Audience Adaptation

I have always been fascinated with the audience rather than the speaker. I find myself looking around, seeing the reaction of the audience. It is something that I have always done, and now being a communication studies major, I know why I look around and gauge the audience more than the speaker.

The speaker is nothing. Without and audience, there is no need for the speaker, and the speaker is not worthy of the attention of the audience if what they are saying is not connecting. I have been in a couple of situations while giving a speech, and noticing the audience is either disinterested, confused, or appalled in what I am saying. I remember in a history class, we were only allowed to use facts and first person accounts. I, wanting to push myself (and my teacher's buttons) decided to choose an era which as fascinated me since childhood: the holocaust. I have a morbid sense of humor to begin with, but I picked first person account that put the Nazi's in a good light, and some of the prisoners in a bad one.

I know it doesn't seem right, but I was trying to push myself into thinking outside of the box. That sentence is me trying to adapt my story to fit my audience (you) into thinking in a different way while keeping you interested. And that is also what I said mid-way through my speech when I noticed a very big guy clenching his fist. I am only human. I have fear, and I was (slightly) afraid.

I also noted that these were not norm cases, and there is both good in evil, and evil in good. Which is what my whole speech was about. Now, I understand how it is offensive, but I was in a safe, classroom setting, presenting exactly what I was assigned. I would have not presented this in a meeting with Holocaust survivors, because the speech was not made for that audience... and I would have probably been killed.

Speaking without an audience in mind is not speaking. It is mindless ranting. A speaker without audience is just a person talking to themselves for no reason. But a speaker must adjust their content, vocabulary, hooks, tones, even speech patterns to accommodate those who really matter: everyone else but themselves.