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Who's in Your Audience and What do you do About Them?

There's no such thing as a one-size-fits-all speech. People are different, and audiences are different because each audience is composed of different people. Being an effective speaker means analyzing your audience and customizing your speech. You'll adjust your speech as a result of your audience analysis information. The same speech topic would be handled differently for audiences of college students, five-year-old children, senior citizens, union members, or heavy metal rock and roll fans.

Audience analysis' goal is to learn as much as you can about your audience. The more you know about your audience the more effectively you can tailor your speech to suit their particular needs and accomplish your specific purpose.

Factors for Analyzing Speech Audiences

1. Existing speech topic knowledge. What does your audience already know about your topic? I've heard professional football players say they turn off the sound when watching televised football games. That's not surprising. The announcer is speaking to a moderately informed audience of football fans and isn't saying anything new to a well-informed football player. Your first job is to determine your audience's existing topic knowledge.

Once you've decided what the audience already knows about your topic, you decide what they still need to learn. Your speech tells the audience something new while making sure the new material is only a little above the audience's existing topic knowledge. In simplest terms, your speech finds the point between boredom and confusion. Let me explain. The audience will be bored if you repeat material they already know. On the other hand, if a nuclear physicist speaks to our class and delivers the same speech she used at the Nuclear Physics Convention, we'll be hearing lots of new things, but the new information will be so far above our existing knowledge we'll have no context in which the place the information. We'll be hopelessly confused.

Your audience's existing knowledge about your topic is classified as either uninformed, moderately informed of well-informed.

Uninformed-Your audience knows little or nothing about the topic so your speech will have to be very simple. You'll need to provide your audience with background information such as definitions for technical jargon and the topic's history. The audience may not understand why your topic is important to them, so get their attention and explain your topic's importance in the introduction.

Moderately Informed-This audience has a "lay person's" topic knowledge. They've heard of the topic, are somewhat familiar with its affect on them, but they certainly won't know everything about the topic. Explain why the topic is important in the speech introduction, make a connection to their existing knowledge and present new material.

Well-informed-This audience are experts in the field and have a thorough topic knowledge. You won't need to give much, if any, background information but you may need to explain the topic's importance to them. Being experts they may wrongly assume you have nothing new to tell them. You must make sure you tell them something new. If you aren't an expert you shouldn't be speaking to them about this subject.

2. Age How old is your audience? People who have lived through different eras may have different ideas about your topic and also about what constitutes good manners and proper decorum. Mild profanity, for example, might be acceptable for some age groups but not for others. If you're dealing with younger children you'll have to simplify your vocabulary. A speech persuading the audience to exercise, for instance, would have to be adjusted to take the audience's age into account.

3. Sex Is the audience primarily male, female or a mixed group? You'll judge on a topic-by-topic basis whether the audience's gender affects how you present your speech. For instance, your audience's gender would probably have little or no effect on how you write a speech about investing in the stock market, but would dramatically change a speech about preventing date rape.

4. Education How well educated is the audience? This will affect the vocabulary you use as well as the audience's existing attitudes on certain issues.

5. Ethnic background Is your audience primarily White, African American, Hispanic, Native American, Asian, etc. or are they of mixed race? You could do a speech about diabetes for any audience. However, diabetes disproportionately affects Hispanics. If your audience was primarily Hispanic, you'd want to make your speech more relevant to your audience by narrowing your topic towards diabetes and the traditional Hispanic diet.

6. Religious beliefs Does your audience believe in a particular religious faith? Are they Jewish, Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists or members of some other faith? Major religions have various denominations or sects. Some denominations are more conservative, while others are more liberal. How strong are their beliefs? Since many religious views are deeply held it's wise to know your audience's religion sees your topic. As long as the Catholic Church adamantly opposes abortion, for example, any speech given to Catholic Christians on the abortion issue would need to take the Catholic Church's view into account.

7. Income What's your audience's average income? Personal finances affect your audience's world view and how your speechwriting. Your audience's income would affect any speech discussing selective tax breaks. A speech informing the audience how to buy their first home would have to be adjusted to take the audience's income into account. If your audience is making between $20,000 and $30,000 year, there's no point showing them million dollar mansions. Your narrowed speech topic for this audience might discuss low-income loans for first-time home buyers, no money down purchasing techniques, renting-to-own plans or acquiring HUD repossessions.

8. Nationality Is everyone in the audience an American citizen, or are people from other countries present? Different nationalities have different customs and taboos. If you're speaking to an audience whose nationality is different from your own it's vital to know their national customs. For instance, the gesture Americans consider to be an innocuous o.k. sign, made by curving your thumb and pointing finger into a "C" shape, is an obscene gesture in several countries.

Even if you're an American speaking to an American audience consider your audience's national beliefs before you write your speech. Ideas such as freedom, equality and speed have great appeal to Americans.

9. Political affiliation Are the audience members Republicans or Democrats, liberals or conservatives? Political parties have different views on key issues. Party members are more likely to share their party's views of key issues.

10. Job status What are the audience member's careers? Are they farmers, lawyers, construction workers, white collar, blue collar or unemployed? Are they union members? Do the majority of the audience members hold jobs in one industry? All of these factors would affect how you would write your speech.

11. Club membership Are most or all of the audience members of a club? Are you speaking to a meeting of the club? The club's views would represent the audience's views.

The more you learn about your audience the more effective your speech writing will be. You're on shaky ground if your assumptions about your audience's response to your speech are based on only one criterion, such as sex or ethnic background. You should analyze your audience in all of the areas just mentioned.

Persuasive Speech Audiences

Since you support one side of an issue in a persuasive speech and urge the audience to adopt your opinion, persuasive audiences are also categorized according to the attitudes they already hold about your speech topic. There are three types of Persuasive audiences:

Friendly Audience, agrees with your side of the issue prior to the speech.

Neutral Audience, has no firm opinion about your topic.

Hostile Audience, disagrees with the side of the issue your speech is presenting.

You decide whether your audience is friendly, neutral of hostile by making an educated guess based upon the factors we've discussed. If you feel your audience is friendly, place your emphasis on getting them to take action. A neutral audience needs to be given convincing arguments and needs to be shown the issue is relevant to them. Avoid reminding a hostile audience you disagree. Emphasize areas of agreement, and don't directly challenge the audience's views. An in-depth discussion of strategies for friendly, neutral and hostile audiences is contained on pages 117 and 118 in the chapter entitled Perusing Persuasion.