Analyzing your Audience before you Speak 6.5 105
Analyzing Your Audience before You
Speak
6.5 Develop methods of analyzing your audience before you speak by
seeking demographic, psychological, and situational information about
your audience and the speaking occasion.
Learning about your audience members’ backgrounds and attitudes can help
you to select a topic, define a purpose, develop an outline, and carry out virtu-
ally all other speech-related activities. You can gather and analyze three primary
types of information:- Demographic
- Psychological
- Situational
Demographic Audience Analysis
As we noted earlier, demographics are statistics on population characteristics
such as age; gender; sexual orientation; culture, ethnicity, and race; group
membership; and socioeconomic status. Now let’s consider how demographic
audience analysis can help you to better understand and adapt to your
audience. Some demographics can be inferred just by looking at your listeners,
but if you are presenting your speech online or via video where you can’t see
your listeners, it’s especially important to do prespeech demographic analysis.
AgE Although you must use caution in generalizing from only one factor such
as age, information about the age of audience members can suggest the kinds
of examples, humor, illustrations, and other types of supporting material to use
in your speech. Many students in your public-speaking class are probably in
their late teens or early twenties; some may be older. The younger students may
know the latest hip-hop performers or musicians, for example, but the older
ones might not be familiar with Wiz Khalifa, Lil Wayne, Drake, or Nicki Minaj. If
you are going to give a talk on music, you will have to explain who the perform-
ers are and describe or demonstrate their style if you want all the members of
your class to understand what you are talking about.
For centuries, adults have lamented that younger generations don’t seem to
share the values of the older generation. Two current researchers who have stud-
ied generational differences have found that different generations do, indeed,
hold differing assumptions about work, duty, and certain values. Table 6.2 sum-
marizes the values and generational characteristics of four generations: matures,
baby boomers, generation X, and millennials.^2
What do these generational differences have to do with public speaking?
Over 2,000 years ago, Aristotle noted that a good speaker knows how to adapt to6.5