Public Speaking

Analyze Your Audience (^69)
their interest. A random audience requires you to attract and maintain attention
long enough to present your message. If you communicate through a form of
media, remember that your audience can easily change channels or tune you out,
so focus on being interesting and relevant, and use conversational delivery as if you
were addressing one listener at a time.

2. Members of passive audiences are present for a variety of reasons but not because
   they are motivated to hear a particular speaker or a particular topic. Some show
   up at a speech because a friend asked them to go, or they go as part of a job
   requirement. Most speech classes contain many passive listeners whose goal is to
   earn academic credit, not to hear you or to learn about your topic. Your challenge
   here is to do three things: (1) select a relevant, interesting topic; (2) gain and main-
   tain interest; and (3) help them understand how the topic relates to their lives.


3. In contrast, motivated audiences want to hear a particular speaker or to know
   more about a topic. Consequently, they are self-selected by voluntarily and inten-
   tionally choosing to be at that speech. Here are some examples:

•   Students attend an evening lecture to hear best-selling author Susan Cain talk

about the power of introverts.

•   Citizens across the country watch the president’s televised State of the Union

speech live.

4. Homogeneous audiences can be unmotivated, passive, or motivated. A shared
   attitude—whether positive or negative—toward the speaker, the topic, or both is
   their defining feature. Speaking when the audience likes you and is interested in
   your topic can be rewarding, but you must still develop your ideas clearly so that
   listeners can understand and accept them. Hostile audiences, in contrast, share
   a negative attitude toward the speaker or the topic. Chances are, your audiences
   won’t be hostile toward you as a person—that sort of hostility is generally directed
   toward controversial public figures. Instead, listeners are more likely to be hostile
   toward your opinions on controversial ideas, especially if your conclusions conflict
   with theirs. Hostile audiences present unique challenges. Your best strategy is to
   emphasize common ground before you address areas of divergence. Chapter 17
   discusses additional ways to design speeches for hostile audiences.


5. Technology as close as your handheld devices provide opportunities to speak to
   absent audiences. In this format, you are separate from your listeners, who watch
   or listen through some form of media, generally not in “real time.” They can stop
   the speech or replay sections as they desire. Absent audiences don’t give the instan-
   taneous feedback of a face-to-face audience, but listeners can often contribute
   comments electronically. If you are taking this course online, you may be asked to
   upload your speeches to classmates who form an absent audience.

As you might imagine, listeners in a single audience can have various motivations.

A mostly self-selected audience may also include passive listeners who are just tagging

along with friends, or a mostly passive audience can have some self-selected members.

All things considered, try to discover the fundamental motivation of most people in the

audience and design speeches that take their motivations into account.

Analyze Audience Demographics

One way to consider your audience is to do a demographic analysis and note some

basic categories such as age, religious affiliation, ethnicity, and sex that are used in analy-

sis of target groups. Demographic information can help you plan your remarks as long

as you remember that, although we sometimes generalize about the experiences of dif-

ferent groups,^11 no one has a single fixed cultural or social identity.^12 Each audience

passive audiences unmoti-

vated listeners who listen to

accomplish other goals

motivated audiences listen-

ers who listen for a reason

self-selected audiences

listeners who choose to

listen to a selected subject

or speaker

homogeneous audiences

listeners who are similar in

attitude

hostile audiences listeners

who are negative toward the

topic or the speaker

absent audiences listeners

who are separated from the

speaker and receive the mes-

sage through some form of

media

demographic analysis

identifying audiences by

populations they represent,

such as age or ethnicity

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