Assignment: Audience

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Assignment Audience

• A Writing Across the Curriculum
• Writing in the Disciplines
• Professional Development Presentation

Dr. Robert T. Koch Jr. Director, Center for
Writing Excellence University of North
Alabama September 11, 2008
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Todays Goals

• Examine the role audience plays in our writing
  assignments.
• Identify the audiences of our disciplines.
• Consider the opportunities these audiences
  present for assignment development.
• Consider ways to reshape our current assignments.

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Audience in Composition

• Higher Order Issue with ties to purpose
• Writer
• Reader Text

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Audience in Composition

• For writers to familiarize themselves with the
  rhetorical situation in which they are writing
• What do I have to say?
• To or before whom is it being said?
• Under what circumstances?
• What are the audience predispositions?
• How much time or space do I have? (Corbett, 1997,
  p.290)

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The Problem with Audience

• Are these analogous?
• Speaker ? Voice ? Audience
• with
• Writer ? Text ? Audience
• or is it
• Speaker ? Voice ? Audience
• with
• Writer ? Text ? Reader

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The Problem with Audience

• The concept of audience is misleading when used
  to describe a relationship that involves a writer
  (as opposed to a speaker). This is because while
  there may be a specific and very real audience,
  readers, being already plural, defy any effort to
  gather under a single identity. Consequently,
  the writer must make up an audience (or more
  accurately, reader) to direct his or her writing
  towards. (Ong, 1997, p. 58-9)

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The Problem with Audience

• Results of this misleading concept
• The writer must construct in his imagination an
  audience cast in some sort of role (Ong, 1997,
  p. 60)
• A reader has to play the role in which the
  author has cast him, which seldom coincides with
  his role in the rest of actual life (Ong, 1997,
  p. 60).

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So Who Do They Write For?

• An idealized intellectual
• Nobody in particular
• Themselves (for presentation, not for learning)
• No Matter which they choose, each can cause
  problems!

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Other Reasons

• Faculty should help students address audience
  because
• Students dont normally value knowledge distinct
  from audience purpose.
• Faculty can situate the assignment within a
  real-world context.
• This is an opportunity to explore the literature
  of the discipline.
• And, again, audience (and Purpose) are
  foundational to good writing.

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Who Could Their Audiences Be?

• Practicing Professionals
• Faculty
• Journal and Book Editors
• Graduate Students
• Peers
• __________

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Developing Audience

• Develop purpose beyond simply finding out what
  they know.
• Discuss in Class, or Explain in Syllabus or
  Assignment Sheet.
• Ask the following
• Who is this paper, report, summary, reflection,
  etc. most likely to be read by if it were in a
  real situation?
• What is this readers professional situation?
• What is his or her intellectual knowledge?
• What does he or she believe?
• What will matter to this reader?
• What style and tone does this reader expect?

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More Advanced Strategies

• Suggest or require students to read the journals
  in your discipline to find out more about
  audience / who they should write for.
• Involve students in undergraduate research
  activities to discover what is important to
  research audiences and professionals.
• Have the student use writing in service-learning
  or other projects where the texts carry
  significance beyond a grade.

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References

• Corbett, E. P. J., Conners, R. (1999).
  Classical rhetoric for the modern student (4th
  ed.). New York Oxford.
• Ong, W. J. (1997). The writers audience is
  always a fiction. In V. Villanueva (Ed.)
  Cross-talk in comp theory A reader (pp. 55-76).
  Urbana, IL NCTE.