view the issue economically, believing that industry needs nuclear energy. Engineers might believe that if the national grid could be modernized, we would have enough energy and that we should strive to use and waste less energy until modernization is feasible. The topic is extremely controversial, and yet it is interesting and very important.
Don’t avoid controversy altogether, but choose your topic carefully. Moreover, how you treat your audience is just as important as how you treat your topic. If your audience has widely diverse views, take the time to acknowledge the concerns they have. Treat them as intelligent people, even if you don’t trust the completeness or the accuracy of their beliefs about your topic.
How do I gather and use audience information
The following sections are adapted from section 5.2 of Stand up, Speak out: The Practice and Ethics of Public Speaking, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.
While audience analysis does not guarantee against judgment errors, it will help you make good topic, language, presentation style, and other speech-aspect choices. The more you know about your audience, the better you can serve their interests and needs. There are certainly limits to what we can learn through information collection, so acknowledge this before making assumptions. But knowing how to gather and use information through audience analysis is an essential skill for successful speakers.
Demographic Analysis
As indicated earlier, demographic information includes factors such as gender, age, marital status, race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status. In your public speaking class, you probably already know how many students are male and female, their approximate ages, and so forth. But how can you assess an audience’s demographics ahead of time if you have had no previous contact with them? In many cases, you can ask the person or organization who has invited you to speak; it’s likely that they can tell you much about the audience demographics.
Whatever method you use to gather demographics, exercise respect from the outset. For instance, if you are collecting information about whether audience members have ever been divorced, be aware that not everyone will want to answer your questions. You can’t require them to do so, and you may not make assumptions about their reluctance to discuss the topic. You must allow them their privacy.
Demographic Analysis
| Demographic | Description |
|---|---|
| Age | There are certain things you can learn about an audience based on age. For instance, if your audience members are first-year college students, you can assume that they have grown up in the post-9/11 era and have limited memory of what life was like before the “war on terror.” If your audience includes people in their forties and fifties, it is likely they remember a time when people feared they would contract the AIDS virus from shaking hands or using a public restroom. They also have frames of reference that contribute to the way they think, but it may not be easy to predict which side of the issues they support. |
| Gender | Gender can define human experience. Clearly, most women have had a different cultural experience from that of men within the same culture. Some women have found themselves excluded from certain careers. Some men have found themselves blamed for the limitations imposed on women. In books such as You Just Don’t Understand and Talking from 9 to 5, linguist Deborah Tannen has written extensively on differences between men’s and women’s communication styles. Tannen explains, “This is not to say that all women and all men, or all boys and girls, behave any one way. Many factors influence our styles, including regional and ethnic backgrounds, family experience and individual personality. But gender is a key factor and understanding its influence can help clarify what happens when we talk” (Tannen, 1994). |
| Culture | In past generations, Americans often used the metaphor of a “melting pot” to symbolize the assimilation of immigrants from various countries and cultures into a unified, harmonious “American people.” Today, we are aware of the limitations in that metaphor, and have largely replaced it with a multiculturalist view that describes the American fabric as a “patchwork” or a “mosaic.” We know that people who immigrate do not abandon their cultures of origin in order to conform to a standard American identity. In fact, cultural continuity is now viewed as a healthy source of identity. |
| We also know that subcultures and co cultures exist within and alongside larger cultural groups. For example, while we are aware that Native American people do not all embrace the same values, beliefs, and customs as mainstream white Americans, we also know that members of the Navajo nation have different values, beliefs, and customs from those of members of the Sioux or the Seneca. We know that African American people in urban centers like Detroit and Boston do not share the same cultural experiences as those living in rural Mississippi. Similarly, white Americans in San Francisco may be culturally rooted in the narrative of distant ancestors from Scotland, Italy, or Sweden or in the experience of having emigrated much more recently from Australia, Croatia, or Poland. | |
| Not all cultural membership is visibly obvious. For example, people in German American and Italian American families have widely different sets of values and practices, yet others may not be able to differentiate members of these groups. Differences are what make each group interesting and are important sources of knowledge, perspectives, and creativity. | |
| Religion | There is wide variability in religion as well. The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life found in a nationwide survey that 84 percent of Americans identify with at least one of a dozen major religions, including Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Islam, Hinduism, and others. Within Christianity alone, there are half a dozen categories including Roman Catholic, Mormon, Jehovah’s Witness, Orthodox (Greek and Russian), and a variety of Protestant denominations. Another 6 percent said they were unaffiliated but religious, meaning that only one American in ten is atheist, agnostic, or “nothing in particular” (Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, 2008). |
| Even within a given denomination, a great deal of diversity can be found. For instance, among Roman Catholics alone, there are people who are devoutly religious, people who self-identify as Catholic but do not attend mass or engage in other religious practices, and others who faithfully make confession and attend mass but who openly question Papal doctrine on various issues. Catholicism among immigrants from the Caribbean and Brazil is often blended with indigenous religion or with religion imported from the west coast of Africa. It is very different from Catholicism in the Vatican. | |
| The dimensions of diversity in the religion demographic are almost endless, and they are not limited by denomination. Imagine conducting an audience analysis of people belonging to an individual congregation rather than a denomination: even there, you will most likely find a multitude of variations that involve how one was brought up, adoption of a faith system as an adult, how strictly one observes religious practices, and so on. | |
| Yet, even with these multiple facets, religion is still a meaningful demographic lens. It can be an indicator of probable patterns in family relationships, family size, and moral attitudes. | |
| Group Membership | Think about “majors” in college, every major has its own set of values, goals, principles, and codes of ethics. A political science student preparing for law school might seem to have little in common with a student of music therapy, for instance. In addition, there are other group memberships that influence how audience members understand the world. Fraternities and sororities, sports teams, campus organizations, political parties, volunteerism, and cultural communities all provide people with ways of understanding the world as it is and as we think it should be. Because public speaking audiences are very often members of one group or another, group membership is a useful and often easy to access facet of audience analysis. The more you know about the associations of your audience members, the better prepared you will be to tailor your speech to their interests, expectations, and needs. |
| Education | People pursue education for many reasons. Some people seek to become educated, while others seek to earn professional credentials. Both are important motivations. If you know the education levels attained by members of your audience, you might not know their motivations, but you will know to what extent they could somehow afford the money for an education, afford the time to get an education, and survive educational demands successfully. |
| The kind of education is also important. For instance, an airplane mechanic undergoes a very different kind of education and training from that of an accountant or a software engineer. This means that not only the attained level of education but also the particular field is important in your understanding of your audience. | |
| Occupation | People choose occupations for reasons of motivation and interest, but their occupations also influence their perceptions and their interests. There are many misconceptions about most occupations. For instance, many people believe that teachers work an eight-hour day and have summers off. When you ask teachers, however, you might be surprised to find out that they take work home with them for evenings and weekends, and during the summer, they may teach summer school as well as taking courses in order to keep up with new developments in their fields. Learning about those occupational realities is important in avoiding wrong assumptions and stereotypes. We insist that you not assume that nurses are merely doctors “lite.” Their skills, concerns, and responsibilities are almost entirely different, and both are crucially necessary to effective health care. |
Psychographic Analysis
Earlier, we mentioned psychographic information, which includes such things as values, opinions, attitudes, and beliefs. Authors Grice and Skinner present a model in which values are the basis for beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors (Grice & Skinner, 2009). They say, “A value expresses a judgment of what is desirable and undesirable, right and wrong, or good and evil. Values are usually stated in the form of a word or phrase. For example, most of us probably share the values of equality, freedom, honesty, fairness, justice, good health, and family. These values compose the principles or standards we use to judge and develop our beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors.”
It is important to recognize that while demographic information is fairly straightforward and verifiable, psychographic information is much less clearcut. Two different people who both say they believe in equal education opportunities may have very different interpretations of what equal opportunities are. We also acknowledge that people inherit values from their family upbringing, cultural influences, and life experiences. The extent to which someone values family loyalty and parent obedience, thrift, humility, and work may be determined by these influences more than by individual choice. Psychographic analysis can reveal preexisting notions that limit your audience’s frame of reference. By knowing about such notions ahead of time, you can address them in your speech. Audiences are likely to have two basic kinds of preexisting notions: those about the topic and those about the speaker.
Psychographic Analysis
| Psychographic | Description |
|---|---|
| Pre-Existing Notions about Your Topic | Many things are a great deal more complex than we realize. Media stereotypes often contribute to our oversimplifications. For instance, a student once said: “the hippies meant well, but they did it wrong.” Aside from the question of the “it” that was done wrong, there was a question about how little the student actually knew about the diverse hippy cultures and their aspirations. The student seemed unaware that some of “the hippies” were the forebears of such things as organic bakeries, natural food co-ops, urban gardens, recycling, alternative energy, wellness, and other arguably positive developments. It’s important to know your audience in order to make a rational judgment about how their views of your topic might be shaped. In speaking to an audience that might have differing definitions, you should take care to define your terms in a clear, honest way. |
| At the opposite end from oversimplification is the level of sophistication your audience might embody. Your audience analysis should include factors that reveal it. Suppose you are speaking about trends in civil rights in the United States. You cannot pretend that advancement of civil rights is virtually complete nor can you claim that no progress has been made. When you speak to an audience that is cognitively complex, your strategy must be different from one you would use for an audience that is less educated in the topic. With a cognitively complex audience, you must acknowledge the overall complexity while stating that your focus will be on only one dimension. With an audience that’s uninformed about your topic, that strategy in a persuasive speech could confuse them; they might well prefer a black-and-white message with no gray areas. You must decide whether it is ethical to represent your topic this way. | |
| When you prepare to do your audience analysis, include questions that reveal how much your audience already knows about your topic. Try to ascertain the existence of stereotyped, oversimplified, or prejudiced attitudes about it. This could make a difference in your choice of topic or in your approach to the audience and topic. | |
| Pre-Existing Notions about You | People form opinions readily. For instance, we know that students form impressions of teachers the moment they walk into our classrooms on the first day. You get an immediate impression of our age, competence, and attitude simply from our appearance and nonverbal behavior. In addition, many have heard other students say what they think of us. |
| The same is almost certainly true of you. But it’s not always easy to get others to be honest about their impressions of you. They’re likely to tell you what they think you want to hear. Sometimes, however, you do know what others think. They might think of you as a jock, a suit-wearing conservative, a nature lover, and so on. Based on these impressions, your audience might expect a boring speech, a shallow speech, a sermon, and so on. However, your concern should still be serving your audience’s needs and interests, not debunking their opinions of you or managing your image. In order to help them be receptive, you address their interests directly, and make sure they get an interesting, ethical speech. |
Situational Analysis
The next type of analysis is called the situational audience analysis because it focuses on characteristics related to the specific speaking situation. The situational audience analysis can be divided into two main questions:
- How many people came to hear my speech and why are they here? What events, concerns, and needs motivated them to come? What is their interest level, and what else might be competing for their attention?
- What is the physical environment of the speaking situation? What is the size of the audience, layout of the room, existence of a podium or a microphone, and availability of digital media for visual aids? Are there any distractions, such as traffic noise?
Situational Analysis
| Situation | Description |
|---|---|
| Audience Size | This audience size gives you the latitude to be relatively informal within the bounds of good judgment. It isn’t too difficult to let each audience member feel as though you’re speaking to him or her. However, you would not become so informal that you allow your carefully prepared speech to lapse into shallow entertainment. With larger audiences, it’s more difficult to reach out to each listener, and your speech will tend to be more formal, staying more strictly within its careful outline. You will have to work harder to prepare visual and audio material that reaches the people sitting at the back of the room, including possibly using amplification. |
| Occasion | There are many occasions for speeches. Awards ceremonies, conventions and conferences, holidays, and other celebrations are some examples. However, there are also less joyful reasons for a speech, such as funerals, disasters, and the delivery of bad news. As always, there are likely to be mixed reactions. For instance, award ceremonies are good for community and institutional morale, but we wouldn’t be surprised to find at least a little resentment from listeners who feel deserving but were overlooked. Likewise, for a speech announcing bad news, it is likely that at least a few listeners will be glad the bad news wasn’t even worse. If your speech is to deliver bad news, it’s important to be honest but also to avoid traumatizing your audience. |
| Some of the most successful speeches benefit from situational analysis to identify audience concerns related to the occasion. For example, when the president of the United States gives the annual State of the Union address, the occasion calls for commenting on the condition of the nation and outlining the legislative agenda for the coming year. The speech could be a formality that would interest only “policy wonks,” or with the use of good situational audience analysis, it could be a popular event reinforcing the connection between the president and the American people. If you look at the history of State of the Union Addresses, you’ll often find that the speeches are tailored to the political, social, and economic situations facing the United States at those times. | |
| Voluntariness of Audience | A voluntary audience gathers because they want to hear the speech, attend the event, or participate in an event. A classroom audience, in contrast, is likely to be a captive audience. Captive audiences are required to be present or feel obligated to do so. Given the limited choices perceived, a captive audience might give only grudging attention. Even when there’s an element of choice, the likely consequences of nonattendance will keep audience members from leaving. The audience’s relative perception of choice increases the importance of holding their interest. |
| Whether or not the audience members chose to be present, you want them to be interested in what you have to say. Almost any audience will be interested in a topic that pertains directly to them. However, your audience might also be receptive to topics that are indirectly or potentially pertinent to their lives. This means that if you choose a topic such as advances in the treatment of spinal cord injury or advances in green technology, you should do your best to show how these topics are potentially relevant to their lives or careers. | |
| However, there are some topics that appeal to audience curiosity even when it seems there’s little chance of direct pertinence. For instance, topics such as Blackbeard the pirate or ceremonial tattoos among the Maori might pique the interests of various audiences. | |
| Physical Settings | The physical setting can make or break even the best speeches, so it is important to exercise as much control as you can over it. In your classroom, conditions might not be ideal, but at least the setting is familiar. Still, you know your classroom from the perspective of an audience member, not a speaker standing in the front—which is why you should seek out any opportunity to rehearse your speech during a minute when the room is empty. If you will be giving your presentation somewhere else, it is a good idea to visit the venue ahead of time if at all possible and make note of any factors that will affect how you present your speech. In any case, be sure to arrive well in advance of your speaking time so that you will have time to check that the microphone works, to test out any visual aids, and to request any needed adjustments in lighting, room ventilation, or other factors to eliminate distractions and make your audience more comfortable. |
What tools can I use for gathering and using audience information?
The following sections are adapted from section 5.3 of Stand up, Speak out: The Practice and Ethics of Public Speaking, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.
Now that we have described what audience analysis is and why it is important, let’s examine how to conduct it. Exactly how can you learn about the people who will make up your audience?
Direct Observation
One way to learn about people is to observe them. By observing nonverbal behavior patterns, you’ll learn much as long as you are careful how you interpret the behaviors. For instance, do people greet each other with a handshake, a hug, a smile, or a nod? Do men and women make physical contact? Does the setting suggest more conservative behavior? Listen to conversations to hear issues that concern people. Are people in a school campus center talking about political unrest in the Middle East? About concerns over future Pell Grant funding? Consider eavesdropping’s ethical dimensions, however. Are you simply overhearing an open conversation, or are you prying into a highly personal or private discussion?
Interviews and Surveys
Because your demographic analysis will be limited to your most likely audience, your most accurate way to learn about them is to seek personal information through interviews and surveys. An interview is a one-on-one exchange in which you ask one respondent questions. A survey is set questions administered to several—or, preferably, many—respondents. Conduct interviews face-to-face, by phone, or by written means, such as texting. Interviews allow more in-depth discussions than surveys, and interviews are also more time consuming. Surveys are also sometimes conducted face-to-face or by phone, but online surveys are increasingly common. Collect and tabulate survey results manually, or set up an automated online survey through either free or subscription portal sites such as Survey Monkey and Zoomerang. Using an online survey provides the advantage of keeping responses anonymous, which may increase your audience members’ willingness to participate and to answer personal questions. Surveys are an efficient way to collect information quickly; however, in contrast to interviews, they don’t allow for follow-up questions to help you understand why your respondent gave a certain answer.
Whether you use interviews or surveys, there are several important things to keep in mind:
- Make sure your interview and survey questions are directly related to your speech topic. Do not use interviews to delve into people’s private lives. For instance, if your speech is about the debate between creationism and evolution, create questions that will ensure getting opinions about that topic; do not meander into people’s beliefs about sexual behavior or their personal religious practices.
- Create and use a standard set of questions. If you ad lib and phrase your questions differently for different interviewees, you are comparing apples and oranges when you tabulate your responses
- Keep interviews and surveys short, or you could alienate your audience long before your speech is even outlined. Tell them the purpose of the interview or survey, and make sure they understand that their participation is voluntary.
- Don’t rely on just a few respondents to inform you about your entire audience. In all likelihood, you have a cognitively diverse audience. To accurately identify trends, interview or survey at least ten to twenty people.
In addition, when you conduct interviews and surveys, keep in mind that people are sometimes less than honest in describing their beliefs, attitudes, and behavior. This tendency is a widely recognized interview and survey weakness, known as socially desirable responding—the tendency to give responses that are considered socially acceptable. Marketing professor Ashok Lalwani divides socially desirable responding into two types: (1) impression management, or intentionally portraying oneself in a favorable light and (2) self-deceptive enhancement, or exaggerating one’s good qualities, often unconsciously (Lalwani, 2009).
To reduce these socially desirable responding effects, choose your questions carefully. As marketing consultant Terry Vavra advises, “One should never ask what one can’t logically expect respondents to honestly reveal” (Vavra, 2009). For example, if you want to know audience members’ attitudes about body piercing, you are likely to get more honest answers by asking, “Do you think body piercing is attractive?” rather than, “How many piercings do you have and where on your body are they located?”
Focus Groups
A focus group is a small group of people who give you feedback about their perceptions. As with interviews and surveys, use a limited, carefully prepared question list designed to get at the information you need to understand your audiences’ beliefs, attitudes, and values as they are specifically topic related.
If you conduct a focus group, part of your task will be striking a balance between allowing the discussion to flow freely according to what group members have to say and keeping the group focused on the questions. It’s also your job to guide the group in maintaining responsible and respectful behavior towards each other.
In evaluating focus group feedback, do your best to be receptive to what people had to say whether or not it conforms to what you expected. Your purpose in conducting the focus group is to understand group members’ beliefs, attitudes, and values about your topic, not to confirm your assumptions.
Using Existing Data about Your Audience
Occasionally, audience information already exists and is available. For instance, if you have a student audience, it might not be difficult to find out what their academic majors are. You might also find out how invested they are in their educations. For instance, you can reasonably assume that seniors are successful students who have invested at least three years pursuing a higher education. Sophomores have at least survived their first year, but may not have matched the seniors in demonstrating strong values toward education and the work ethic necessary to earn a degree.
In another audience, you might be able to learn other significant facts. For instance, are they veterans? Are they retired teachers? Do they volunteer at civic organizations such as Lions Club or Mothers Against Drunk Driving? This information will help you respond to their concerns and interests.
In other cases, use public and private organizations’ demographics. Every year, the United States Census Bureau conducts demographic analysis through the American Community Survey and other specialized demographic surveys (Bureau of the Census, 2011; Bureau of the Census, 2011). The US Census Bureau analysis generally captures information about people in all US regions, but you can also drill down in census data to see results by state, age group, gender, race, and other factors.
Demographic information about narrower segments of the US, such as individual zip codes, is available through private organizations such as The Nielsen Company, Sperling’s Best Places, and Point2Homes. Sales and marketing professionals use this data, and you may find it useful for your audience analysis as well.
Why should I always keep the audience in mind?
The following sections are adapted from section 5.4 of Stand up, Speak out: The Practice and Ethics of Public Speaking, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.
How an Audience Analysis Can Help a Speaker Alter a Speech While Speaking
A good audience analysis takes time, thought, preparation, implementation, and processing. If done well, it will yield information that will help you interact effectively with your audience. Professional speakers, corporate executives, sales associates, and entertainers all rely on audience analysis to connect with their listeners. So do political candidates, whose chances of gaining votes depend on crafting the message and mood to appeal to each specific audience. One audience might be preoccupied with jobs, another with property taxes, and another with crime. Similarly, your audience analysis should help you identify your audiences’ interests. Ultimately, a successful audience analysis can guide you in preparing your basic speech content and help you adjust your speech on the fly.
Prepare Content with Your Audience in Mind
The first thing a good audience analysis can do is to help you focus your content for your specific audience. If you are planning to deliver a persuasive speech on why people should become vegans and you find out through analysis that half your audience come from cattle ranching families, you need to carefully think through your content approach. Maybe you’ll need to tweak your topic to focus on just the benefits of veganism without trying to persuade the audience explicitly. The last thing you want to do as a speaker is stand before an audience who is highly negative toward your topic before you ever open your mouth. While there will always be some naysayers in any audience, if you think through your topic with your audience in mind, you may be able to find a topic that will be both interesting to you as a speaker and beneficial to your audience as well.
In addition to adjusting your speech’s topic prior to the speaking event, you can also use your audience analysis to help ensure that your speech’s content will be as clear and understandable as humanly possible. Use your audience analysis to help make sure that you are clear.
One area to be careful of is using idioms that your audience may not know. An idiom is a word or phrase in which the meaning cannot be predicted from normal, dictionary definitions. Many idioms are based on culture or an historical time.
Adjusting Your Speech Based on Your Analysis
In addition to using audience analysis to help formulate speech content, you can also use audience analysis to make adjustments during the actual speech. These adjustments can pertain to the audience and to the physical setting.
The audience feedback you receive during your speech invaluably indicates ways to adjust your presentation. If you’re speaking after lunch and notice audience members looking drowsy, make adjustments to liven up your speech’s tone. Use humor. Raise your voice slightly. Pose some questions and ask for a show of hands to get your listeners actively involved. Other audience feedback such as frowns and head shaking mean that some listeners aren’t convinced by your arguments. In this case, spend more time on a specific topic area and provide more evidence than you originally intended. Good speakers learn a lot by watching their audience while speaking, and then they make specific adjustments to both the speech content and delivery to enhance the speech’s ultimate impact.
The second adjustment type has to do with your speech’s physical setting. For example, your situational analysis may reveal that you’ll be speaking in a large auditorium when you had expected a nice, cozy conference room. If you’ve created visual aids for a small, intimate environment, you may have to omit them, or tell your listeners that they can view them after the presentation. You may also need to account for a microphone. If you’re lucky enough to have a cordless microphone, you won’t have to make too many adjustments to your speaking style. If, on the other hand, the microphone is corded or is attached to an unmovable podium, make adjustments to how you deliver the presentation.
References
University of Minnesota. (2011). Stand up, Speak out: The Practice and Ethics of Public Speaking. University of Minnesota Libraries Publishing. https://open.lib.umn.edu/publicspeaking/. CC BY-SA 4.0.
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