Chapter 3 Summary

In order to give an effective speech, you have to consider who you are speaking to. Make sure to think about what type of audience you are speaking to: are they captive, committed, contrary, concerned, or casual? What is the demographic makeup of the audience, and what can you suppose about their attitudes, beliefs, and values?

Once you have considered your audience, you’ll need to adapt your speech to connect with them through some sort of identification, like presenting yourself as likable and relatable, similar to them in style and/or substance. You will also need to establish yourself as credible, demonstrating competence, trustworthiness, dynamism, and composure.  As you present yourself as credible and relatable, you’ll also need to be sensitive to your audience and their responses—keeping their attention and recognizing when they may need more or less information in any particular section.

Your speech topic should also be made in the context of your audience: consider topics that work well for you as the speaker, for your audience, and for the occasion of the speech. In order to choose a topic, do a personal inventory, brainstorm, crowdsource, and scan through books, magazines, newspapers, and blogs in order to get some ideas. Once you have a topic idea, make sure the topic is a good fit for you, suitable for your listeners, and appropriate for the general purpose of your speech. When you have a topic that meets all of these criteria, make sure that you can adequately cover the topic in the time frame of the speech, which likely means narrowing your topic into a subfield, or a section of your general topic.