While it is important for people to speak their minds and hearts relating to a particular cause or concept, the audience is the key behind those words, a confounding variable, a third factor. What makes words be them of a speech, book, movie, song, or any other numerous possibilities so powerful is the understanding of to whom the message is presented.
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There are many different variables that you must keep in mind when addressing an audience: occasion, situation, context, need, demographics, homogeneity or heterogeneity, ideology, and genre. All of these aspects have an impact on the audience, and your job is to pertain the words on the tip of the tongue to the ears, minds, and hearts of the individuals listening.
The occasion at which you are presenting your speech is basically the expectations set for you in the given venue. For example, if you are giving a speech at a funeral, you are most definitely not going to speak about the terrible life of the diseased or start jabbering about a random, personal problem. Instead, you will probably speak of the fond memories you have of the diseased, keep your message fairly short and sweet, and maintain a comforting and courteous manner. What you say and how you speak are generally based on the occasion.
To paint a better picture, imagine your speech is a closet full of clothes and your occasion is the plans you have for the day. If you are planning on going to a job interview, you should probably choose a nice, clean, crisp outfit as opposed to some gym shorts, a ratty t-shirt, and some sneakers. On the other hand, if you are planning on doing yard work that day, your gym shorts, t-shirt, and sneaks will be much more suited for getting dirty than business attire.
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Situation is probably one of the most influential components to a speech. Have you ever had a friend, a parent, maybe even an educator start talking about some absurd topic of absolutely no interest to you? You may have decided there was more value in tuning out that lecture and pondering over what movie to watch that weekend or see the inside of your eyelids while you try not to snore too loudly. The situation you were faced with as a listener and audience member did not encourage you to listen and did not meet your personal expectations of listening-worthy information. When you, as a speaker, are addressing your audience, it is imperative that you think over the situation or situations of the audience. The audience needs to be intrigued and inspired to listen after the first couple of sentences or else they will just drift from the message, maybe even drift into a hearty snore.
Now that you have your audience's attention, at least for the moment, it is story time. If you can remember back to when you were in preschool and elementary school, your whole class might have sat on the floor all comfy cozy on the carpet, eyes alert and ears attentive for the next book or story your teacher was holding in hand.
Just like a bunch of little children, your audience will also appreciate a little bit of story time. In other words, your audience wants to know the background of your topic: Why are you speaking about a presidential candidate? Do you just like the person's hair? Is an election approaching? This example may very well run through an audience's mind if they are not given some context as to why you are discussing the subject.
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Just like a bunch of little children, your audience will also appreciate a little bit of story time. In other words, your audience wants to know the background of your topic: Why are you speaking about a presidential candidate? Do you just like the person's hair? Is an election approaching? This example may very well run through an audience's mind if they are not given some context as to why you are discussing the subject.
The background information of your topic could also very well support the need for your speaking of a particular topic. If you address a particular issue at hand, describing the current events that lead to your speech can supply your viewers with a logical reasoning for presenting them with your information.
With already gripped attention and a little bit of story time under your belt, your audience members should be fully equipped to listen to the details of your speech. Now your knowledge of the audience members is required. While your message relates perfectly to your circumstances, someone else might not see the relevance to their circumstances. Words do not always connect the same way with everyone. Depending on an individuals age, a lecture on political candidates or government policies may be adamantly heard or simply pose as annoying background noice during snack time. Just as children require different circumstances from a speech than adults do, so do people of different ethnicities, religions, political views, races, sexes, and social classes. The demographics of your audience can really affect the comprehension of your message; therefore, it is best to know ahead of time to whom you will be addressing so as to plan your speech around the appropriate circumstances.
Unfortunately with demographics, there are times when your audience members are absolutely similar to one another, almost like the clones from the Star Wars series, and there are times when your audience members are entirely different from one another. The good news for you as a speaker is that if your audience members are very similar, your message can be understood or relatable with general circumstances to which the whole audience will most likely relate.
For example, if a presidential candidate is speaking to a room full of republicans, they will not want to arrange their speech around democratic ideology. Likewise, if they decide to give a speech to an audience of democrats, framing their message around the republican perspective will probably not win them many supporters. If an audience is very similar, or have strong homogeneity, adapt your speech to their perspective while you speak your own opinions and information.
If your audience members are not very similar or have minor differences amongst one another, your speech should pertain to this heterogeneity. Maybe you incorporate different examples or scenarios in a descriptive section of your speech. Maybe you use broader commonplaces to which your entire audience can relate.
As an advanced warning, people are generally stubborn once they believe a certain way. The ideology of your audience is going to possibly be of great benefit or great trial to your overall message. If your audience's beliefs and perspectives on your topic of interest is similar to your own, then your speech will not require too much tweaking or persuasion to get the audience to agree with your side of the argument.
Every now and then, you may be thrown to the wolves and have to make a speech that is rather persuasive to make your audience open-minded to listening to your ideologies. Be very cautious, though. Depending on how you present your ideologies and different methods of persuasion, your audience may be completely prepared to hear your views or entirely against your stance before you even provide your evidence. A general rule of thumb, an audience will more than likely not appreciate being scolded because of their beliefs not matching your own. Take it nice and easy.
At the end of the day, your speech should follow a specific genre. Is your speech meant to persuade your audience to believe a different viewpoint? Is your speech meant to inform the audience of a topic or event? Are you simply supposed to entertain your audience for a while? Your genre will set the mood for your entire speech, and the seven other categories explained above serve as your guidelines to forming a speech that your audience will savor.
This information was provided by Keith, William M., and Christian O. Lundberg. The Essential Guide to Rhetoric. Boston, Bedford/St. Martins, 2008. For more information or additional comprehension, please visit chapter two of The Essential Guide to Rhetoric.
Beautifully articulated synthesis. It is really nice that you made everything more applicable to the consequential circumstances, especially in terms of the audience's composition. Thorough Demographic analysis that provides one with much more insight in a scientific yet still relate-able manner about the audience. Indeed, the audience and their composition will have profound effects on a rhetorical piece and its impacts.
ReplyDeleteI loved all of the metaphors and comparisons that you used in this blog post, it made it really easy to understand and comprehend what you were saying. I love your presentation about the situation of the argument especially, comparing it to a closet full of clothes. I think that this is very relatable for many people and it definetly made me understand the idea a lot better.
ReplyDeleteYour use of real life examples helps people to understand just why considering the audience is important. I especially thought the democrat and republican discussion was particularly relevant since the election was less than a year ago. Thank you for putting so much information into this blog!
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