Analyzing the Audience and

Occasion
“Adapting your ideas to the audience and the occasion is an
essential task in achieving success as a public speaker”

5/4/2019 Dr Sadia Preston University Islamabad

 Audience Analysis

Audience analysis is the study of:

• audience composition
• audience knowledge
• audience interests
• audience attitudes
• the speaking situation

5/4/2019 Dr Sadia Preston University Islamabad

Analyzing Audience Demographically
• A demographic analysis is a study of social
and physical traits people hold in common.

• The young and the old have often different

ways of thinking to bear on topics under
discussion.

5/4/2019 Dr Sadia Preston University Islamabad

 Analyzing Demographic categories
• Age
• Gender
• Education
• and experience
• How much will the listeners already know about the
subjects?
• Will their education and experiential background allow
them to grasp easily the essential ideas you want to
convey?
• Group membership Will the listeners belong to groups
that represent specific experiences, attitudes?

5/4/2019 Dr Sadia Preston University Islamabad

• Cultural and ethnic background Will the
listeners predominantly belong to a specific
cultural or ethnic groups? Are those groups
identifications likely to be raised by your
speech?

• Using Demographic Information: Demographic

information will affect the listener’s ability or
willingness to understand and accept what the
communicator want to speak.

5/4/2019 Dr Sadia Preston University Islamabad

 Situational Audience Analysis
• Audience size
• Physical setting
• Length of presentation
• Audience disposition toward
i. The topic
ii. The speaker
iii. The occasion

5/4/2019 Dr Sadia Preston University Islamabad

 Nonverbal Audience Analysis
• Eye contact
• Facial Expressions
• Restless movement
• Nonverbal responsiveness
• Verbal responsiveness

5/4/2019 Dr Sadia Preston University Islamabad

Strategies For Making speech Effective
To The Listeners
• Avoid Technical jargon: Try to use a simple
language during your speech.
• Give Examples: Create a friendly Environment.
• Speech should be clear and completed with
full of facts and knowledge, audience will take
interest.

5/4/2019 Dr Sadia Preston University Islamabad

 Analyzing Audiences Psychologically
• Dividing audience members in to psychologically profiles on
the basis of their beliefs, attitudes, and values.
• Beliefs: beliefs are the convictions about what is true or false.
• Beliefs that can be demonstrated and held confidently are
called facts. Facts are supported by strong external evidence
• opinions are personal beliefs that may not be supported by
strong external evidence. e.g. you may think that cats are
nasty animals.
• Beliefs may vary in intensity they are held. Fixed beliefs are
those which are highly resistant to change. E.g. universal
truths.
• variable beliefs are less well anchored in your mind and
experiences, those which can be change with the passage of
time or with experiences. E.g. your beliefs about your talents

5/4/2019 Dr Sadia Preston University Islamabad

 Attitudes
• Attitudes are tendencies to respond positively or negatively to people,
objects, and ideas. Attitudes are emotionally weighted as well, They
express individual preferences and feelings, such as, “ I like my public
speaking class”
• as a speaker you must consider dominant attitudes of your audience
towards you, you subject and your purpose. Due to which they may accept
or reject you, your subject and your purpose.
Values
• Values are relatively enduring conceptions of ultimate goods and
evils in the human relationships and the best and worse ways of pursuing
those goods and evils. These are the principles or standards of behaviour;
one's judgment of what is important in life.
– Instrumental Values are core values, permanent in nature, comprise
personal characteristics and character traits.
– Terminal Values are those things that we can work towards or we
think are most important and we feel are most desirable.

5/4/2019 Dr Sadia Preston University Islamabad

 Using the Psychological Profile
• Understanding your audience’s beliefs, attitudes, values and visions
will help you frame your ideas.
• Understanding your audience’s beliefs, attitudes, values, desires
and fantasies will help you select your supporting materials.
• Understanding your audience’s beliefs, attitudes, values, desires and
rhetoric visions allows you to set realistic expectations as you plan
your speech.

5/4/2019 Dr Sadia Preston University Islamabad

 Activity
Mr. Jackson was asked to give a speech at work. He gathered data and
statistics. He then wrote the speech based on how he learns best. What
type of speaker is he?
• Speaker Centered Speaker
• Audience Centered Speaker
• Demographic Speaker
• Psychological Speaker
Which is NOT a general purpose?
• choose a topic about which you know nothing so your topic will be fresh.
• choose a topic in which you are not really interested, so you can
empathize with the audience and develop their interest.
• delay your choice as long as possible so that you spend as much time as
you can searching for a good topic.
• choose a topic that interests you so you can make it interesting for others.

5/4/2019 Dr Sadia Preston University Islamabad

 Analyzing Speech Occasion
• An occasion is a set of activities that occurs in a time and
place set aside expressly to fulfill the collective goals of
people.
• Components of definition: In a time and place: Regular
occasions, such as religious services, usually occur at special
times, (Friday, Saturday, Sunday) and in special places
(mosques, churches).
• Fulfill the goals of people.
• General audience expectations
• Specific audience expectations

5/4/2019 Dr Sadia Preston University Islamabad

• Using Audience Analysis in Speech Preparation Audience Targeting:
Your specific purpose To inform or persuade the audience Area of
Audience Interest finding out the major area of audience interest
Audience’s capacity to Act Limit your request to an action that lies
within your listener's range of authority. Don’t ask them to
accomplish the impossible.

• Audience’s willingness to Act Degree of change Realistic in targeting

the degree of change you can reasonably hope to obtain The
information is new or already know will influence how much
material you can cover in a single speech.

5/4/2019 Dr Sadia Preston University Islamabad

• It’s up to the speaker to make the audience choose to pay attention

• Every speech contains two messages – the one sent by the speaker and
the one received by the listener

• Frame of reference
What a speaker says is filtered through a listener’s frame of reference –
the sum of his or her needs, interests, expectations, knowledge and
experience.

• Egocentricity
People are egocentric. They want to hear about things that are meaningful
to them. “Why is this important to me?”

• Result is listeners will hear and judge what you say on the basis of what
they already know and believe. Second, you must relate your message to
your listeners.

5/4/2019 Dr Sadia Preston University Islamabad

 Assessment activity
• George wants to persuade his audience to purchase more locally produced foods. He decides
he needs to know how his audience members already feel about this topic and whether they
know about locally produced options. George’s audience analysis focuses on gathering
a. demographic information
b. psychographic information
c. situational information
d. statistical information
e. religious information
• Freya wants to give her classroom an informative speech on the dangers of drunk driving. You
suggest that this might not be a good topic because the audience of college students
probably
a. will not understand the topic
b. will not be interested in drinking
c. are not culturally diverse
d. do not believe in drinking because of their religious background
e. already know a lot about the topic
• Ali will be giving a speech at the local Lodge in a few weeks and wants to know more about
his audience. He decides to attend one of the group’s meetings so he gets a sense of what
the group does and who its members are. Ali is engaging in which method of audience
analysis?
a. interviews
b. focus group
c. survey
d. experiment
e. direct observation
5/4/2019 Dr Sadia Preston University Islamabad