1. Audience Analysis
SPE 108

2. Audience-Centeredness
• Good public speakers are
audience-centered,
meaning, they keep the
audience foremost in their
minds at every step of
speech preparation and
presentation
• The primary purpose of
speechmaking is to gain a
desired response from
listeners

3. Audience-Centeredness
• To whom am I speaking?
• What do I want them to know, believe, or do
as a result of my speech?
• What is the most effective way of composing
and presenting my speech to accomplish
that aim?

4. Audience-Centeredness
• Effective speakers create a
bond with the audience by
emphasizing common values,
goals and experiences
(identification)
• Think in advance about your
audiences’ background and
interests, their level of
knowledge about a topic
your speaking on, their
attitudes about certain topics

5. The Psychology of Audiences
• When you listen to a speech,
sometimes you pay close attention,
other times your thoughts wander.
• You can force people to ATTEND a
speech, but you cannot force
someone to listen
• What a speaker says is filtered
through the listener’s frame of
reference (the sum of his/her needs,
interests, expectations, knowledge
and experience)
• Egocentrism: the tendency of people
to be concerned above all with their
own values, beliefs and well-being

6. Egocentricism
• People want to hear things that are
meaningful to them
• They pay closest attention to messages that
affect their own values, beliefs, and wellbeing
• Listeners will hear and judge what you say
on the basis of what they already know and
believe
• You must relate your message to your
listeners

7. Demographic Audience Analysis
• Analysis that focuses on demographic factors like
age, gender, sexual orientation, religion, group
membership, racial, ethnic or cultural
background, etc.
1. Identify the general demographic features of
your audience
2. Gauge the importance of those features to a
particular speaking situation

8. Situational Audience Analysis
• Builds on demographic
analysis, focuses on
situational factors like size of
the audience, the physical
setting for the speech, and
the disposition of the
audience toward the topic,
the speaker and the
occasion.
Size: the larger the audience,
the more formal your
presentation must be. Size
can also affect your language,
and choice of visual aids.

9. Situational Audience Analysis
Physical setting: size of the room, A/V technology
availability, microphones, hot/cold temperature, time
of day, etc.
Disposition toward the topic:
• Interest - is the audience engaged or distracted?
• Knowledge - can you use technical language if the
audience is experienced in the topic? Do you have to
change your level of speech if the material is new to
the audience?
• Attitude - how would you change your speech if you
knew the audience favored/opposed your topic?

10. Situational Audience Analysis
Disposition toward the speaker: understanding
that an audience’s response to a message is
invariably colored by their perception of the
speaker (credibility)
Disposition toward the occasion: is the speech
appropriate for the occasion?
Example: using a graduate commencement
speech to further a political agenda

11. Adapting to the Audience
Before the speech: assess how your audience is
likely to respond to what you say in your speech,
and adjust what you say to make it as clear,
appropriate and convincing as possible
How will the audience react to my introduction and conclusion?
Do the visual aids actually make my message clearer, or do they
distract?
How will the audience respond to my delivery and choice of words?

12. Adapting to the Audience
During the speech: you may have to make onthe-fly adjustments to remedy a variety of
circumstances: maybe you have to shorten your
speech or fill more time, maybe there will be no computer
to use for visual aids, maybe a venue change.
It’s most important to stay flexible and be ready
to expect anything! Control what you can
before the speech, and adjust what you can
during the speech.