Chapter 16 Persuasive Speaking 471second-year students from having cars on campus so that
they stick around and invest more in their life at school.
When you speak about this topic, you should think
about portions of your audience each having a different
possible anchor position—their position on the topic at
the outset of the speech (Sherif & Sherif, 1967)—about
the issue of keeping students on campus. Depending on
how strongly the audience members feel about their anchor
position, they will also have different latitudes, or ranges of
acceptable and unacceptable viewpoints, about your topic.
These different anchor positions and latitudes might result
in three different kinds of audiences for your speech:
c A receptive audience is an audience that already leans
toward your viewpoints and your message. These audi-
ence members might be residential students who are
around on the weekends and wish there was more to do. They probably have
a large latitude of acceptance; that is, they would find acceptable a wide
range of proposals you could make regarding keeping first- and second-year
students on campus.
c A neutral audience falls between the receptive audience and the hostile
audience: its members neither support you nor oppose you. Nonresi-
dential commuting students (who are off campus on weekends anyway)
might fall into this category. This audience would probably have a large
latitude of noncommitment, that is, a range of positions that they are
not sure about.
c A hostile audience is one that opposes your message (and perhaps you per-
sonally); this is the hardest type of audience to persuade, particularly if you
are trying to change people’s behavior. In this audience, you’ll certainly find
first- and second-year students who live on campus but want to spend their
weekends away. This audience would likely have a large latitude of rejec-
tion; that is, they would find unacceptable most proposals that aim to keep
students from leaving campus.
So how do you persuade these distinct groups of individuals? Your receptive
audience already basically agrees with your position, allowing you to simply reaf-
firm their current beliefs or perhaps even get them to accept stronger proposals.
Your neutral audience may need some more information about the issue: for
example, how exactly does the student weekend flight impact campus life? Most
important, they will need to know why they should care. Perhaps, for example, if
there were more to do on campus on the weekends, commuting students would
be more interested in getting involved in weekend cultural and social events,
strengthening their own attachment to the campus community. Your hostile audi-
ence will, of course, require some special consideration. You want these audience
members to find you trustworthy and full of goodwill. You want to avoid making
them feel as though you’re trying to force them to accept your views, as research
shows that such behavior will backfire and cause your audience to be less likely to
engage with you (Brehm, 1966; Brehm & Brehm, 1981) and less likely to accept
CORETTA SCOTT KING
found a receptive audience
when she spoke to other like-
minded individuals at a press
conference on ending the
Vietnam War. © Bettmann/Corbis