Audience Analysis and Adaptation

 Audience analysis is “obtaining and evaluating information about your audience in order to anticipate their needs and interests and design a strategy to respond to them” (Coopman 77). Essentially, audience analysis involves finding out your audience’ interests, views, and familiarity with your topic. Once you have done so, you will then mold your speech to fit these aspects. This is extremely important because if your audience is interested and feels engaged in your speech, you are more likely to deliver a successful speech with positive results. However, if your audience cannot relate to your topic and/or speech, and do not find it interesting, it would be very difficult to deliver an effective speech. Audience adaptation involves both using audience feedback (nonverbal cues) to adapt, and recognizing audience diversity and adhering to it. I plan on using audience analysis in preparation for my demonstration speech in order to make my topic more interesting to the entire class as opposed to only subgroups. This may be difficult considering my particular topic; however, if I can single out different ways in which my demonstration would be useful to my peers (based on their backgrounds, marital and parental status, age etc.) then I can tailor my speech to best fit my audience.