Chapter 2 Notes

Chapter 2: Audience Analysis and Listening

Learning Objectives

• Define audience-centered, audience analysis, and demographic characteristics.
• List and explain various demographic characteristics used to analyze an audience.
• Define the meanings of attitudes, beliefs, values, and needs.
• Diagram Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and explain its usefulness to public speaking.
• Describe contextual factors that should be considered when preparing a speech.
• Describe typical barriers to listening in public speaking situations.
• Explain ways an individual can improve his/her listening when in an audience.
• Apply listening knowledge to improve personal speech preparation.

Chapter Preview

• 2.1 – The Importance of Audience Analysis
• 2.2 – Demographic Characteristics
• 2.3 – Psychographic Characteristics
• 2.4 – Contextual Factors of Audience Analysis
• 2.5 – Listening in Public Speaking Settings

2.1 – The Importance of Audience Analysis

• Studying public speaking enhances awareness of other speakers' techniques.
• Recognize how speakers incorporate stories, examples, and transitions.
• Awareness of speakers using dramatic delivery or emotional appeals to mask a lack of facts or logic.
• A public speaking course should improve listening skills.
• Examine the audience from the speaker's and listener's perspectives.
• Understand the audience to construct the speech's approach and content.
• Learn how to get the most out of a speech as an audience member, even if the topic seems uninteresting.
• Communication involves a content dimension and a relationship dimension (Paul Watzlawick, Janet Beavin, and Don Jackson, 1967).
• Audience analysis is crucial; content should be meaningful and applicable to the audience.
• The audience's perception of the speaker and their connection (trust, respect) determines success.

2.2 – Demographic Characteristics

• Audience analysis involves examining demographic characteristics and internal psychological traits.
• Demographic characteristics: Outward characteristics of the audience.
• Eleven demographic characteristics discussed.
• Three principles to consider:
  • Avoid stereotyping based on demographic characteristics.
  • Stereotyping: Generalizing about a group and assuming all members share a characteristic.
  • Avoid totalizing about a person or group.
  • Totalizing: Taking one characteristic as the totality of a person or group.
  • Harmful to relationships and ineffective communication.
  • Don't assume everything based on one demographic characteristic.
  • Multiple characteristics can be important.
  • Age, socio-economic level, career, location, and religious beliefs can influence financial perspectives.
  • Not all demographic characteristics are equally important in every situation.
  • Parents at a PTA meeting focus on their children.
  • Senior citizens focus on age and socio-economic level when planning for retirement.
• Two ways to think about demographic characteristics:
  • Positively: Motivations, interests, or what binds the audience.
  • Negatively: Subjects or approaches to avoid.
  • Understanding the audience, not playing defensive tic-tac-toe.
  • Example: Speakers are often warned not to offend Roman Catholics by discussing abortion.
    • This analysis misses three points:
      • Even pro-life Catholics can listen and think about the issue.
      • Not all Catholics agree with the official stance.
      • Catholics are motivated by other things besides what they are against.
  • Demographic characteristics inform what to talk about and how, not just what to avoid.
• Demographic characteristics are dynamic in an increasingly diverse country.
• What was true or considered a demographic characteristic changes over time.
• Example: Internet users in 1980 were few.
• Example: Population shifts away from the Great Lakes area.

The eleven common demographic characteristics:

Age

• Traditional roles, behaviors, motivations, interests associated with age.
• Young people think about career choices; older people think about retirement.
• College from 18 to 24.
• 50-year-olds are “empty nesters."
• These categories may be outdated.
• According to the National Center for Education Statistics (2015), 38% of college students are over 25 years old.
• Many wait until their late thirties to have children; grandparents raise grandchildren.
• Longer lives and the 2008 recession mean 62 is no longer a reasonable retirement age for many.
• Knowing the audience's age is important, but just one factor.
• Classroom audiences can include nontraditional students, young entrepreneurs, dual enrollment students, and veterans.

Gender

• Gender is open to misunderstanding.
• Not all women love shoes, not all men love football.
• Address the mixed audience of men and women.
• If speaking to a single-gender audience and of the same gender, use common experiences.
• Awareness of gender differences in communication if speaking to an audience of the opposite gender.
• Deborah Tannen (2007) states that men and women have divergent communication styles.
• Neither style is all good or bad, but not recognizing the differences causes problems.
• Women communicate inductively, giving many details before a conclusion.
• Women listen better, interrupt less, collaborate more (though research varies).
• Women are less direct, ask more questions, use hedges/qualifiers, and apologize more.
• Women praise more, expect more praise, and interpret lack of praise differently from men (Floyd, 2017).
• Men may see female speakers as unsure due to less direct communication, while women think it sounds diplomatic.
• Tannen calls women's style "rapport" style, male communication as "report" style.
• Some scholars call these differences "expressive" (women) vs. informational (men) (Floyd 2017).
• Male speakers are more deductive and direct, state their point, give limited details, and move on.
• Men may be less inclined to ask questions and qualify statements, tending toward facts.
• Men are socialized to "fix" things and give advice to women when it is not really needed or wanted.
• These differences provide material for comedians and discussions about apologizing.
• Some writers help others avoid these patterns without losing the positive side of either communication style.
• Books like Lean In (Sandberg, 2013) teach women to negotiate salaries and avoid hurtful behaviors.
• Differences are situational and relate to power levels.
• These tendencies may not disappear any time soon.
• If a woman is speaking to an all-male audience, be direct and avoid excessive detail.
• Avoid starting sentences with "I don't know if this is 100% correct, but…" or “I’m sorry, but…“.
• If a man is speaking to a primarily female audience, realize that women want knowledge, not to have their problems fixed.
• Men seem abrupt when talking to women.
• Men interrupt more and talk more in groups.
• Male speakers should allow time for questions and listen.
• The gender section takes a traditional “binary” approach.
• More people identify as genders other than male/female.
• Even males/females do not fully follow traditional gender roles.
• This is an area for growing sensitivity.
• The speech's purpose, subject, and context will define how you address gender.
• Age and gender categorize people.
• Several other demographic characteristics exist.

Race, Ethnicity, and Culture

• Race, ethnicity, and culture are often lumped together and can be controversial.
• Considered together due to their interrelationship, though distinct categories.
• Racial groups: Caucasian, African, Asian, Pacific Islander, Native American.
• Each race has many ethnicities.
• Caucasian ethnicities: Northern European, Arab, some South Asian, Mediterranean.
• Each ethnicity has cultures.
• Mediterranean ethnicities: Greek, Italian, Spanish.
• Each culture has subcultures.
• Many social scientists reject race as a biological reality, seeing it as a social construct.
• This view arose over time and affects our thinking about others.
• Dividing these categories is difficult due to political and personal concerns.
• Most audiences will be heterogeneous: a mixture of different types of people and demographic characteristics.
• Opposite of homogeneous: very similar in many characteristics (e.g., single, 20-year-old, white female nursing students).
• Be sensitive to audience members' identification with culture.
• Anglos confuse Hispanic (a language category) with cultures.
• Mexican is not Puerto Rican is not Cuban is not Colombian.
• Similarly, a Canadian is not an Australian is not an American is not a Scot.