As you prepare for your speech, it’s important to start by analyzing who is in your audience. You may have people attending your speech from a variety of backgrounds and with differing experiences who may not all see things in the same way you do.
In the previous unit, we discussed how our differences can impact public speaking. The following list of audience characteristics will influence how you and those in your audience view the world. As you prepare for your speech, it’s important to examine any bias you may hold about these characteristics as well as any biases your audience may have.
Age is an important variable to consider when analyzing your target audience. Individuals who grow up at the same time are called cultural generations. They often share many of the same experiences as others of the same age group.
An outcome of a cultural generation is a set of shared values, beliefs, and attitudes that are important to consider when preparing a speech. When you speak to an audience with members of different ages, you are likely to experience a generation gap. Each generation sets its own trends and has its own cultural impact. Every generation has defining experiences that shaped how they see the world: The Vietnam War, 9/11, and the Covid-19 pandemic are just a few such defining experiences.
Regardless of which generation you are from, it is important to become aware of one's own biases in order to avoid ageism in your speeches.
IN CONTEXT
The fast-changing world of technology has also shaped how different generations see the world and created gaps between older and younger generations. The term "communication skills," for example, might mean formal writing and speaking abilities to an older worker. But it might mean e-mail and instant messaging to a 20-something. Cell phones, texting, tweeting, and social media have encouraged younger users to create their own inventive, quirky, and very private written language.
It is important to remember that since birth, we have been conditioned to make the distinction between men and women, masculinity and femininity. Gender is the perceived or projected (self-identified) masculinity or femininity of a person.
Although there are almost as many males as females in the U.S. population, not all people conform to their birth sex. Genderism is the cultural belief that gender is binary, or that there are, or should be, only two genders—male and female—and that the aspects of one's gender are inherently linked to the sex in which they were assigned at birth.
It reinforces negative attitudes, bias, and discrimination toward people who display expressions of gender variance or nonconformity and/or whose gender identity is incongruent with their birth sex.
Sexual orientation is about who you’re attracted to and who you feel drawn to romantically, emotionally, and sexually.
There are many different types of sexual orientation. Examples include straight (heterosexual), gay (homosexual), and bisexual. Sexual orientation is different from gender identity: It refers to who you are attracted to, not who you are.
It’s important to remember that many people feel like labels used for both gender and sexual orientation are inaccurate or stigmatizing. What’s important is how each individual labels (or does not label) themselves and that they are treated fairly regardless of their identity.
As you prepare your speech, first ask yourself what the members of the audience already know about the topic. What is their knowledge level, and can they learn more?
Remember, it is important to consider not only the formal education but also the self-directed learning of audience members to gear your speech to the right level of understanding.
Individuals who practice a religion have belief systems and worldviews that relate humanity to spirituality and moral values. According to some estimates, there are roughly 4,200 religions in the world. The members of your audience could be followers of any of those religions.
The five largest religious groups by population, estimated to account for between 5 and 7 billion people, are Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Chinese folk religion. Additionally, there may be atheists and agnostics in your audience.
Culture is the non-biological or social aspects of human life; basically, anything that is learned by humans is part of their culture. Culture is more than the object or behavior. Culture also includes norms, values, beliefs, or expressive symbols.
In a world of seven billion people, author David J. Smith reduced the world down to just 100 inhabitants. Of those 100, Smith breaks the world down into the following locales and languages:
Our unique cultural backgrounds can be the proving ground for commonality. Unfortunately, more often than not, our cultural backgrounds serve as reminders of the ways in which we differ from one another and that our biases can serve as barriers to communication.
A race is a human population that is believed to be distinct in some way from other humans based on real or imagined physical differences. An individual is usually externally classified (meaning someone else makes the classification), but an individual may also self-identify with a particular racial group.
Ethnicity, while related to race, refers not to physical characteristics but social traits shared by a human population. Some of the social traits often used for ethnic classification include:
Addressing diverse audiences can be challenging, especially if your audience members’ identities differ from your own. However, if you spend some time considering the potential perspectives of your audience as you plan your speech, they will be more receptive to your message.
You'll want to be aware of how gender bias may factor into your speech. For example, when a woman gets up to speak in front of a group of men, she may be received differently than her male counterpart. In some cases, women may be at ease with a female speaker, but they may also be more attentive to a male speaker, given that many cultures teach women to be attentive to men. In fact, any situation in which the speaker’s gender differs from the audience may introduce bias on either side.
Cognitive psychologists and linguists suggest that word choice has significant framing effects on the perceptions, memories, and attitudes of speakers and listeners.
When one uses less inclusive or stereotypical language, the following can occur:
Gender-neutral language and gender-inclusive language aim to eliminate (or neutralize) references to gender in terms that describe people.
EXAMPLE
The words fireman, stewardess, and chairman are gender-specific; the corresponding gender-neutral terms are firefighter, flight attendant, and chairperson (or chair). The pronoun "he" may be replaced with "he or she," or "they" when the gender of the person referred to is unknown. Other gender-specific terms, such as actor and actress may be replaced by the originally male term "actor" used for either gender.Speakers should be aware of the bias in the audience and Western society in general toward heteronormativity and heterosexism. One common mistake that speakers make is assuming that the audience is just like them concerning this aspect of identity.
Heteronormativity is the belief that people fall into distinct and complementary genders (man and woman) with natural roles in life. It also holds that the normal sexual orientation is heterosexual and that sexual and marital relations are only fitting between a man and a woman. Heterosexism is a system of attitudes, bias, and discrimination in favor of opposite-sex sexuality and relationships. It can include the presumption that everyone is heterosexual, or that opposite-sex attractions and relationships are the only norm and, therefore, superior.
EXAMPLE
Rather than referring to or asking in an interview if one has a boyfriend or girlfriend, you can ask if the person is seeing someone or has a significant relationship. One can also use the term "partner" rather than the more heteronormative "husband" or "wife." And remember that families come in all different kinds of formations, not just biological male and female birth parents with their child.Finally, there may be many speech topics where the sexual orientation of the audience will not be an important consideration. However, some areas are important, such as laws around the world that criminalize homosexual behavior, recognition of relationships, same-sex marriage and adoption, immigration issues, and violence and hate crimes.
Cultural bias exists when you try to navigate the experiences of others through the framework of your personal compass of cultural experience.
Your cultural experience inherently makes you biased against dissimilar cultural experiences to your own. Remember, bias doesn't necessarily mean exclusion, so bias can mean a preference for one culture over another.
This cultural bias may exist in the form of affinity towards one culture or cultural experience over another or complete detachment from one cultural experience over another.
Cultural bias exists in two forms when speaking in public. There's the cultural bias you bring to the podium. The other exists in the minds of your audience as they bring cultural biases with them to the auditorium. Both can impact your speech.
This dissonance between these biases can affect the ways your audience receives you as a speaker, in both trustworthiness and reliability as a subject matter expert. Additionally, your cultural bias may impact your mannerisms and speaking patterns as you deliver your speech.
From a rhetorical perspective, your cultural bias may impact the strength and comprehensiveness of your argument. If your cultural bias only allows you to see things in a certain cultural context, there may be parts of your argument that aren't fully developed simply because you don't have the cultural context to even realize that part of your argument was not fully formed. To overcome cultural bias, take a step back from your speech.
Consider the following questions as you attempt to recognize and address cultural bias in your speech:
To adapt the message to the audience, it is crucial to become aware of your own ethnocentrism and to avoid prejudice and racism.
When you judge another culture solely by the values and standards of your own culture, you miss significant aspects of the other culture of your audience members. Racism or racial discrimination operates similarly.
Racism can refer to any or all of the following beliefs and behaviors:
When looking at another culture or ethnic group to compensate for ethnocentrism as a speaker, try to look at the other group through the eyes of the members of that particular ethnic or cultural group.
As our society becomes more diverse, the speaker will find it desirable to put aside ethnocentrism and prejudice to learn more about the cultures, races, and ethnic groups that will be an increasing part of the local and global audience.
The following story is about Lewis, who was giving a presentation to an audience that had a different background from his own. After his audience had trouble understanding his message, he learned that he needed to take a different perspective next time.
I enjoy learning new things and I love sharing what I know. Or, more accurately, I love sharing what I think I know. If I can learn something while I'm sharing, that's a total bonus. Being a good presenter is a personal goal for me. Part of creating a good presentation is knowing your audience and aiming the material right between their eyes.
I was giving a presentation recently. It was a presentation for work. I had given a general purpose "What is a data mart?" presentation last year and this was Part Two, digging into our financial transactions data mart. I started with a refresher—what is a fact, what is a dimension—and then segued into the facts and dimensions specific to our mart. I spent quite a bit of time explaining bitmap indexes and star transformations. I really thought that was where most of my questions would be.
The fascinating thing to me is where the discussion ended up. It wasn't a failure to understand bitmaps (I credit my awesome diagram for that) nor was it anything confusing about star transformations.
On a couple of slides, I mentioned "query rewrite" in relation to tuning (using aggregates) and star transformations. What I learned is that something that has become second nature to me might not be to many other people. But my audience was sitting there wondering, "What does query rewrite mean?" Some thought that it meant the developer did not write it correctly the first time so Oracle was recommending that it be rewritten as a star transformation (or to go against a materialized view instead of a base table).
That is such an obvious misconception that I can't believe I didn't even anticipate it at all. The questions and comments I got on that drove a nice discussion. The problem was not with the audience, it was my failure to make sure that my presentation gave a basic explanation of the terms I would be using. I am learning that it is important to "know thy audience." Data marts were new to most of this group. That's why I took the time to define a fact, a dimension, bitmap indexes, star schemas, star joins, etc. Query rewrite (basic, advanced) is such a fundamental part of what I was explaining, I totally glossed over it. It's like explaining why the sidewalk is hard but not giving a definition of concrete.
The experience reminded me to remember that I need to look at my presentation from the view of someone sitting in the audience, not the view from the podium.
Source: THIS TUTORIAL HAS BEEN ADAPTED FROM "BOUNDLESS COMMUNICATIONS" PROVIDED BY BOUNDLESS.COM. ACCESS FOR FREE AT oer commons. LICENSED UNDER CREATIVE COMMONS ATTRIBUTION-SHAREALIKE 4.0 INTERNATIONAL.
