In a recent study D. Conley established "experienced writers are cognitively aware of their readers; therefore, teaching or stressing audience in the writing classroom is extremely important if students are to mature as writers" (1992). Surely, then, we must delve into that realm. Who your audience is will be the leading factor for your next assignment. To you discover your audience, groups will examine specific ezines (electronic magazines) and try to figure out who reads that particular ezine.
Through discussion of the electronic magazines various elements, i.e., content, form,
features, please try to discover who would really spend their time reading the ezine you
choose. I have attached list of questions to help you
with this discovery.
The Process
- Group members are encouraged to visit varying sites listed below and peruse the ezines
under scrutiny. If someone disagrees with a group's assessment, then (ideally) a
discussion will ensue. Students need to remember when doing this assignment,
generalizations must be made about who the typical readers are. All magazines, electronic
or not, are geared towards a specific target audience. Those who read Reader's Digest
*usually* are not the same people who purchase The New Yorker.
- Groups choose one magazine or ezine whose audience seems reachable.
- Post your group's choice on the discussion board. First come -- first dibs.
- Once a group has established who reads "their" ezine, they will choose one of the questions all of them are interested in from the selections on pages 179-241 in Language Awareness (from Writing Suggestions: Writing From Reading or Writing From Research). This topic should be controversial in nature, as well as accessible.
- Each group member will take his or her own stance on that question and then write a
persuasive paper geared toward the specific audience. A persuasive paper is nothing more
than using evidence to sway your audience to believe your
point-of-view. In effect, you are trying to write an essay that "could" be
published in the magazine you studied.
- You are expected to use at least three quotations from outside research in your audience paper.
Get together with your group. Look at various newspapers online. See a few listed below.
Listed below are the magazines (ezines) that you can explore.
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People Online | |
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Money | |
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Time -- http://www.time.com/time/ |
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Atlantic--www2.TheAtlantic.com/Atlantic |
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Utne Lens--www.utne.com | |
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PCNet Online -- http://www.zdnet.com/pcweek/ | |
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Salon -- www.salonmagazine.com |
More About Audience:
Much theory has been devoted to the idea of audience awareness. But for our purposes let's try to keep it simple.Think of audience awareness as a communication situation. The essential parts of any communication situation are a speaker (in this case writer), a listener (the audience) and a message.
First, looking at this diagram you will see Aristotle's point: for communication to be successful the writer must be aware of both what the audience knows about the topic and who the audience is. Think about it. Most likely you would not write the same letter to both your mother and your best friend. All of us are raised to know that different audiences require different types of information.
Another part of the situation is that the writer must be aware of who she is in relation to both the subject/message and the audience. Here again let's use the different audiences of a friend and someone's mother.
The friend, Natasha, is twenty years old, a college student who lives on a limited budget and likes to have lots of adventures. The mother, on the other hand, has already had her adventures, and now works very hard so that her daughter can study in a university. Her major concern is that her daughter is gaining a good education. The writer in this imaginary case is Zainab.
Zainab is much like her friend, a college student who likes adventures. One day Zainab receives an invitation in her email from an acquaintance, Shirley. Shirley wants Zainab and a friend of her choice to travel down the coast of Oregon over spring break. Zainab is very happy about the invitation.
She doesn't know much about the Oregon coast and neither does her friend
, Natasha. Now here is the dilemma. Zainab needs $600.00 for the trip which she does not have. She also needs to convince Natasha to go along on the trip.Okay, let's think about her two audiences. What will she need to convince Natasha to go on the trip? Not much you say? You are probably right.
The two young women are so similar that they will both see it as an opportunity. Zainab knows she will not need any extra information to convince her friend.Let's look at the other audience: her mother. How will she convince her mother to not only give her permission to travel on the Oregon coast with two other young women but also to borrow the $
600.00? What do you think she will have to do? Look at the communication situation again. She knows what her message is. She knows who she is. But what does she know about the Oregon coast?When she reviews what she knows about her mother,
she remembers her mother has already made this same trip.The more she thinks about it the more she realizes that safety will be the number one concern of her mother. This leads her to the final part of the communication situation, the path to the audience. Zainab, through careful planning and many phone calls, plans a route of busily traveled roads and makes reservations at popular hotels along the coast before she calls her mother. This gathering of evidence will give Zainab information for her mother's objections.While we have used a simple example here of a daughter and mother, the communication situation will work with any two people.
Thus, in order to communicate effectively, "Good sense and good taste must guide the writer," states E. Corbett in Classical Rhetoric. Is Corbett talking about the writer's sense and taste? Or perhaps is he alluding to something else, the unseen audience who is the target of the writer? Of course, he is talking about the relationship between the writer and the audience. To use "good sense and taste
," a writer must know her audience. To do so, the writer must attend to the rhetorical situation. Aristotle, the Father of Rhetoric, established that there are some common traits in any communication situation.Let's think about the speaker/writer. When we write, whether it be a note or an essay or a letter of complaint, there a myriad of details involved:
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Who is the writer?
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Of course there are numerous others that could be listed. Now let's look at the audience:
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Who is a member of the target audience
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Okay, you have probably understood the point now.
If writers understand who they are in relationship to the
audience and the topic, then they can proceed to the pathway which determines what information needs to be provided to the audience in order for them to truly comprehend the topic under consideration. Then we would know what kind of introduction would be best, what kind of information should be provided, and what type of language and sentence structure should be used. If writers follow these parameters, then they can use "good taste and good sense" in writing; thus, they will do what is intended: communicate their message.