Religion and Religiousness

The religion and religiousness of your audience often will influence their responses to your speech. Religion permeates all topics and all issues. On a most obvious level, we know that such issues as attitudes toward birth control, abortion, and divorce are often connected to religion. Similarly, people's views on premarital sex, marriage, child rearing, money, cohabitation, responsibilities toward parents, and thousands of other issues are frequently influenced by religion.

Analyzing the Psychology of the Audience

In addition to looking at the sociological characteristics of audience members, it's often useful to consider their psychological characteristics – particularly their willingness to listen to you, their favorableness to your purpose, and their background knowledge.

How Willing Is Your Audience?

Your immediate concern in a public speaking class, of course, is with audience willingness to hear your speech. Do they come to hear your speech because they have to, or do they come because they're interested in what you'll say? The unwilling audience demands special and delicate handling. Here are a few suggestions to help change your listeners from unwilling to willing:

■ Secure their interest and attention as early in your speech as possible, and reinforce their interest throughout the speech by using little-known
facts, quotations, startling statistics, examples, narratives, audiovisual aids, and the like.

■ Reward the audience for their attendance and attention. Let the audience know you're aware they're making a sacrifice in coming to hear you
speak. Tell them you appreciate it.

■ Relate your topic and supporting materials directly to your audience's needs and wants. Show the audience how they can – for example – save time, make money, solve important problems, or become more popular. If you fail to do this, then your audience has good reason for not listening.

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