 My dad is a super friendly guy and growing up and always entertained me quite a bit to go out with him And he would just make friends wherever he was that he'd just love to meet people play cards and just hang out with them The coffee shops or just whatever and he would just sit down and he would become your friend immediately And so you'd start talking and people start telling stories and some of them might be a little race here They might use some language or something and then inevitably gets around to so what do you do? They would ask him and he would say oh I'm a pastor and then immediately it was oh my goodness from the crowd. What have I said? What have I done? How have I embarrassed myself, you know, and he would assure them everything is fine You know, he's nothing to worry about. This is what he does and he's just getting to know them But but that's the reaction he would get a lot of times because folks didn't really consider Who's my audience? Am I telling this to the right audience or something? I'm gonna regret later. This was really my first introduction to audience analysis And we're going to talk about it in the context of public speaking Although it certainly applies in other areas of life as well. But for our purposes today, we're going to focus on audience analysis in public speaking So what is audience analysis? What's just gathering information about the audience so that you can adapt your speech accordingly? So first of all, we're just gathering information. We're finding out who's this audience Who's who's this comprised of where they're what's their background? What's their beliefs what they're what's their knowledge level and so forth and then we're going to adapt our speech accordingly That does not mean we change everything around that we that we change the focus of our speech necessarily or that we change our Stance on a topic, but there are ways that we can adjust our language our delivery our visual aids are the level that we're speaking at In regards to this topic are these beginners in this area or they experts in this area We need to know all those things so that we can adapt our speech accordingly And that's what happens in audience analysis in a general sense So the purpose of audience audience analysis first of all why we do audience analysis Why is this important? We want to learn the attributes and motivations of the audience in order to do a couple of different things So we want to learn about the audience for a couple of reasons first We want to be able to identify with the audience members We want to be able to connect with them in some way and and demonstrate that we understand them and that we really there for Informing or persuading them for their benefit or whatever so we want to establish that sort of connection with them What's something that we have in common that we can use as a source of connection to identify with the audience? Next we want to answer the audience's question. What's in it for me with them, right? What's in it for me? People are essentially egocentric. That's not a negative thing. It's just the way Human nature works. We are most concerned with those things that correct or that that affect us most directly That's what we mean by egocentrism. So the audience is going to be asking what's in this for me? Why should I care? Why should I listen so we need to know the audience so that we can figure that out and let them know the answer to what's in it for them We want to craft our speech to the audience too. This is another reason. We need to know the audience We want to craft it to the audience in a variety of ways including our topic What topic are we selecting and presenting to this audience? Is it something that's going to be kind of interest to them and there's that's a whole other discussion that we've had In a separate video, but we need to know the audience so that we can select an appropriate topic We also as I mentioned before we need to know what type of language we should use And I'm not talking about should I deliver the speech in English or Spanish or Chinese and if you have that ability That's amazing. But what I'm really talking about is at what level should I be speaking to this audience? How can I use words that will that they will understand and that will have meaning to them that will connect with them? So language choices are very important But we want to craft that specifically to the audience We need to craft our sources to the audience What sources can we use that are going to be credible? They're going to be believable that are gonna have an impact on that audience and then what about our delivery, right? Get it up here our delivery We need to craft our all our delivery to this audience as well think about the elements of delivery for the speech as it relates to the specific audience So we need to learn the attributes and motivations the audience for all of these reasons And that's really an important part of audience analysis We also need to be able to select a target audience for our speech if we have a wide audience and a broad audience There's a pretty good chance. We're not going to be able to reach Everyone all the time right so we need to determine Who is it in this audience specifically that I'm speaking to it's not that we're going to exclude intentionally anybody But who is it that I really really want to reach with this audience? Who am I targeting? So we need to know the audience in order to select a target audience And then we need to be able to prepare accordingly for the speech situation We need to be able to plan for where is the speech going to be delivered? What's the physical environment going to be like am I going to be up on a stage with a microphone? Am I going to be wandering around a room? I gotta be outdoors somewhere. So what's the speech situation there? What's the general tone? Is this an after-dinner speech? Is it a eulogy at a funeral? Is it you know, we need to be able to plan for all of these elements and so to do that We need to perform an audience analysis So there are a couple different types of audience analysis that we can perform We're going to start by talking about demographic analysis and this really just means looking at the demographic makeup of your audience It includes elements such as age. What's the age of this audience? When it's the predominant sex or gender of this audience, is there or is it a mixed audience, you know What's the ethnic and cultural background as well as the socio-economic status of this This audience these different types of elements socio-economic status by that we mean things like income Occupation and education. That's what makes up the socio-economic status We need to know what these are just checking off boxes, you know What's the predominant age of the audience predominant, you know, socio-economic status of the audience so we can begin making some Beginning determinations about those things we mentioned additional demographic analysis would come in the form of things like religion Political affiliation and group membership. It's important to know if I'm giving a speech to the NRA That is going to be different than a speech I'm probably going to give to the Boy Scouts, right or to the PTA in my local school or to the Chamber of Commerce These people first of all through their group membership tells us something about the audience, right? If you're giving a speech to the NRA, you can assume that the audience is in favor of gun ownership of The ability of people to own guns privately and of less restriction for that So how does that shape my topic? You know, how does that shape my stance on not that again? Not that I'm gonna totally change my mind if I'm If I'm for gun control and I'm speaking to the NRA, I'm not necessarily just gonna say oh well I'm now I'm not gonna be for gun control That's not what we're talking about But I need to approach it differently when I'm speaking to the NRA Then if I was speaking to a group that was in favor of gun control It affects all those elements and understanding that group membership gives us that ability to connect and shape our speech specifically So we conduct demographic analysis to to just have some general kind of broad demographics of who's making up the audience that we're going to be speaking to We can also do what we call specific analysis specific to this audience And things like what is the audience's interest and knowledge level of the topic that I'm speaking about again If I'm speaking to a room of people who are experts in that field Then I start at a higher level and I approach it differently than if I'm speaking to a group of people Who don't know anything about what I'm talking about I'm gonna in that instance have to break it down a little more simply start at the beginning And determine how far I can get then right So we need to know what's the audience's interest and knowledge in that topic to begin with Then we look at some psychological things the attitudes beliefs and values of that audience and how that's going to impact their View of that and their perspective of that topic and and their stance So we look at the psychology of the audience as much as possible We look at some multicultural elements What's you know particular language that might be impactful for this audience? What about their cognition? What about the elements of ethnocentrism and the general communication styles of this particular culture? So we're looking at a variety of things like that when we look at specific analysis things that are specific to this audience Then we also look at things like as before the situation is important We need to understand the situation. First of all, is this a captive audience? Is this an audience that is forced to be there? Do they have a choice or if they're showing up out of interest then that puts a different spin on things, right? But if it's a captive audience, you really probably have to work a lot harder To pull that audience in and to make it of interest to them because they're there because they have to be So we want to understand that we want to know about the number of audience members How big is this group and that's going to affect the type of visual aids we use It's going to affect, you know, are we are we tethered to a microphone in some way? Are we going to be able to move around? Should we do group activities? So the number of audience members is an important part of a situational analysis We need to look at the time restraints. Am I am I speaking for 10 minutes or am I speaking for two hours? That makes a big difference and and the expectations of the audience in that regard too If I'm expected to speak for half an hour and I'm still up there after an hour The audience is going to lose interest, right? And if I cut it off too soon Then some of the audience may be grateful, but they're also going to wonder, you know, how prepared was I or was I just not You know with it that day. So we need to consider the time restraints in that situational analysis We need to think about the expectations of our speech goals. What is it that we're trying to accomplish? What is it that we hope the audience will gain from this? And what's the best way for us to to get there based on the on the situation that we're in based on that context? And then the rhetorical situation I've touched on this before as well Are we speaking to a group of second graders? Are we speaking to a class of second graders? Or are we conducting a training at work of some sort or or some sort of professional environment? Or are we delivering a eulogy at a funeral? Those are very different situations that require very different approaches Obviously different content and all that kind of thing. So we need to understand that about the situation What kind of rhetorical situation is this? Is it a lighthearted one? Is it a serious one? Is it a professional one? Is it a little more casual? So we're going to conduct these different types of analysis demographic Specific and situational we need to understand these things, but how are we going to find this out? How are we going to get this information? Well, we're going to conduct some analysis in a variety of different ways And there are lots of different ways you can do that But some of the more common ones are first of all to ask the liaison who invited you to speak Somehow you got connected with this group and they asked you to come Or whose lead didn't just show up on their doorstep and say I'm going to speak to you today Somebody asked you to be there. So you can ask that person Who's going to be there? What's the makeup of this audience? What's the demographics? And and what's the setup going to be when I'm there the situation? What's the the physical environment going to be like and what are the expectations in time that you can Connect with that person who's the liaison and who invited you to speak and find out some of that information You can you know, this isn't very scientific But you can get online and do a little research if it's a group Maybe they have a website that you could look at or you can google You know who makes up this group or you know some you can do some online research about these people You can do a direct observation if you have the ability to Go to one of their meetings before you're speaking Maybe you're speaking at one next month You can go to this month's meeting and see what happens see what the other speakers do or you can You know, even if you're just able to show up before it's your time to speak That can be helpful until you can see what the group is like who makes up the group What the feel of the room is that can all be very helpful information so you can conduct direct observation You can you know make some inferences you can make some assumptions if I'm speaking to the nra I can make some assumptions about The makeup of that group or from speaking to the pta I can just make some assumptions there about the makeup of that group And what their interests are what their values are things like that If you have the opportunity you can conduct specifically audience surveys and interviews right to gather more information You know if you have the time and the and the opportunity and the ability to do so that can be very helpful it can be time consuming and difficult as well, but But you know depending on the situation it may well be worth it Whatever the situation you want to be sure that you're conducting that audience analysis that you know your audience that you're not stepping into it by By you know crossing the streams and and and not knowing anything about your audience and you come in and put your foot in your mouth Right, that's what you want to avoid So if you have questions about audience analysis or anything related to public speaking Please feel free to email me and be happy to chat with you via email And in the meantime get out there get to know your audience so that you can prepare the most effective Speech you can as a public speaker