PUBLIC SPEAKING

Meeting 4-5
 Analyzing the audience
• In choosing a topic, keep your audience in mind so your
speech will interest them.
1. In-depth research allows you to design a speech
tailored to your audience.
2. You probably won’t be able to do in-depth research for
your first speech, but just looking around the classroom
gives you some clues about your audience. Demographic
characteristics such as ethnic background, age, sex,
and educational level tell you a lot.
 Cont...
• Adapting your speech to your audience means that you
apply the information you’ve gathered about them when
designing your speech.
1. Target your message to this particular audience at this
particular time and place.
2. Use audience-centered communication that engages
your listeners and helps you achieve your goal for the
speech.
3. You want your audience to feel as if you’re speaking
directly to them.
 Audience-centeredness
• Good public speakers are audience-centered. They know
the primary purpose of speechmaking is not to browbeat
the audience or to blow off steam. Rather, it is to gain a
desired response from listeners.
• Being audience-centered does not involve compromising
your beliefs to get a favorable response. Nor does it mean
using devious, unethical tactics to achieve your goal. You
can remain true to yourself and speak ethically while
adapting your message to the goals, values, and attitudes
of your audience.
 Cont...
• To be audience-centered, you need to keep several
questions in mind when you work on your speeches:
1. To whom am I speaking?
2. What do I want them to know, believe, or do as a result of
my speech?
3. What is the most effective way of composing and
presenting my speech to accomplish that aim?
 Cont...
• In many ways, adapting to an audience during a public
speech is not much different from what you do in your
daily social contacts. Few people would walk into a party
and announce, “You know those people protesting at the
administration building are way over the edge!”
• People usually prefer to open controversial topics with a
fairly noncommittal position. You might say, “What’s
going on at the administration building?”
 The Psychology of Audiences
• What do you do when you listen to a speech? Sometimes
you pay close attention; at other times you let your
thoughts wander. People may be compelled to attend a
speech, but no one can make them listen. The speaker
must make the audience choose to pay attention.
• Auditory perception is always selective. Every speech
contains two messages—the one sent by the speaker
and the one received by the listener.
 Cont...
• What do people want to hear? Very simply, they usually
want to hear about things that are meaningful to them.
People are egocentric.
• They pay closest attention to messages that affect their
own values, beliefs, and wellbeing. Listeners approach
speeches with one question uppermost in mind: “Why is
this important to me?”
 Cont...

• As Harry Emerson Fosdick, the great

preacher, once said: “There is nothing that
people are so interested in as themselves,
their own problems, and the way to solve
them. That fact is . . . the primary starting
point of all successful public speaking.”
What do these psychological principles
mean to you as a speaker?
• First, they mean your listeners will hear and judge what
you say on the basis of what they already know and
believe.
• Second, they mean you must relate your message to your
listeners—show how it pertains to them, explain why they
should care about it as much as you do.
 Demographic Audience Analysis
• One of the ways speakers analyze audiences is by
looking at demographic traits such as age; gender;
religion; sexual orientation; group membership; racial,
ethnic, or cultural background; and the like. This is called
demographic audience analysis.
 Cont...

It consists of two steps:

(1) identifying the general demographic features of your
audience, and
(2) gauging the importance of those features to a particular
speaking situation.
 Cont...
• Demographic audience analysis can be a useful tool in
understanding your audience, like all tools, it can be
used improperly. When analyzing demographic
information about your audience, it is essential that you
avoid stereotyping. Stereotyping involves creating an
oversimplified image of a particular group of people,
usually by assuming that all members of the group are
alike.
 Cont...
• Examples of stereotyping include the erroneous notions
that all African Americans are athletic or that all Asians
excel in science. Looking at demographic factors can
provide important clues about your audience, but you
must use those factors prudently and responsibly.
• What you should pay attention:
1. Age
2. Gender
3. Religion
4. Sexual orientation
5. Racial, ethnic, and cultural background
6. Group membership
 Cont...
• Others include occupation, economic position, social
standing, education, intelligence, and place of residence.
Indeed, anything characteristic of a given audience is
potentially important to a speaker addressing that
audience. For your classroom speeches, you may want
to learn about your classmates’ academic majors,
years in school, extracurricular activities, living
arrangements, and job aspirations.
 Cont...
• The most important thing to keep in mind about
demographic audience analysis is that it is not an end in
itself. Your aim is not just to list the major traits of your
listeners, but to find in those traits clues about how your
listeners will respond to your speech.
 Situational Audience Analysis
• Situational audience analysis usually builds on
demographic analysis. It identifies traits of the audience
unique to the speaking situation at hand. These traits
include the size of the audience, the physical setting,
and the disposition of the audience toward the
subject, the speaker, and the occasion.