2 Chapter Two

Audiences: Engage, Relate, & Listen

Many of us are fans of standup comedy. A well-developed standup routine can leave us engaged and on the edge of our seat and it can leave us feeling like each joke was crafted for us. Sadly, many of us have sat through less-engaging routines where awkward silence fills the space after an ill-placed punchline.

“Wow. Wrong audience,” the comic often nervously responds.

Similar to standup, audiences are central to public speeches. They are the main focus of our advocacies, and when we know more about our audiences, we can craft messages that effectively inform or move them toward action. We can craft messages to engage them, to interest them, and to persuade them.

When you speak out, you are not speaking into thin air; instead, you are inviting the audience to listen—you are calling them in. To call in means creating a message that both relates to and includes your audience. Watzlawick, Beavin, and Jackson (1967) write that communication always involves a content dimension and a relationship dimension. Nowhere does that become more important than working to call in and include your audience. You are not using the speech to dump a large amount of content on the audience. You are making that content important, meaningful, and applicable to them. Additionally, the way the audience perceives you and your connection to them—such as whether there is mutual trust and respect—will largely determine your success with the audience. The speaker must respect the audience as well as the audience trusting the speaker for the speech to be a success.

Relating to and including your audience is a process, and a complex one at that. In this chapter, we explore audiences in public speaking. To start, we answer the question: what is an audience, anyway?

What is an Audience?

Let’s approach the audience in three ways.

First, by “audience” we mean the explicit audience that is present when a speaker gives their message. The people sitting in classroom chairs, looking at the speaker. Because public speeches require an audience, and because public speakers are asking the audience to listen, it is important to analyze the group receiving a message – who you are speaking to. This is your explicit audience.

In addition, there are implied audiences who may or may not be present. Like we discussed in Chapter 1, public speaking is presenting an advocacy that engages for and with your community. When you are representing a group, culture, or an individual, they become an implicit audience. You are responsible for how you communicate about that audience or about other groups who may be referenced.

Finally, consider YOU as an audience member. The third dimension of “audience,” then, is you! As an audience member, your primary goal is to listen and reflect on what the speaker is presenting. Listening is not as easy as it sounds. We will discuss listening, barriers to listening, and best practices to become better listeners.

Who you are speaking to, who you are speaking for or about, and when you are receiving a message are all components of the “audience.” Below, we will begin by analyzing the first dimension of audience: the explicit, formal group that listens to your message.

Speaking to an Audience

Public speaking requires an audience. After all, when speaking, your goal is to share a message that is relevant and provide unique insight that will benefit those present. To accomplish that goal, you need to get to know the audience you are speaking to – you need to analyze them.

You may wonder, “Okay, but how do I do that?” Information gathering is the answer.

The more information you have, the more you are able to isolate any overlapping beliefs, attitudes, values, or goals that the audience shares. Audiences are unique, diverse, and sometimes unpredictable; information gathering will allow you to give a speech that is relevant to what your specific audience knows, what they believe, and what they value.

When addressing an audience, determining what they need can influence how you make content that is relatable. Diving deeper into the speaking context, audience demographics, and audience values all provide necessary information to identify needs and craft relevant speaking points.

Researching the Context

Analyzing the needs of your audience begins by asking top level questions about the public speaking context: why will your audience be there? What is bringing them together? What is motivating them to attend? Determining why your audience will be in attendance can help uncover more about who they are.

If you are not familiar with the why—why the audience is attending— conduct preliminary research. Use resources that are at your disposal to learn more and dig deep. If you are speaking at a formal convention, for example, what is the convention about? Is there a convention theme? Does the convention provide insight into past convention participants? How many people does the event accept?

Your research can help identify what’s bringing the audience together. You might learn, for example, that conference attendees share a common career, participate in a common organization, or have a similar hobby. When you speak in a class, the course content (or university requirement) brings the audience together. If you’re at a neighborhood meeting, the audience likely lives in that neighborhood, and you can learn about the key issues being discussed at the meeting.

As you research, try to determine what is motivating your audience to be present. Identifying motivations can help assist in identifying what your audience already knows about your topic, what they believe, the attitudes they may have about your topic, and what they value.

Understanding Audience Demographics

A second information gathering strategy is looking at audience demographics.

Demographics – sociocultural characteristics that identify and characterize populations – are common ways of organizing and gathering data about groups of people. Have you ever taken a survey? Researchers often ask demographic information of participants to determine how answers may change between sub-groups (based on different demographics). In the United States, for example, data might track the average age or the average socioeconomic standing of an incoming college student.

Demographics can be a helpful source of information gathering. If you are aware of common audience demographics, you can gather information that might provide insights into common beliefs, attitudes, or responses to a topic. Using data and research, like a survey or experimental finding, can help educate you about particular demographic groups that may be in your audience. Figure 2.1 introduces common audience demographics and their corresponding descriptions.

Audience Demographics and Descriptions

Figure 2.1

Other demographics include ethnicity, gender expression, spirituality, family structure, ability/disability, region or nationality, and generation or age.

Rather than stable categories, demographics are dynamic, changing, and contextual.

Religion, for example, is a porous concept that encompasses a wide range of formal and informal practices. If you gather information about your audience, and you determine that your audience is “religious,” make sure that you are not assuming a particular religious affiliation or making assumptions about what the category of religion infers.

While using demographic information can be helpful, it can also lead to stereotyping or relying on totalizing conclusions. Stereotyping is generalizing about a group of people and assuming that because a few persons in that group have a characteristic, all of them do. If we were sitting near campus and saw two students drive by hectically and said, “All college students are bad drivers,” that would be stereotyping. Sadly, our stereotypical thoughts are often reinforced when a group behavior is observed. Every time we see a student (or who we perceive to be a student) driving hectically, we use that observation to support our stereotypical thought. Stereotypes have strongholds, so we likely don’t “count” observations where students are driving safely.

We know what you’re thinking: “I never stereotype.” But we all do. Rather than pretend that stereotypes are not part of our cultural narrative, use reflective and reflexive thinking (from Chapter 1) to evaluate when a stereotypical thought or idea arises. This includes being reflexive when using demographic information to help you build your speech content.

Similarly, individuals are part of multiple demographic categories, and not just one. Think about yourself and your identity. What are the key parts? What types of demographics make you, you? You are not just one category. Isolating one demographic to represent the whole person is totalizing. Totalizing is taking one characteristic of a group or person and making that the “totality” or sum total of what that person or group is. Totalizing often happens to persons with disabilities, for example; the disability is seen as the totality of that person, or all that person is about. This can be both harmful to the relationship and ineffective as a means of communicating.

Demographics, then, are part of the information gathering process, but researching your audience’s demographics does not mean learning one category and stopping there. Instead, think about your audience as a complex matrix, and demographics are one component of the grid. To gain a deeper insight into the matrix, search for insight about your audience’s beliefs, attitudes, and values.

Beliefs, Attitudes, and Values

In Chapter 1, we discussed that communication is a matter of culture. All of us are part of different cultures and, through communication, we learn about what those cultures believe and value, often adopting those beliefs for ourselves. For example, why are you in college? It’s likely that you are part of a culture that values education and believes that education will lead to your betterment.

In some cases, groups with similar demographics can hold similar beliefs, attitudes, or values, but not always. Rather than map beliefs onto your demographics, use your research and information gathering to determine what kind of inner beliefs, attitudes, and values your audience may hold.

Beliefs are “statements we hold to be true” (Bem, 1970). Notice this definition does not say the beliefs are true, only that we hold them to be true and, as such, they determine how we respond to the world around us. Stereotypes are a kind of belief: we believe all the people in a certain group are “like that” or share a trait. Beliefs, according to Bem (1970), come from our experience and from sources we trust. Therefore, beliefs are hard to change—not impossible, just difficult.

Values are goals we strive for and what we consider important and desirable. However, values are not just basic wants. A person may want a vintage sports car from the 1960s, and may value it because of the amount of money it costs, but the vintage sports car is not a value; it represents a value of either:

• Nostalgia (the person’s parents owned one in the 1960s and it reminds them of good times).
• Display (the person wants to show it off and get “oohs” and “ahs”).
• Materialism (the person believes the adage that the one who dies with the most toys wins).
• Aesthetics (the person admires the look of the car and the sleek appearance).
• Prestige (the person has earned enough money to enjoy and show off this kind of vehicle).
• Physical pleasure (the driver likes the feel of driving a sports car on the open road).

In the United States, for example, you might speak to an audience that values monetary security and success. This value is informed by a belief. It is likely, for example, that values around monetary success and prestige are rooted in beliefs that individual hard work can achieve success in a capitalist society. If you can identify a value, ask: what beliefs could be fueling that value?

Finally, attitude is defined as a positive or negative response to a person, idea, object, or policy. How do you respond when you hear the name of a certain singer, movie star, political leader, sports team, or law in your state? Your response will be either positive or negative, or maybe neutral if you are not familiar with the object of the attitude. Where did that attitude come from? Does that person, idea, or object differ from you in values and beliefs?

Let’s extend our monetary example from above. If you speak to an audience who believes in capitalism and values monetary, individual success, it may be unwise to mention “socialism” as the audience may have a negative attitude to socialism as a concept.

While discrete categories, beliefs, values, and attitudes are often intertwined, knowing more about these categories can add to your level of understanding who the audience is. Knowing who they are means identifying their needs and determining how and why your speech is relevant to them.

Speaking for an Audience

Gathering information about your explicit audience—the formal audience you are speaking in front of – is certainly important. The second audience to consider is the implied audience. In this section, we discuss how we talk about who we are talking about. In other words, how we are talking about the groups that are either represented and/or affected by our message.

Let’s use a state congressional hearing as an example. Imagine a group of congress people meeting to advocate for a bill’s passage that decreases environmental protections for a city in that state. The bill’s author stands and advocates passionately for the bill’s passage, noting that reducing the environmental protections would allow more business and jobs in the area. The speaker works to craft an argument that is compelling for the explicit audience – the audience of other congress people who are present.

However, there are other implied audiences – the communities that would be most impacted by environmental pollution; residents who live in the area; business owners themselves. These audiences are important because they are both represented in the advocacy and would be impacted by the results of the speech. They may not, though, be part of the explicit audience because they are not physically present.

To determine your implied audience, ask: Who are you speaking about/advocating for? Are you sharing information about a culture, group, or individual? If so, who? Are you sharing information that will impact a culture, group, or individual? If so, who?

It may seem odd to consider audiences that are implied or not present. After all, isn’t it the explicit audience who you are trying to inform, persuade, or entertain? Yes, your explicit audience is important, but as we discussed in Chapter 1, communication creates meaning. When you communicate or advocate for an idea, you are participating in world-making. The way that you talk or represent groups, cultures, or individuals has lasting impacts, even outside your explicit speech event. It can impact your implied audience, so talking about an implied audience matters.

Asking ourselves to be accountable to implied audiences also encourages us to use ethical communication, pay attention to power, and reduce stereotypes.

For example, if a speaker advocated to intervene in a country through military means, they might argue that “The United States needs to intervene because, right now, the other country is exhibiting barbaric tendencies.”

First, ask: Who is the implied audience in this example? What audiences would be implicated (but are likely not present)? A clear implied audience includes the non-U.S. population or cultural group, i.e. “the other country.”

Second, ask, how has this group been represented? What kind of talk is being used to describe these implied audiences? You’ll notice that “barbaric” was used to describe individuals in this culture. In this instance, “barbaric” seems to imply that the United States intervention is justified; barbaric seems bad and, alternatively, the United States does not exhibit those “barbaric tendencies” so, the U.S. may be best suited to intervene.

However, this explanation is an example of ethnocentrism—or the belief that one’s own culture is superior—as part of their argument. This type of talk should be avoided because it often represents other cultures in unethical, stereotypical, or unjust ways. If the speech’s argument requires an ethnocentric perspective, the argument is not a good one to make.

So far, we have discussed your implied audience as groups that are discussed, represented, or affected by your speech. A final implied audience includes any groups, cultures, or an individual’s ideas that you are using.

Have you ever had a friend who re-tells your joke but doesn’t give you credit? Not cool! The same is true for speech advocacies. Any time you use or adapt an idea from a group or individual, you must give that implied audience credit. Failing to do so is known as plagiarism, or representing someone’s ideas as your own. Once you have finished writing an advocacy, make sure to double-check that anyone and everyone’s information has been properly cited.

Identifying your implied audience can take time, but don’t worry. We will continue building critical thinking skills throughout this book to practice ethical and just public speaking with your explicit and implied audiences in mind.

Listening While in the Audience

The third component of “audience” includes you! You will be an audience member many, many times, and you should take that job seriously. Your job in the audience is to listen and ethically reflect on what the speaker is saying. In this section, we explore listening as a key audience concept.

Listening is not the same thing as hearing. Hearing is a physical process in which sound waves hit your ear drums and send a message to your brain. You may hear cars honking or dogs barking when you are walking down the street because your brain is processing the sounds, but that does not mean that you are listening to them. Listening implies an active process where you are specifically making an effort to understand, process, and retain information.

In an audience, listening can be a difficult process. Unlike reading, which allows you to re-read a passage, you often have only one chance to listen to an argument in a speech. Many studies have been conducted to find out how long we remember oral messages, and often the level of memory from oral communication is not very high (Bostrom & Bryant, 1980). The solution? Try to enact different listening techniques and reduce your barriers to listening.

Types of Listening

Ideally, we recommend working toward comprehensive or active listening, which is listening focused on understanding and remembering important information from a public speaking message. There are other “types” of listening, based on the context and purpose.

One other type is empathetic listening, or understanding the feelings and motivations of another person, usually with a goal of helping. For example, if a friend says that she is thinking about dropping out of college at the end of the semester, you would want to listen for the reasons and feelings behind her choice, recognizing that you might need to ask sensitive questions and not just start telling her what to do or talk about your own feelings.

Another type of listening is appreciative, which takes place while listening to music, poetry, or literature, or watching a play or movie. For example, knowing that the melodies of classical musical have a certain A-B pattern informs us how to listen to Mozart. To be good at this kind of listening, it helps to study the art form to learn the patterns and devices.

Yet another type is critical listening, where the audience member is evaluating the validity of the arguments and information and deciding whether the speaker is persuasive and whether the message should be accepted. This often occurs when listening to persuasive arguments.

What can a speaker do to encourage listening for an audience?

Planned redundancy refers to purposeful ways of repeating and restating parts of the speech to help the audience listen and retain the content. You should not try to cover or dump a great deal of information in a speech, but you can make the information meaningful through planned redundancy and repeating or underscoring key components of your argument.

A speaker can also help the audience’s listening abilities by using visual aids, stories and examples, audience interaction or movement at key points in the speech, and specific attention-getting techniques. All of these elements are covered in this textbook and will build upon your public speaking skills as you learn how to implement them into your speeches.

In short, listening is hard work, but you can meet your audience half way by using certain strategies and materials to make listening easier for them. At the same time, an audience member has a responsibility to pay attention and listen well.

Barriers to Effective Listening

Since hearing is a physiological response to auditory stimuli, you hear things whether you want to or not. Just ask anyone who has tried to go to sleep with the neighbor’s dog barking all night. However, listening–really listening– is intentional and hard work, and there are three common barriers to be conscious of.

Barrier #1: Noise – physical and mental – is the first barrier to listening. We have constant mental distractions in our lives, something that you might not even be aware of if you have always lived in the world of Internet, cell phones, iPods, tablets, and 24/7 news channels. We are dependent on and constantly wired to the Internet, so focus is difficult. Not only do electronic distractions hurt our listening abilities, but life concerns can distract us as well. An ill family member, a huge exam next period, your car in the shop, deciding on next semester’s classes—the list is endless.

Physical noisiness and distractions also contribute to difficulty listening. Perhaps someone next to you is on their cell phone or you hear the constant click of their laptop keyboard. Perhaps they are whispering to each other and impeding your ability to hear the speaker clearly. The physical environment can also exert noise. Maybe it’s raining outside or someone is vacuuming out in the hallway.

Barrier #2: Confirmation bias is a second barrier to listening. This term means that humans typically search for or interpret information that confirms the way they already perceive something (Nickerson, 1998). Although the concept has been around a long time, we are more aware of confirmation bias today. It leads us to listen to news outlets and Internet sources that confirm what we believe already rather than being presented with and challenged by new ways of thinking through reading or listening to other sources of information. It can cause us to discount, reject, or reinterpret information to fit our preconceptions.

Barrier #3: Information processing is the third barrier to listening. Our minds can usually process much faster than a speaker can speak clearly. We may be able to listen, when really trying, at 200 words per minute, but few speakers can articulate that many words clearly; an average rate for normal speech is around 100-120 (Foulke, 1968). That leaves a great deal of time when the mind needs to pull itself back into focus. During those gaps, we might find it more enjoyable to think of lunch, the new person we are dating, or our vacation at the beach.

These are all possible obstacles to listening, but there might also be reasons that are particular to you, the listener. We often go into listening situations with no purpose; we are just there physically but have no plans for listening, or we go in to a situation unprepared. We are tired and mentally and physically unready to listen well. We are hungry or fatigued. We do not sit in a comfortable position to listen. We do not bring proper tools to listen, specifically to take notes. So, what do we do?

Intentional Listening

As audience members, barriers prohibit our ability to absorb information that could benefit us.

Your own barrier might be not coming prepared, being quick to prejudge, or allowing gadgets to distract you. Obviously, recognizing the cause of your poor listening is the first step to becoming a better listener. Here are some steps to consider:

• Practice the skill. Believe that good listening and improving your own listening are important. You would not want to be called upon in a meeting at work when you were daydreaming or being distracted by a cell phone. Consider preparing yourself to listen to speeches and practice listening as a skill.
• Practice reflexive listening. Since it is so easy to react to a speaker’s ideas with confirmation bias, go into listening knowing that you might disagree and that the automatic “turn off” tendency is a possibility. In other words, tell yourself to keep an open mind.
• Be prepared to listen. Put away mobile devices, have a pen and paper, and situate yourself physically to listen (no slouching). Have a purpose in listening. There is actual research to indicate that we listen better and learn/retain more when we take notes with a pen and paper than when we type them on a computer or tablet (Mueller & Oppenheimer, 2014). Situate yourself by making decisions that will aid in your listening.
• When taking notes, keep yourself mentally engaged by writing questions that arise. This behavior will fill in the gaps, create an interactive experience with the speaker, and reduce the likelihood that your mind will wander. However, taking notes does not mean “transcribing” the speech or lecture. Whether in class or in a different listening situation, do not (try to) write down everything the speaker says. Instead, start with looking for the over-all purpose and structure, then for pertinent examples of each main point. Repetition by a speaker usually indicates you should write something down.

Conclusion

Audiences are central to a speaker’s success. All three audience dimensions are key to consider, whether you are speaking or listening. Use this chapter throughout the public speaking process to create a relevant argument that is engaging to your audience. Work to call in your audience, or to summon them to actively listen to your advocacy.

References
Bem, D. J. (1970). Beliefs, attitudes, and human affairs. New York, NY: Brooks Cole.

Bostrom, R. N. & Bryant, C. L. (1980). Factors in the retention of information presented orally: The role of short-term listening. Western Journal of Speech Communication, 44(2), 137-145.

Foulke, E. (1968). Listening comprehension as a function of word rate. Journal of Communication, 18(3), 198–206.

Mueller, P. A. & Oppenheimer, D. M. (2014). The pen is mightier than the keyboard: Advantages of longhand over laptop note taking. Psychological Science. doi: 10.1177/095679761452458

Nickerson, R. S. (1998). Confirmation bias: A ubiquitous phenomenon in many guises. Review of General Psychology, 2(2), 175-220.

Watzlawick, P., Beavin, J., & Jackson, D. (1967). Pragmatics of human communication. New York: W. W. Norton & Company