Audience Analysis

What Is an Audience Analysis?

One of the consequences of the First Amendment to the Constitution, which protects our right to speak freely, is that we focus so much on what we want to say that we often overlook who our audience is. Does your audience care what you, as a speaker, think? Can they see how your speech applies to their lives and interests? The act of public speaking is a shared activity that involves interaction between the speaker and the audience. For your speech to get a fair hearing, you must create a relationship with your listeners. Scholars Sprague, Stuart, and Bodary explain, "Speakers do not give speeches to audiences; they jointly create meaning with audiences." The success of your speech rests in large part on how your audience receives and understands it.

Think of a time when you heard a speech that sounded "canned" or that fell flat because the audience didn't "get it." Chances are that this happened because the speaker neglected to consider public speaking an audience-centered activity. Worse, a lack of consideration for one's audience can result in the embarrassment of alienating listeners by telling a joke they do not appreciate or using offensive language. The best way to reduce the risk of such situations is to conduct an audience analysis as you prepare your speech.

Audience analysis is the process of gathering information about the people in your audience so that you can understand their needs, expectations, beliefs, values, attitudes, and opinions. In this chapter, we will first examine why audience analysis is essential. We will then describe three types of audience analysis and some techniques to use in conducting audience analysis. Finally, we will explain how you can use your audience analysis not only during the creation of your speech but also while you are delivering it.

 This text was adapted by Saylor Academy under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 License without attribution as requested by the work's original creator or licensor.