The previous chapter established audience analysis as the practice of assessing factors that are likely to influence an audience’s reception of a message. So what do you do with all the insights and information you gain about your audience?

This chapter answers that question by considering audience adaptation, or the ways you alter your speech, using audience analysis cues, to better achieve your speaking goals. We begin by establishing the importance of adapting your speech to your audience. We follow with specific strategies you can use to connect with and engage your audience. We end by addressing how rhetoric allows you, as a speaker, to work with your audience in imagining a more productive future together.

The Importance of Audience Adaptation

Too often, student speakers make one of two mistakes when drafting and presenting their speeches. One mistake is that they don’t think enough about delivering it to an audience. They approach their speech similarly to writing an essay they will submit only to the instructor. A second mistake is that speakers assume their audience is just like themselves. They deliver a speech they personally find compelling and assume their classmates will too.

Both mistakes result in similar consequences: speeches that fail to connect with the audience. They center the needs and interests of the speaker rather than their audience. You might even call these speeches selfish or self-focused. Accordingly, they do not create a sense of community or compel the audience to address communal issues.

Adaptation corrects both mistakes. It approaches a speech as public address—that is, as communication with and to a public audience. The audience is critical to a speech. Without an audience, there is no speech! Adaptation also recognizes that your audience is not the same as you, the speaker. Your and your audience’s demographic and psychological factors (explored in the previous chapter) may overlap, but they also likely differ. Audience adaptation, then, prompts you to adjust, or adapt, your speech to center the audience’s needs. We next offer strategies for making such adaptations.

Audience Adaptation Strategies

What do we mean by adapting your speech? We offer seven specific strategies you can (and should) utilize in crafting your speech: own your message, find common ground with your audience, use appropriate language, adjust the depth and complexity of the content, appeal to deeply held values, use compelling supporting appeals, and select credible and familiar sources.

As we explore each strategy, we assume you will use these strategies mostly for your direct and target audiences. Recall from the previous chapter that your direct audience are the people who are exposed to and attend to your speech. Your target audience includes specific members of the direct audience who are more likely to be influenced by your appeals and/or more likely to act on them. When appropriate, however, we note ways your adaptation efforts should also be mindful of your implied audience (a group that is represented in your message) and your implicated audience (those affected by your message if it succeeds).

Own Your Message

Though it may seem counterintuitive, one of the first strategies to remember when adapting to your audience is that you, as the speaker, must continue to own the message. That is, your efforts at audience adaptation must not compromise your voice and vision. Your intent is not to tell the audience what they want to hear or what is popular. Instead, maintain your authenticity as you connect with the audience and make your message relevant to them.

Find Common Ground

At the center of audience adaptation is the effort to find common ground or, as literary critic Kenneth Burke says, to develop identification.^[1] Identification is the degree to which individuals or groups find themselves joined or linked. For Burke, identification is the primary means of persuasion and occurs when audience members feel a connection with the speaker. When we identify with someone, we also can share a view of life, demonstrate similar values, or develop a sense of trust.

In terms of audience adaptation, the speaker can cultivate identification in several ways. You may explicitly reference what you hold in common, such as demographic factors (your shared age, geographic region, political affiliation, etc.) or psychological factors (your shared personal stakes, knowledge about the topic, or enthusiasm for the occasion). Alternatively, you can foster identification more implicitly through your verbal style (chapter 16), vocal and nonverbal delivery (chapter 18), use of visual aids (chapters 28 and 29), and the other adaptation strategies we will offer.

You have undoubtedly experienced several means of identification in everyday life. Perhaps you’ve talked with a stranger wearing the hat of your favorite sports team or your college’s T-shirt. The connection and sudden comfort you felt came from identification. As a speaker, you hope to make adaptations, based on information gleaned from analysis, that create a connection. Your adaptations should be authentic, though, or they could backfire. For instance, a group of ranchers probably won’t take seriously a city slicker who shows up wearing a cowboy hat and suddenly starts talking with a drawl.

Identification also occurs through division. In chapter 2, we discussed division as a quality of unproductive discourse when speakers highlight and accentuate differences with other participants and their positions. We can also think about division, however, more positively as a tool you can use to adapt to your audience. People might identify with each other through their shared distaste for (division from) a rival sports team or college, for instance. You might build an audience through your joint frustration with the local school board.

Be careful with using division to foster identification with your direct or target audience, however. Division is often built on the rejection of an absent implied or implicated audience. Calls to “strengthen” or “close” the US/Mexico border, for instance, attempt to form identification among North American citizens by dividing them from migrants. In this case, migrants (and others) form the implied and implicated audiences, because they will be impacted by these policies and are being indirectly represented in the discourse, but they are not typically part of the direct audience. Unethical speakers may capitalize on that absence, oversimplifying or even dehumanizing implied and implicated audiences to connect with their target audience.

Ethical speakers, in contrast, recognize the power of their speech and adjust it to also account for the humanity, experiences, motives, and actions of the implied and implicated audiences. They may still advocate for a more stringent immigration policy (that is, they can still own their message), but they will find alternative ways to identify with their direct audience. They may also recognize and offer ideas for how we can aid immigrants who are escaping violence, exploitation, and abuse.

Use Appropriate Language

Another way to adapt to your audience is to use appropriate language for your direct and target audiences. Think for a moment about our common expectation that our teachers, doctors, lawyers, and religious leaders adjust what they teach or say to our level and specific needs and interests. We would be frustrated with a professor who spoke to a college class with the same vocabulary with which they write a journal article for specialists. In speaking situations, you should adjust your language based on audience characteristics such as age, education, and knowledge. This means altering the complexity of your language—the amount of technical language you use and even the possible use of popular slang terms—depending on the audience and situation. If you don’t, the audience is likely to tune you out.

Using appropriate language also regards your implied and implicated audiences.^[2] Asking yourself to be accountable to these audiences encourages you to use ethical communication, pay attention to power, and reduce stereotypes. For example, if a speaker advocated to intervene in a country through military means, they might argue, “The United States needs to intervene because, right now, the other country is exhibiting barbaric tendencies.” First, ask, Who are the implied and implicated audiences in this example? A clear implied and implicated audience includes the non-US population or cultural group—that is, “the other country.” Second, ask, How have these groups been represented? What kind of talk is being used to describe these implied and implicated audiences? You’ll notice that “barbaric” was used to describe individuals in this culture. In this instance, “barbaric” seems to imply that the United States’ intervention is justified; barbaric seems bad, and alternatively, the United States does not exhibit those “barbaric tendencies,” so the US may be best suited to intervene. However, this explanation is using ethnocentrism—or the belief that one’s own culture is superior—as part of the argument. This type of talk should be avoided because it often represents other cultures in unethical, stereotypical, or unjust ways.

Adjust the Depth and Complexity of Content

Audience adaptation also means adjusting the depth of information presented on a topic and its complexity. Consider your direct and target audiences’ familiarity with, or knowledge of, a topic as you assess how much background information is needed. Likewise, adjust the depth and complexity of your content based on situational factors such as the time available to speak and the purpose of the occasion.

It is frustrating when a speaker spends significant time explaining an idea or event that the audience already knows about. In that case, the speaker squandered an opportunity to address what attracted the audience to the presentation by rehashing common knowledge. Adapting to the needs and knowledge of the audience ensures your presentation will be relevant and timely.

Appeal to Deeply Held Values

Another way to adapt to your direct and target audiences is by appealing to values they identify as important. Demonstrating in a speech how a problem violates or jeopardizes a deeply held value motivates an audience. Similarly, explaining how a particular action or decision will advance an important value makes an audience more likely to lend their support. Common values that work in such a fashion in the American context are freedom, justice, and equality. Value appeals are explored in more depth in chapter 21’s discussion of deliberation.

Use Compelling Supporting Appeals

One of the most effective ways to employ audience adaptation is through supporting appeals. In general, you want to use diverse forms of evidence as discussed in chapter 26: examples, statistics, and testimony. However, you don’t have to use them in equal amounts. You might, for example, employ more numerical data if most of your direct audience—classmates in this case—are pursuing studies in the natural or social sciences. If you are speaking at a protest rally, however, your direct audience might find quotes by several eloquent leaders about your cause to be more compelling.

Whomever your direct or target audiences are, examples can be impactful if they reverberate with your listeners. As defined in chapter 26, an example is a concrete instance that supports a broader point or conclusion. However, if a selected example is unfamiliar to the audience or too obscure, it is unlikely to be effective. Similarly, an anecdote—a story or extended example in narrative form—can nicely draw an audience in, but only if it’s an already familiar story or features values esteemed by the audience. Box 11.2 extends this logic to your use of metaphors.

Select Credible and Familiar Sources

Finally, even your sources can be adapted to your direct and target audiences. As discussed in chapter 8, you should set the evaluative standard, or bar, high when choosing research materials by judging each source by its BAARR: potential bias, accuracy, authority, recency, and relevance.

However, you should also consider which sources your audience likely holds in high esteem. It is one thing if you use a source to support your claim, and it is quite another (and very helpful) if your audience knows and respects that source. Don’t assume all groups value the same sources. Quoting the Bible or Koran, for example, may help sway fellow members of your church or mosque, but these sources are less likely to compel classmates at a nonreligiously associated university.

Box 11.3 Sample Audience Analysis and Adaptation

Lisa wanted to prepare a speech for class on the benefits of community supported agriculture (CSA) as a valuable source of local, organic food.

Audience Analysis

• Demographic factors: Lisa realized most of her audience members were eighteen to twenty-three years old, lived in campus housing and were on a school dining plan, and had minimal disposable income. Many were also athletes and did not own cars. She concluded that they valued economic responsibility, proximity, and health.
• Psychological factors: Through a class survey, Lisa also learned most of her classmates were from urban areas and thus were likely unfamiliar with either growing their own food or CSAs.
• Environmental factors: Lisa knew her class met right before lunch, when her classmates would be hungry.

Audience Adaptation

• Find common ground: Lisa referred to herself as a fellow student living in the residence halls who shared a desire for more healthy options on or near campus.
• Adjust the depth of the content: She gave a brief explanation of how CSAs work and why they got started before advocating that their college offer CSA shares to students as part of their meal plans.
• Use compelling supporting appeals: Lisa handed out several fresh fruits and vegetables she had purchased from the local farmers’ market. She used them as examples of the kinds of produce available through a CSA.

Lisa crafted specific appeals that engaged her peers and centered their needs and values. She practiced audience adaptation.

Adaptation, Not Manipulation

Before leaving the strategies, we offer a final warning. Adaptation does not mean saying what the audience wants to hear or what is popular. Nor does it mean manipulating the audience to achieve your desired response. Ethical speakers do not mislead or prey upon their audience, whether by magnifying fears or promising the fulfillment of personal desires.

Instead, we adjust our speech to help make messages more meaningful to our audience, centering their needs, stakes, and interests. As a speaker, you are speaking “with” an audience, not “to” or “at” them. Ideally, adaptations enable you to talk to and work with the audience to address issues together and improve your communities. The point is that speakers need to examine the ethics of their alterations and be mindful that adaptation and manipulation are not the same, nor are they equally acceptable.

Imagining the Future Together

So far we have concentrated on adapting to an audience based on your analysis of who they are. Before closing, however, there is another dimension of audience adaptation to consider, one that is particularly important in efforts at civic engagement: who your audience wants to be and how you can all work together to accomplish that vision.

That is, in considering your direct or target audience, you are not restricted to who they are now. Rather, you can offer a vision of who they can become as they strive with you to create a better future together. The ideas you address in your speech can be framed as opportunities for your audience to grow and thrive, thus making them more attractive to subscribe to.

Box 11.4 Public Figures Who Help Us Imagine the Future

We can look to popular speakers and figures for examples of people who help audiences imagine the future together:

• Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. famously shared his “dream” of racial equality to help motivate Americans to support civil rights legislation.
• Greta Thunberg offers contrasting visions of the environment—one where climate change has continued unimpeded and one in which we have curbed rising global temperatures—to advocate for conservation and stewardship of our planet.
• Laverne Cox advocates for transgender rights by acting in fictional films and television shows where her gender is normalized and by hosting talk shows and documentaries that feature transgender people.

These public figures don’t just take audiences as they are; instead, they present a vision that imagines what we can become by working and dreaming together.

In his essay “In Search of ‘the People’: A Rhetorical Alternative,” Michael Calvin McGee theorized “the people” as a rhetorical construct that is called into being by an advocate.^[3] In other words, a speaker can use rhetoric to transform an audience from a mass of individuals into a collective—“the people”—with a defined purpose. As McGee explains, the people “are conjured into objective reality, remain so long as the rhetoric which defined them has force, and in the end wilt away, becoming once again merely a collection of individuals.”McGee, “In Search of ‘the People,’” 242.[.footnote]

Your local community already exists. But it is through rhetorical advocacy that its members might envision themselves as united together in brainstorming, problem-solving, and imagining a better future. Through speech, your community can envision themselves as “the people” or similarly, as we defined in chapter 2, a public: a collection of people who are joined together in a cause of common concern.

Imagine, for instance, that your hometown wants to build a new school. To pay for it, the city needs to increase property taxes, which requires local citizens to vote in approval. If you advocate for that cause, you will, of course, appeal to parents of schoolchildren. However, to rhetorically activate “the people” to support the measure, your vision should be broader. You can appeal to lifelong residents of the city, grandparents of schoolchildren, small-business owners, and others by imagining what a new school might mean for their future: It could attract people to the town, help produce engaged citizens and productive workers, lower crime rates, and so on.

If effectively drawn together during your persuasive campaign, volunteers would form a people—a collective working on behalf of their common cause through phone calls, placement of yard signs, development of campaign literature, door-to-door canvassing of neighborhoods, and other activities. Once the vote was complete, this collective would disperse, as the rhetoric that drew this diverse set of individuals together would cease to be a unifying force. As a speaker, you too can lead your audience by offering a collective vision of their existence and future potential.