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Chapter 9: Topic Selection and Audience Analysis
Chapter Objectives and Integrator Guide
After reading and thinking about this chapter, students should be able to:
Objective
Resources
1. Know how to select an
appropriate topic.
Key Terms: Brainstorming and
commitment.
In the Text:
Page Reference: pages 185-187
Figure 9.1:Brainstroming a Simple but Useful Process
Study Question 1 (p. 200)
IM Resources:
Discussion Starter 1: Overdone Topics
Activity 9.1: You as a Public Speaker
Activity 9.2: Personal Topics
2. Explain strategies for
narrowing your topic.
Key Terms: Concept mapping.
In the Text:
Page Reference: pages 187-188
Table 9.1: Possible Presentation Topics
Study Question 2 (p. 200)
IM Resources:
Discussion Starter 2: Explore and Narrow your Topic with Peers
Activity 9.3: Selecting a Topic
3. Apply three levels of analysis
to discover specifics about
your audience and use
observation, inference,
questionnaires, and the
Internet to analyze your
audience.
Key Terms: Audience analysis,
captive audience, voluntary
audience, demographic analysis,
attitude, value, belief, observation,
inference, and questionnaire.
In the Text:
Page Reference: pages 188-196
Connecting Globally: User-Generated Content Reflects Human
Values (p. 190)
Figure 9.2: The Relationship Among Attitudes, Beliefs, and
Values
Skill Builder: “Size Up” Your Audience (p. 192)
Table 9.2: Ranking Values
Table 9.3: Attitudinal Scale
Study Question 3 and 4 (p. 200)
IM Resources:
Discussion Starter 4: Class Demographic Analysis
Activity 9.4: Audience Analysis Form
Activity 9.5: Audience Response
Discussion Starter 3: Ineffective Audience Analysis
Activity 9.6: Observation
4. Demonstrate how to adapt
yourself, your language, and
your purpose and thesis
statement to your audience.
Key Terms: Specific purpose and
thesis statement.
In the Text:
Page Reference: pages 196-199
Figure 9.3: From Topic to Thesis Statement
Challenge Yourself: How do I know what to talk about when I
have to make presentations in school, in the community, and
at work? I don’t think I know enough about anything to be
confident about choosing a topic. (p. 199)
Study Question 5 (p. 200)
IM Resources:
Discussion Starter 5: Sensitivity with Politics and Religion
Activity 9.7: Adapting to Your Audience
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Chapter Outline
I. How to Select an Appropriate Topic for You
A. Survey your interests: public speaking starts with the self. If you choose a
topic that is important to you, you will already know more about it than you
will know about a topic that you may choose at random.
i. What do you like best and least at work, about family life, about
your community, and about our government, politics, and policies?
B. Use brainstorming
i. Brainstorming consists of thinking of as many topics as you can in a
limited time, so that you can select one that will be appropriate for
you and your audience.
2. Select the three most appealing ideas.
3. Narrow those down to one idea that most appeals to you and
your audience.
ii. Brainstorming can help you find topics for your public speeches,
reports, and term papers.
C. Assess your knowledge of and commitment to your topic
i. You should know more about your topic than your audience does.
ii. Commitment is a measure of how much time and effort you put into
a cause.
2. Do you volunteer in a childcare center, at a hospital, at the
library, or at a food pantry?
3. Have you had friends or relatives die of careless habits,
diseases, or addictions?
4. Do you work for a political party when it’s time to vote?
D. Determine your topic’s age
i. Topics, like people, live, change and die.
ii. Consider the age and development of your subject matter, as well
as the age and development of your audience.
iii. If you consider a topic that has been around for decades as a
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members may stop listening early when they hear yet another
presentation on a common topic.
vi. Current events can quickly recast an overly familiar topic into one
that is relevant for the present.
II. Narrow your Topic
A. One way to narrow your topic before you begin your search for additional
information is to use concept mapping.
B. Concept mapping is a technique for visually diagramming your primary
topic and subtopics and the relationships between them.
C. You can also choose a broad or abstract category, like love, and list as
many smaller topics as you can that are loosely related to it.
D. For topics that are sufficiently narrow, take into account and consider
three things:
III. Audience Analysis
Audience analysis is the collection and interpretation of audience characteristics
through observations, inference, questionnaires, and the Internet.
A. Captive and voluntary audiences
i. Captive audiences do not choose to hear you or your speech.
Therefore, they will need more convincing than voluntary
audiences.
B. Demographics
i. Demographic analysis is the collection and interpretation of data,
such as name, age, sex, hometown, year in school, race, major
subject, relation, and organizational affiliations.
C. Attitudes, beliefs, and values
i. An attitude is a predisposition to respond favorably or unfavorably
to a person, an object, an idea, or an event.
1. Attitudes are quite stable and often difficult to change.
ii. A belief is a conviction.
2. Examples of beliefs include things like hard work pays off;
good people go to heaven; taxes are too high; and anyone
can get rich.
iii. A value is a deeply rooted belief that governs our attitude about
something.
1. Both attitudes and beliefs can be traced to our values.
IV. Four Methods of Audience Analysis
A. Observation
i. Effective public speakers must engage in active observation using
their five senses – particularly sight and hearing – to gather
information about their audience.
B. Inference
i. To draw an inference is to make a tentative generalization based
C. Questionnaires
i. Questionnaires are questions developed to obtain demographic
and attitudinal information.
ii. Keeping questionnaires anonymous encourages honest answers
and does not reduce the value of the information you collect.
iii. You can collect attitudinal information in at least three ways:
2. Ask people to rank order their values in order of importance
from a list of possible values that you generate.
D. The Internet
i. The Internet offers considerable information about the
E. Tips for Analyzing your Audience
i. Consider who invited you to speak and what your relationship is
with this person (or people) and the audience.
ii. Ask the person who invites you to speak to a group to tell you more
about the audience, and then consider the degree to which the
information they provide to you might be biased.
iii. Examine the environment where you will be speaking, and see if
the room will be arranged in a way in which people will be actively
listening to you or perhaps get distracted by environmental factors.
V. Adapt to the Audience
A. Adapting yourself
i. When you adapt your message to the audience’s attitudes, they will
have a better recollection of the message, better feelings about the
B. Adapting your language: The language you use in your speech, as well as
your gestures, movements, and even facial expressions, should be
adapted to your audience.
C. Adapting your topic
i. Exercise caution in speaking boldly about politics and religion in
many public speaking situations.
D. Adapting your purpose and thesis statement
i. Specific purpose
1. The specific purpose is the purpose stated precisely as an
2. Your specific purpose includes your topic, your audience,
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ii. Thesis statement
2. The thesis statement is similar to the central idea of a written
composition in that it forecasts the speech and is often
stated early on, generally in the introduction.
iii. Adapt the specific purpose and thesis statement to your audience
by considering what might be appropriate for a classroom setting.
Discussion Starters
1. Overdone Topics: One recommendation provided in the chapter is to think about
how old or novel your topic might be to your audience. You can use the class to
help you think about this. What are some topics that you all feel have been
2. Explore and Narrow your Topic with Peers: Pair up with someone in the class
and help one another explore potential topics together. Each of you should identify
a topic you’re considering doing a speech on. Then, talk through potential sub-
3. Class Demographic Analysis: One strategy that can provide you clues about how
to organize your speech is to engage in demographic analysis. What you are aiming
for is demographic diversity when preparing your speech, and not to exclude
someone. Let’s consider your peers in this class since you will be speaking to them.
What are some demographic factors that are common for this class as a group?
4. Ineffective Audience Analysis: Can you think of a time where someone said
something in a speech that was not appropriate for the audience they were
5. Sensitivity with Politics and Religion: The chapter recommends that when you
are preparing your speech, you should be cautious about speaking boldly about
politics and religion. Can you recall a time when someone has said something about
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Activities
ACTIVITY 9.1 YOU AS A PUBLIC SPEAKER
Purpose: Students should be able to recognize that public speaking is something they
do fairly often by naming the occasions in the last six weeks in which they have spoken
Procedure: Ask students to list the instances in the last six weeks when they spoke to
more than one other person. Then, have them list future occasions when they see
themselves speaking to more than one other person. Have the students read their lists
aloud.
Debriefing: Try to reduce student anxiety about public speaking by showing its
relationship to conversation and discussion. Relate public speaking in the classroom to
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ACTIVITY 9.2 PERSONAL TOPICS
Purpose: Students should be able to determine a speech topic based on an
examination of personal tastes.
Procedure: Provide the students with the “Personal Tastes Assessment” that follows.
Instruct them to complete the items and ascertain at least three informative speech
topics based on the information they have provided. This inventory should be kept for
future reference.
Debriefing: This activity is a natural extension of the chapter on self-awareness and the
remaining chapters on public speaking. Topic selections are often a difficult
undertaking. In this activity, students are afforded an opportunity to reflect on
themselves, in order to generate topics for future speechmaking.
PERSONAL TASTES ASSESSMENT
1. States I have visited include:
3. Famous people I have met include:
5. Special talents I possess include:
7. Organizations I belong to include:
9. The emotion that I usually avoid is:
11. The time of the day I prefer to study is:
13. The topic of the best class I have taken is:
15. The most tense time for me has been:
17. The adjective that best describes my relationships is:
19. I believe that all parents should:
20. I think that I am at my best when:
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ACTIVITY 9.3 SELECTING A TOPIC
Purpose: Students should be able to discover several possible topics for speeches; to
Procedure: During the preceding class meeting, distribute the “Topic Interest Survey”
that follows to each student. Each student should make a list of possible topics in each
area and then select the most interesting topics in each list.
TOPIC INTEREST SURVEY
Without consulting another person, list topics that interest you in each of the categories
that follow. Each student should make a list of possible topics in each area and then
select the most interesting topics in each list.
2. Realities that may be desirable or undesirable—for example, grading, teenage
marriage, or labor unions
4. Topics that involve our capacity to change—for example, driving smaller cars,
consuming fewer calories, or spending less money
5. Topics related to degree or extent—for example, how much nuclear power is needed
for a strong defense posture, or how much marijuana should be legally possessed
Students should limit their lists to include only one topic that seems most interesting
from each of the five categories. Working in groups of five or six, the students should
narrow each person’s list to three topics that are most interesting to the group. Each
Debriefing: This activity provides the students with an opportunity for brainstorming. It
also generates a list of topics that can be used for a classroom speech. The discussion
enables students to analyze the audience’s interest in the topic before preparation and
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ACTIVITY 9.4 AUDIENCE ANALYSIS FORM
Purpose: Students should be able to describe the characteristics and attitudes of the
classroom audience and demonstrate their skill in audience analysis by drawing
inferences from the “Audience Analysis Form.”
Procedure: Have each student complete the “Audience Analysis Form” that follows on
the next page. If possible, have the students record their answers on a computerized
answer sheet so that the data can be processed by the test-evaluation service at your
university.
The demographic data (items 1-15) indicate the students’ backgrounds, interests, and
characteristics. The word concepts (items 16-50) indicate the students’ attitudes toward
a variety of subjects. The class discussion should focus not only on individual answers
but on correlations between answers. For example, the data may indicate that students
respond favorably to the concept of sexual freedom and yet respond unfavorably to
homosexual rights. The students should use as many different items as possible in
drawing inferences about the class’s attitudes and beliefs. They should realize that an
Debriefing: This activity gives students insight into the mechanics and uses of
questionnaires and provides experience in both demographic and attitudinal analysis of
AUDIENCE ANALYSIS FORM
Indicate your major and your gender at the top of the answer sheet. The questions that
follow should be answered on the numbered part of your answer sheet.
DEMOGRAPHIC INFORMATION
1.
I am a
9.
My political convictions are
(a) freshman
(a) strong
(b) sophomore
(b) average
(c) junior
(c) weak
(d) senior
10.
My financial support comes primarily
from
2.
I am
(check only one)
(a) 17 years old or younger
(a) parents
(b) between 18 and 19
(b) part-time employment
(c) between 20 and 22
(c) scholarships
(d) over 22 years old
(d) loans
(e) spouse
3.
I am
(a) single
11.
My cumulative grade point average
(b) married
(on a 4.0 scale) is
(c) divorced
(a) 3.5 – 4.0
(d) separated
(b) 3.0 – 3.49
(c) 2.5 – 2.99
4.
I have
(d) 2.0 – 2.49
(a) no children
(e) below 2.0
(b) one child
(c) more than one child
12.
My parental annual income is probably
(a) less than $20,000
5.
My spouse (answer only if relevant) is
(b) between $20,000 and $25,000
(a) employed outside the home
(c) between $25,000 and $35,000
(b) not employed outside the home
(d) between $35,000 and $50,000
(e) over $50,000
6.
I am
(a) Protestant
13.
I was raised
(b) Catholic
(a) in the country
(c) Jewish
(b) in a small town
(d) other
(c) in a suburb
(e) not identified with any religious
group
(d) in a city
7.
I am living
14.
I have served in the military.
(a) in a dormitory
(a) true
(b) in a fraternity or sorority
(b) false
(c) in an apartment
(d) with my parents
15.
I am active in campus organizations.
(a) true
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8.
I belong to a fraternity or sorority.
(b) false
(a) true
(b) false
WORD CONCEPTS
Indicate next to each word your initial attitude about it:
16. Law enforcement
17. Politics
18. Facts
19. Moral majority
20. America
21. Welfare
22. Christianity
23. Parents
24. Corporations
25. Democrats
26. Technology
27. Republicans
28. Pornography
29. Homosexual rights
30. Capitalism
31. Gun control
32. Communism
33. Blacks
34. Financial aid
35. Smoking
36. Marriage
37. Sexual freedom
38. Alcohol
39. Labor unions
40. Social welfare
41. College education
42. Divorce
43. Minority groups
44. Dissent
45. Military
46. Marijuana
47. Abortion
48. College sports
49. Religious freedom
50. Women’s rights
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ACTIVITY 9.5 AUDIENCE RESPONSE
Purpose: Students should be able to discern the varying attitudes of class members on
a variety of topic areas that will aid in determining audience analysis.
Procedure: Distribute the “Classroom-Audience Analysis” form on the next page to
students. Instruct them to complete the form; then collect the forms. Collate responses
Debriefing: This activity illustrates that effective public speaking includes analyzing the
audience to whom an individual speaks. The classroom analysis can serve as a
beginning step in understanding audience composition.
CLASSROOM AUDIENCE ANALYSIS FORM
Number of siblings:
Hometown:
Political affiliation (if any):
Religious affiliation (if any):
Viewpoint on abortion:
Viewpoint on homosexuality:
Viewpoint on government spending:
Favorite personal activity:
Most admired person:
Jobs I have held:
The percent of college education I am personally financing:
The priorities of our country should be:
Most exotic pet I would love to own:
Of course, these items are only suggestions and can be altered for the particular class.
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ACTIVITY 9.6 OBSERVATION
Purpose: Students should be able to apply the concepts and skills of observation to the
speech class as an audience; to discuss the weaknesses and strengths of observation;
and to differentiate between observation and inference.
Procedure: Divide the students into groups of three. Each group should try to ascertain
as many demographic characteristics of the class as possible. It may be helpful to hand
out a checklist like the one that follows:
1. How old are the members of the audience?
2. What is the economic background of the class?
3. What style of clothes do the students wear?
When the group members have completed their observations, they should draw as
many inferences about the audience’s attitudes, prejudices, stereotypes, knowledge,
and interests as they can. Each inference should be directly supported by one or more
observations. When everyone is finished, have each group share its list of observations
and inferences with the rest of the class.
The students should identify the similarities and differences in the lists contributed by
the groups. The reasons for the inferences should be discussed, and their accuracy
should be ascertained by questioning the class. For example, if a group inferred that
class members like movies, the students should be asked how many movies they have
Debriefing: This activity provides students with an opportunity to observe a specific
audience. It also provides information that will be useful to the students when they make
classroom speeches. The concepts of perception and nonverbal communication are
important in observation.
ACTIVITY 9.7 ADAPTING TO YOUR AUDIENCE
Purpose: Students should be able to describe methods of adapting the verbal content
Procedure: Divide the students into groups of four or five. Each group should receive
the following descriptions of two audiences and two topics:
AUDIENCES
A. The members of this audience are all Catholic church members. They attend church
regularly and believe strongly in the Catholic doctrine. They are middle-aged (35-45)
small-business people and farmers from the same community. They are patriotic
Democrats who tend to be liberal in their political views except for issues that involve
religion.
TOPICS
A. You are to address the audience as a student government representative who is
working to legalize the sale of beer on campus. You wish to get the support of the
audience to convince the college’s administrators that legalization is popular.
B. You are a member of the election committee for a local mayoral candidate. The
slogan of your candidate, Marvin Fitzpatrick, is “Stop crime in the streets.” Marvin is
Catholic but does not attend church regularly. He believes in birth control but not
abortion. You want to encourage your audience to vote and to support your
candidate.
1. What inferences can you draw about each audience’s interest in the topics?
2. What do you expect will be each audience’s initial reaction to the topics?
3. What issues would you tend to emphasize in the speeches?
4. What arguments do you think would best persuade each audience?
5. What differences do you perceive in the makeup of each audience that would be of
primary importance in the design of your speeches?
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The students should be encouraged to use these questions as a starting point and to
generate as many ideas as possible about ways to adapt the topics to the audiences.
When the groups are finished, have them compare their decisions and discuss the
reasons for the strategies they chose. The discussion should focus first on the
inferences drawn about the audiences. The conclusions should be based on the
Debriefing: This activity allows students to apply information gained by audience
analysis to specific speech situations. It provides practice in audience adaptation that
will be helpful in preparing a speech.
