Audience Analysis

VALUE: 20 points

This assignment is designed to help you identify and adapt to the potential audience(s) for your persuasive speech. Your persuasive speech will be graded on how well you adapt your speech to your audience. Although the audience could potentially be anyone, since you are posting it online, it’s not likely that anyone/everyone would watch it. Those who do not do a thorough analysis will not receive full credit.

In order to identify your target audience(s), you should consider who might be interested in your topic, the medium (an online speech), and the fact that it’s a student speech. Don’t forget that your classmate peer evaluators are also part of your audience, but do not assume that they are the only ones. Ultimately, you should be able to answer the following question: who would likely watch a student speech on the topic you’re presenting online?

USE BULLET POINTS FOR YOUR ANALYSIS:  1. What is the age range of your audience? Explain why. 2. What is the gender make-up of your audience? Explain why. 3. What is the racial, ethinic or cultural background of your audience? Explain why. 4. What is the sexual orientation of your audience (if this is relevant)? Explain why. 5. What is the group membership of your audience (school, hobbies, etc.)? Explain why. 6. What is the religious orientation of your audience? Explain why.

ADAPTING TO THE AUDIENCE: 1. Discuss how you will adapt your speech to your audience (p. 98 in Lucas text). A central part of audience adaptation is framing your speech toward their knowledge, experience, and interests. As such, make sure to answer the following questions (at minimum):

2. How will you adapt the main points of your persuasive speech to the audience you’ve identified above? For example, are the main points you’ve chosen interesting to your audience? Should they be organized in a particular order?

3. What kind of research or evidence would be most interesting to your audience, and thus, appropriate to support your speech topic?

4. How should you frame your evidence or support? For example, is this audience already fairly knowledgeable about the subject, or less familiar, and so will need more background information and terms/jargon defined and explained to them? What kinds of data, statistics, testimony, or examples would be most appropriate?

5. And finally, what are some ideas for beginning and ending your speech that will interest the audience the most?