Week 14, Discussion 2

One concept that I found useful and interesting from Chapter 14 was persuading different types of audiences. The five different types of audiences are negative, positive, divided, uninformed, and apathetic. The negative audience is an audience that is informed about the presenter's topic but holds an unfavorable view of the presenter's position. This type of audience is also called a hostile audience. They may seem intimidating but if you establish credibility, take a common-ground approach, help your audience visualize the topic in positive ways, and prepare for your audience's negative reaction to your position, you can successfully persuade them to favor your position. A positive audience is an audience that is informed about the presenter's topic and favors the presenter's views. They are also called a sympathetic audience. In order to persuade them to still favor your position, you must rely on narratives to elaborate on your points, incorporate engaging evidence that further reinforced the audience's commitment to the topic, use vivid language and images to heighten your audiences enthusiasm, and last but not least, rally them to take action. A divided audience is an audience that is informed about the presenter's topic but is equally split between those who favor and oppose the presenter's position. In order to persuade them to favor your position, you must demonstrate that you recognize the legitimacy of the arguments that are for and against the issue, establish credibility, establish common ground, address the objection, and reinforced the position of those who agree with you. The uninformed audience is an audience that is unfamiliar about the presenter's topic and has no opinion about it. In order to persuade them to favor your position, you must motivate your audience to want to learn more about the topic, demonstrate expertise on the topic, use repetition and redundancy to reinforce points, and keep persuasion subtle. Last but not least, the apathetic audience is an audience that is informed about the presenter's topic but is not interested in it. In order to get this type of audience to favor your views and become interested, you must gain the audiences attention and show how the topic impacts them. You must also show the audience how much you care about the topic and take a one-sided approach on the particular topic.