PUBLIC SPEAKING AND AUDIENCE DESIGN

Abstract

The article is devoted to the acute problem of public speaking, to the art of persuasion in democratic societies. Public speaking is an inseparable part of the life of human beings. The art of speaking persuasively requires certain skills and knowledge from public speakers as the world is constantly changing and setting new challenges to communicators in various rhetorical situations. So are the audiences that are becoming more demanding, sophisticated, informed, and digital. A special attention has been paid to the cooperation of a speaker and their audiences, to the ways of learning about the audiences, their demographics and culture, their modelling and design in different types of contexts. All these factors define the topicality of our research and its relevance to modern trends in humanitarian studies. The novelty of the research lies in the fact that we have applied theoretical and practical approaches to the study of the topic and focused on the cooperative audience design, analysed the expectations and preferences of the audiences of young listeners. The purpose of our research was to define audience and its design, to find out about the ways of shaping it, to point out what makes speakers successful, cooperative and well-perceived in public speaking in general and in education in particular.The topic and the purpose defined the methods of our research: surveys and questionnaires, description, analysis, and generalization.It has been found out that successful speakers usually use audience participation (questions, polls, volunteers), refer to shared experiences or knowledge, include “you-focused” language and speak directly to the audience’s needs and desires and use metaphors or examples that are relatable to them. It has been shown that with the help of the analysed techniques and approaches, it is possible to design our audiences, convert them into a second persona, make them not only active listeners but the ones that feel and live the speech. The empirical study has proved that the most important qualities of a good public speaker is their confidence and credibility, vividness, cooperation with the audience, positive attitude and passion, the ability to engage the audience and tell compelling stories, kairos, and a good sense of humour.