The Significance of Audience Analysis
It cannot be said often enough: KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE! Knowing your audience—their beliefs, attitudes, age, education level, job functions, language and culture—is the single most important aspect of developing your speech. Your audience isn’t just a passive group of people who come together by happenstance to listen to you. Your audience is assembled for a very real reason: They want to hear what you have to say. In public speaking, the audience is the entire reason you are giving the speech; thus, the audience is the most important component of speechmaking.
We analyze our audience because we want to discover information that will help create a link between the speaker and the audience. We call this link identification. Aristotle loosely called it “finding a common ground.” This isn’t a one-way process between the speaker and the audience; rather, it is a two-way transactional process. When you ask an audience to listen to your ideas, you are asking them to come partway into your experience as a speaker. And, in return, it is your obligation to go partway into their experience as an audience member. The more you know and understand about your audience and their needs, the better you can prepare your speech. For example: Bob Mullins, a local bank officer, was preparing for a speech at the Rotary Club in Dallas, Texas on “finding the right loan” for a diverse ethnic audience. He knew his topic extremely well, had put a lot of hard work into his research, and had his visual aids in order. One of the things he had not completely considered, however, was the audience to which he would be speaking. On the day of the event, Mr. Mullins delivered a flawless speech on car and home loans, but the speech was not received well. You see, on this particular week, a major segment of the audience consisted of the “Junior Rotarians” who wanted to hear about “personal savings accounts” and “college savings plans.” It was a critical mistake. Had Bob considered the full nature and makeup of his audience prior to the event, he might not have been received so poorly. A hard lesson learned.
This module is dedicated to understanding how a speaker connects with an audience through audience analysis.
