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.

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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.