Analyzing Your Audience

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Chapter 5

• Analyzing Your Audience

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Key ideas

• The success of a speech depends on the audience
• Demographics
• Adaptating to Your Audience
• Ethos

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Your Goal is two-fold

• audience-centered
• If you neglect to keep your audience foremost in
  mind, you dont have a speech.

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Ask

• To whom am I speaking?
• What do I want them to know, believe, or do?
• What is the most effective way of composing and
  presenting my speech to accomplish that aim?

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2. Identification

• Kenneth Burke and division
• Rhetoric bridges that division
• We do this through identification pointing out
  commonalities between you and your audience
  common interests or experiences using inclusive
  language (we, us, our my fellow
  students, brothers).
• This all starts with knowing your audience.

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Demographics - the characteristics of an audience
as a whole.

• Size how large is your audience?
• Heterogeneity how similar is my audience?

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• Voluntary v. Captive Audience ?
• Composition age, gender, religion, ethnicity,
  educational level or socioeconomic status, sexual
  orientation.
• Stereotyping oversimplification
  overgeneralization can insult/offend and
  antagonize an audience.

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Respecting Audience Cultures

• Culture a group that distinguishes themselves
  from other groups by sharing patterns of values,
  beliefs, symbols, norms, procedures, and
  behaviors that have been historically passed down
  from generation to generation.
• Be mindful of diverse values and beliefs.

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Suggestions for adapting to a culturally diverse
audience

• Derive examples from many cultures so all
  listeners feel included.
• Make others feel that their distinctiveness is
  valued.
• Resist culture-specific references.

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• Disposition toward the Topic/Prior Understanding
  How interested is my audience in my topic? How
  much do they know about my topic?
• Pathos How do they feel about my topic? Whats
  their attitude? What time of day is it? What
  mood are they in?

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Things to be particularly mindful of

• Offending your audience in any way
• - Insulting their intelligence
• - Insulting their culture

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Understanding Audience Psychology

• Selective Exposure
• Selective attention
• The speaker can motivate the audience.
• - Make the message personally important to
  listeners.
• - Make the message easy to follow.

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Strategies for Analyzing the Audience

• Formal Methods (p.128 -131).
• Informal Methods

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Analyzing Your Own Ethos