Audience Analysis

Good public speakers are audience-centered Good public speakers are audience-centered. They know the primary purpose of speech-making is to gain a desired response

The speaker’s aim is to adjust to the concerns of the audience, not to show how much she or he knows about a wide variety of issues.

One way is to find out as much as you can in advance about your audience.

Psychology of Audiences It’s up to the speaker to make the audience choose to pay attention

Every speech contains two messages – the one sent by the speaker and the one received by the listener

Frame of reference What a speaker says is filtered through a listener’s frame of reference – the sum of his or her needs, interests, expectations, knowledge and experience.

Egocentricity People are egocentric. They want to hear about things that are meaningful to them. “Why is this important to me?”

Result is listeners will hear and judge what you say on the basis of what they already know and believe. Second, you must relate your message to your listeners.

Demographic Audience Analysis Observable traits such as age, gender, religious orientation, racial, ethnic or cultural orientation, group membership, place of residence, occupation, social status, income, etc.

Two steps to Demographic Analysis First, identify the general demographic features of your audience Gauge the importance of those features to a particular speaking situation

Situational Audience Analysis Traits such as size of audience, attitudes influenced by the physical setting, disposition of the audience toward the subject, speaker and occasion.

Size The larger your audience, the more formal the presentation must be

Physical setting Temperature, space, audio-visual available, time of day

Disposition toward topic Interest: Outside class, people don’t usually expend the effort to attend a speech they aren’t interested in. But your classmates must. That makes you have to work harder.

Knowledge: Strong correlation between interest in a topic and knowledge about it. If your audience knows little about your topic, you will have to talk at a more elementary level. If well-informed, take a more technical approach.

Attitude: If you know in advance, can adjust what you have to say to what your audience needs to hear

Disposition toward speaker: An audience’s response is invariably clouded by their perception of the speaker.

Occasion: Will dictate what can be said and how long speech should be.

Two stages of audience adapation Stage one before the speech as part of your preparation Stage two during the presentation

Before speech Assess how your audience is likely to respond to what you will say Adjust what you say to make it as clear, appropriate and convincing as possible.

During speech Confused, angry, asleep, murmuring?