How Favorable Is Your Audience?

Audiences vary in the degree to which their ideas and attitudes will be favorable or unfavorable toward you, your topic, or your point of view.

If, on analyzing the question, you conclude that your audience will be unfavorable to your chosen topic or viewpoint, the following suggestions should help.

- Clear up any possible misapprehensions that may be generating disagreement. For example, if the audience is hostile to your proposed team approach for a certain project because they wrongly think it will cause a reduction in their autonomy, then tell them very directly that it won't, and perhaps explain why it won't.

- Build on commonalities; stress what you and the audience share as people, as interested citizens, as fellow students. When an audience sees similarity or common ground between itself and you, it becomes more favorable to both you and your speech.

- Organize your speech inductively. Try to build your speech from areas of agreement, through areas of slight disagreement, up to the major differences between the audience's attitudes and your position. Once areas of agreement are established, it's easier to bring up differences.

- Strive for small gains. Don't try, in a five-minute speech, to convince a pro-life group to contribute money for a new abortion clinic or to persuade a pro-choice group to vote against liberalizing abortion laws. Be content to get the audience to listen fairly and to see some validity in your position.

- Acknowledge the differences explicitly. If it is clear to the audience that they and you are at opposite ends of an issue, it may be helpful to acknowledge this directly. Show the audience that you understand and respect their position but that you'd like them to consider a different way of looking at things.

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