THE THREE BASICS

AUDIENCE, OCCASION & PURPOSE

We've already stated that the basic elements to consider a situation "public speaking" involve audience, occasion, and purpose. But what are we talking about when we mention these words? Let's take a closer look at each element.

Audience

We talked in the last lesson about how an audience both receives and gives messages during a speech. Now let's look at audience as a more basic element of public speaking.

In a public speaking situation, the audience is actually present in real-time and is gathered (in small or large numbers) for some occasion. (More on occasion in a minute).

There are two very broad types of audiences: general and specific.

The general audience includes anyone who receives the speaker's message. This can include everyone present in the audience that's gathered to listen to a speaker in real-time. In some instances, it reaches even further than that. For example, if a speech is recorded and posted to the internet, the audience expands to include everyone who watches the recording later on. (Source)

The specific audience is an audience within the general audience. It's the group of people that the speaker specifically wants to reach. Let's go back to the examples we brought up in the previous lesson: a stand-up comedian and POTUS.

A stand-up comedian knows he has a general audience of everyone in the club during his set and all the people who will watch a recording of that set later, including a whole bunch of people taking an online public speaking course. (Although we're guessing most stand-ups don't anticipate that exactly.) But the stand-up might have a specific audience that he really wants to reach. Maybe he knows there's a group of other stand-ups at a table in the back, and his actual goal is to make them laugh.

The President speaks to a general and specific audience, as well. We can't claim we know exactly what President Obama's specific audience was during his 2016 State of the Union address, but that won't stop us from wildly speculating. Maybe Obama really wanted to direct his message to Republicans, or Democrats, or the people of Springfield, Illinois.

Every audience is different, and it's important for a speaker to have a good handle on who's going to be in her audience and what qualities about that audience matter to them. We'll go into detail on that subject in a later lesson when we talk about audience analysis.

Occasion

A real-time, present audience usually gathers in a specific time and place to listen to a speaker. This doesn't just happen out of the blue, but for a specific occasion.

The occasion simply means the reason the audience is gathered. The occasion might be formal or informal, big or small. Here are some examples:

• A stand-up gig

• The State of the Union address

• A wedding

• An all-company meeting

• A pep rally

• A city council meeting

• A charity gala

• A meeting of the Dead Poets Society

What a speaker needs to understand is that different occasions come with different norms and expectations. (Source)

What kinds of norms and expectations might you have for a wedding? What about for a meeting of the Dead Poets Society? Close your eyes for a minute and think about those two different occasions.

Okay, now that you've filled your brain up with thoughts, compare them to ours.

Wedding norms and expectations:

• The audience will be friendly, happy, and very likely tipsy.

• It'll take place in a large room full of people.

• The tone of the occasion will be positive.

• There will be lots of talk of love.

• There might be little kids crying and shouting and running around.

• The speakers won't be trained professionals.

• There very well might be crying, sobbing, and the occasional embarrassing snot issues—on the speaker and audience sides.

• The audience will probably be wondering how long it's going to be before they actually get to eat something.

Meeting of the Dead Poets Society*:

• It'll start with some very moody running through the woods with flashlights and hoods.

• It'll take place in a cave.

• Liberal use of flashlights.

• It'll be mostly prep-school dudes in weird robes.

• Robin Williams will have something to do with it.

• It'll be pretentious as all get-out.

*Feel free to watch this clip if you have no idea what we're talking about. Better yet, just go watch the whole movie. Trust us, it holds up.

Purpose

Last of the three great elements of public speaking is the purpose of the speech. What does the speaker want to accomplish with her speech? How does she want to affect the audience? Almost all speakers have one of the following three basic purposes:

• Inform

• Persuade

• Entertain

(Source)

Of course, a speaker's purpose may be to do more than one of the three. During the State of the Union, POTUS probably wants to do a little of all three: inform the nation of where we stand, persuade us to take action, and entertain us so that he doesn't seem like a stick-in-the-mud up there. Despite that, there's almost always one main purpose that the speaker wants to accomplish that falls into one of the three main categories.

A speaker might have really specific ways they want to accomplish their main purpose. A stand-up comedian's main purpose is to entertain, and in most cases, they specifically want to make the audience laugh until that two-drink minimum beer comes out of their nose.

Okay, so we've used the POTUS and stand-up comedian examples a lot by now. Possibly too much. In the next reading we'll take a look at an example that's a lot more common.

YOU'RE NOT SPECIAL

There's a kind of speech that happens all over the country in spring. Sometimes the speakers are famous. Sometimes they're recognizable only to a few. You've probably been in the specific audience at least once.

Yep—we're talking about the commencement speech.

Watch this commencement speech given by David McCollough Jr. at Wellesley High School's commencement ceremony in Massachusetts in 2012. (The whole speech is just over twelve minutes long—listen to the whole thing or you'll miss the main purpose.)

Now let's take a minute to cover the three basics of this speech: its audience, occasion, and purpose.

Audience

Like most speeches, this one has a general and a specific audience.

• General: Everyone present at the commencement, including graduates, parents, family and friends as well as everyone who's since viewed the speech online. (That means you.)

• Specific: Clearly, this speaker wants to reach a subset of the general audience: the graduates.

Occasion

The audience was gathered in a specific time and place to celebrate a group of graduates—that's what a commencement is, after all. So what would the norms and expectations be in this situation? Maybe some of the following:

• The tone of the speech would be inspirational.

• There will be lots of advice.

• There won't be a lot of rough language.

• There will be lighthearted moments mixed with more serious ones.

• The audience will be mostly well-behaved (with some exceptions).

What would you definitely not expect to happen at an occasion like a high school commencement?

• Heckling from the audience.

• Curses sprinkled heavily throughout the speech.

• A super-negative tone.

(Of course, there are probably exceptions to this. Maybe the person who gave your high school commencement speech cussed like a sailor. But that would be pretty far outside the norm.)

Purpose

This speaker has more than one purpose. He starts the speech with a series of jokes, so he's clearly trying to entertain the crowd. But the main purpose of the speech isn't to entertain, is it?

Remember, while a speaker may want to persuade, entertain, and inform his audience all in one single speech, he must have one main purpose that rises above the others. The main purpose of this speech becomes clear toward the end, when the speaker tells the audience: "You're not special." It quickly becomes clear that the speaker's true purpose is to persuade the graduates to do or believe something. But what?

We think it's pretty well summed up when the speaker says "…do things because you love it and believe it's of importance."

Wise words, Mr. McCollough.