Audience Relationships: Identify an Audience

Video Transcript

"The first thing I want you to do is I want you to think about your audience. Who are they? Are they college students? Are they the ladies' social group from the Baptist church? Are they prison inmates, or former prison inmates? Who is your audience? That's the first thing you have to take a look at because what you want to do is plan your speech, present your speech in a manner that the audience can relate to. If you're speaking to the ladies' social club, you want to present your speech in a certain way. If you're presenting a speech to former prison inmates, you will probably present your speech in a different way. And this all becomes about choice of language, choice of presentation style. If I'm going to give a speech about heart murmurs, but I'm not talking to doctors, I'm going to choose a specific set of verbiage. I'm going to present my speech in a certain way, where I would do it differently if I was presenting that speech to college students. So it's very important to know your audience so that you can know how you're going to present your speech."