AUDIENCE ANALYSIS

Audience analysis involves identifying the audience and adapting a speech to

their interests, level of understanding, attitudes, and beliefs. Taking an
audience-centered approach is important because a speaker's effectiveness will be
improved if the presentation is created and delivered in an appropriate manner.

Audience Analysis Factors

Audience expectations
When people become audience members in a speech situation, they bring with
them expectations about the occasion, topic, and speaker. Violating audience
expectations can have a negative impact on the effectiveness of the speech.
Imagine that a local politician is asked to speak at the memorial service for a
beloved former mayor. The audience will expect the politician’s speech to praise
the life and career of the deceased.
Knowledge of topic
Audience knowledge of a topic can vary widely on any given occasion, therefore,
communicators should find out what their audience already knows about the topic.
Never overestimate the audience’s knowledge of a topic. If a speaker launches into
a technical discussion of genetic engineering but the listeners are not familiar with
basic genetics, they will be unable to follow your speech and quickly lose interest.
On the other hand, drastically underestimating the audience’s knowledge may
result in a speech that sounds condescending.
Attitude toward topic
Knowing audience members’ attitudes about a topic will help a speaker determine
the best way to reach their goals. Imagine that a presenter is trying to convince the
community to build a park. A speaker would probably be inclined to spend the
majority of the speech giving reasons why a park would benefit the community.
Audience size
Many elements of speech-making change in accordance with audience size. In
general, the larger the audience the more formal the presentation should be. Sitting
down and using common language when speaking to a group of 10 people is often
quite appropriate. However, that style of presentation would probably be
inappropriate or ineffective if you were speaking to 1,000 people. Large audiences
often require that you use a microphone and speak from an elevated platform.

Audience–Centeredness:

 Good public speakers are audience-centered, meaning, they keep the

audience foremost in their minds at every steps of speech preparation and
presentation.
 The primary purpose of speechmaking is to gain a desired response from
listeners.
 To whom am I speaking?

 What do I want them to know, believe, or do as a result of my speech?

 What is the most effective way of composing and presenting my speech to

accomplish that aim?

 Effective speakers create a bond with the audience by emphasizing common

values, goals and experiences (identification)

 Think in advance about your audiences’ background and interests, their level
of knowledge about a topic your speaking on, their attitudes about certain
topics.

The Psychology of Audiences:

 When you listen to a speech, sometimes you pay close attention, other times
your thoughts wander.
 You can force people to attend a speech, but you cannot force someone to
listen.
 What a speaker says is filtered through the listener’s frame of reference ( the
sum of his/her needs, interests, expectations, knowledge and experience)
  Egocentrism: the tendency of people to be concerned above all with their
own values, beliefs and well-being.

Egocentrism:

Most audience members are egocentric: they are generally most interested in things
that directly affect them or their community. An effective speaker must be able to
show their audience why the topic they are speaking on should be important to
them.

 People want to hear things that are meaningful to them.

 They pay closest attention to messages that affect their own values, beliefs,
and well-being.
 Listeners will hear and judge what you say on the basis of what they already
know and believe.
 You must relate your message to your listeners.

Demographic Audience Analysis:

 Analysis that focuses on demographic factors like age, gender, sexual

orientation, religion, group membership, racial, ethnic or culture
background, etc.
1. Identify the general demographic features of your audience.
2. Gauge the importance of those features to a particular speaking situation.

Situational Audience Analysis:

 Builds on demographic analysis, focuses on situational factors like size of

the audience, the physical setting for the speech, and disposition of the
audience towards the topic, the speaker and the occasion.

Size: the larger the audience, the more formal your presentation must be. Size can
also affect your language, and choice of visual aids.
Physical setting: size of the room, A/V technology availability, microphones,
hot/cold temperature, time of day, etc.

Disposition towards the Topic:

 Interest- is the audience engaged or distracted?

 Knowledge- can you use technical language if the audience is experienced
in the topic? Do you have to change your level of speech if the material is
new to the audience?
 Attitude- how would you change your speech if you knew the audience
favoured/opposed your topic?

Disposition towards the Speaker:

Understanding that an audience’s response to a message is invariably colored by

their perception of the speaker (credibility).

Disposition towards the Occasion:

Is the speech appropriate for the occasion?

Example: using a graduate commencement speech to further a political agenda.

Adapting to the Audience:

Before the speech: assess how your audience is likely to respond to what you say
in your speech and adjust what you say

To make it as clear, appropriate and convincing as possible.

How will the audience react to my introduction and conclusion?

Do the visual aids actually make my message clearer, or do they distract?

How will the audience respond to my delivery and choice of words?

During the speech: you may have make on-the-fly adjustments to remedy a
variety of

Circumstances: maybe you have to shorten your speech or fill more time, maybe
there will be no computer to use for visual aidsm, maybe a venue change.

Its most Important to stay flexible and be ready to expect anything ! Control what
you can before the speech, and adjust what you can during the speech.

DEMOGRAPHIC AUDIENCE ANALYSIS:

Demographic audience analysis defines and examines an audience by its

demographics, including age, geographic location, gender identification, education
level, income level, and other statistical data. There are two steps in doing an
accurate demographic analysis gathering demographic data and interpreting this
data.

What is the most important reason to analyze the demographics of your audience?
 Analyzing your audience will help you discover information that you can use to
build common ground between you and the members of your audience. A key
characteristic in public speaking situations is the unequal distribution of speaking
time between the speaker and the audience.

YOU-ATTITUDE:
Considering the rhetorical aspects of any writing situation, such as purpose, stance,
and audience, is an essential part of adapting the style of a message for any
audience. Adopting a you-centered business style can help you achieve your
purpose, choose a stance, and analyze your audience. A you-centered business
style employs the you view and an audience-centered tone to choose particular
words and adopt a targeted tone in a message.
The “you view” analyzes and emphasizes the reader’s interests and perspectives.
Because the reader’s interest or benefit is stressed, the writer is more likely to help
the reader understand information or act on a request. Adopting a you view often,
but not always, involves using the words you or your rather than we, our, I, and
mine. Consider the following sentence that focuses on the needs of the writer and
the organization (we) rather than on those of the reader.

 We have not received your signed invoice, so we cannot process your payment.

Even though the sentence uses the word “your” twice, the first clause suggests that
the point of view focuses on the writer’s need to receive the invoice to process the
payment. The word “we” itself is not problematic, but the we view is. Consider the
following revisions, written with the you view.

“You-attitude,” a phrase used by Kitty O. refers to a style of writing that puts

readers' needs first. Specifically, you-attitude “emphasiz[es] what the reader wants
to know, respecting the reader's intelligence, and protecting the reader's ego”. The
“you” attitude is designed to make the reader feel like we're looking at a situation
from their perspective. We want to make the reader feel respected and be sensitive
to their feelings so that their ego doesn't get hurt.
SPOKEN VERSUS WRITTEN DISCOURSE:
Written discourse is more structurally complex and more elaborate than spoken
discourse . In other words, sentences in spoken discourse are short and simple,
whereas they are longer and more complex in written discourse. Written discourse
is more structurally complex and more elaborate than spoken discourse . In other
words, sentences in spoken discourse are short and simple, whereas they are longer
and more complex in written discourse. Spoken Language is mostly used between
two people who are in the same place. Written Language promotes communication
across space and time. Spoken discourse is less lexically dense than written
discourse. Content words tend to be spread out over a number of clauses, whereas
they seem to be tightly packed into individual clauses. Spoken discourse has more
pronouns (it, they, you , we). The overall conclusion is that the grammar of written
language is neither better (nor worse) than that of spoken language, it is simply that
the two types of language exhibit properties which suit the purpose of their users.