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Text For Thought Communication Handbook

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1 Text for Thought Communication Handbook How to Determine Your Audience Get to know your audience by learning about their attributes. Of course, there are several attributes for any given person, so which ones do you focus on? A good way of thi nking about attributes is to thi nk about the Navy. In order to have a balanced force, there are surface as well as subsurface assets; surface vessels like ships and subsurface vessels like submarines comprise a fleet . Whenever a fleet ge ts underway, there are always surface and subsurface assets, even though you cannot see the submarines, they are always an indispensable part of the fleet. Thus, any analysis of a naval fleet is incomplete without an understanding of surface and subsurfac e elements. The same can be said about audiences, there are always surface and subsurface elements that must be accounted for in order to understand your audience. For our purposes, we will discuss three categories of attributes: 1. Demographic attributes – Surface 2. Organizational attributes – Surface 3. Intellectual/experiential attributes – Subsurface Demographics are individual differences. People vary by race, ethnicity, culture, gender, sexual orien tation, education, socioeconomic status, and religion, among othe r factors. Knowing about these surface differences can yield insight in crafting and delivering effective messages. For instance, in delivering a message to an all - male group, you would not want to use examples that included

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