Audience Analysis

Audience Centeredness

• Good public speakers are audience-centered, meaning,

they keep the audience foremost in their minds at
every step of speech preparation and presentation.
• The primary purpose of speech making is to gain a
desired response from listeners.
 Audience-Centeredness

• 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?
 Audience-Centeredness

• 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 you
speaking on, their attitudes about certain topics.
 The Psychology of Audience
• 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
 Egocentrism

• 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 cultural background, etc.
• Identify the general demographic features of your audience
• Gauge the importance of those features to a particular
speaking situation
 Situational Audience Analysis

• Builds on demographic analysis, focuses on the situational factors

like size of the audience, the physical setting for the speech, and
disposition of the audience toward 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.
 Situational Audience Analysis
• Physical Setting: Size of the room, A\V technology
availability, microphones, hot/cold temperature, time of
day, etc.
• Disposition toward 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?
 Situational Audience Analysis

• Disposition toward the speaker: understanding that an audience

response to a message is invariably colored by their perception of the
speaker
• Disposition toward 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?
 Adapting to the Audience

• During the speech: you may have to make on-the-fly adjustments to

remedy a variety of circumstances: may be you have to shorten your
speech or fill more time, maybe there will be no computer to use for
visual aids, maybe a venue change.
• It’s 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.