Public speaking and audience responses

Analyzing audience responses

This chapter reports some preliminary observations from a study of sequences in which audiences at public meetings produce a display of affiliation in response to something said by a speaker (e.g., by clapping, cheering, laughing, etc.). The collection of audio and videotape recordings of such interactions was initially prompted by an interest in two related sorts of problem that appear to have considerable importance for the organization of interaction in courts and a range of other multiparty settings where one speaker speaks at a time. The first, which has been discussed in more detail elsewhere (Atkinson, 1979a, 1982; Atkinson and Drew, 1979), concerns how public speakers hold the attention of nonspeaking recipients, such as members of a jury, congregation, or audience. The second has to do with just what it is about so much of the talk that takes place in courts and many other public settings that makes it hearable as persuasive. The two issues are closely interdependent in that a speaker who fails to resolve the problem of sustaining the attentiveness of audience members is unlikely to succeed in persuading any of them to affiliate with the position being proposed and/or to disaffiliate from that of an opponent.

It is easy enough to get a sense, from the way a speech is produced, that certain features of it may be relevant for the solution of one or both of these problems.