Learn how different
audiences require a writer to make different presentations of his/her
thesis.
Different
Audiences: Different Purposes
When you write,
it may seem like you're starting on a lonely journey: There's just
you and a blank sheet of paper or a black computer screen. Actually,
when you write you're never really alone! Instead, you're part of
a triangle of relationships that includes you, the writer, but also
your subject and your audience.
If you take
away the writer, there is no communicator; there is nothing for the
audience to read or listen to. If you take away the subject, the writer
has nothing to say, and the audience has nothing to read. Finally,
if you take away the audience, the writer has no one to talk to, leaving
him or her without any reason to communicate.
Meeting the needs
of your audience is therefore a big part of your reason for writing.
As you write for different audiences, you'll find that there are many
ways to meet their needs. For example, you can communicate with your
audience through observations, memories, explanations, and arguments.
To define which
of these strategies will best meet your readers' needs you need to
ask yourself some questions about your audience:
What level
of knowledge does your audience already have about your subject?
Does your
audience have the power to make changes regarding this subject?
Do they need
simply to be informed, or do they need to be called to action?
What do they
need to learn in order to understand the subject?
How will they
accept your message? Will they welcome it, or be resistant?
Exercise
In the
topic "Who Cares About the Audience?" in this manual, we asked
you to imagine being a student who wants his/her school to start
a homeless shelter. To argue in favor of your idea, you're writing
an essay for the school newspaper. Since you want your audience
to do something, to create a homeless shelter, your goal is
to persuade them and you need to move them to action. The following
exercise will teach you how targeting a different audience for
an argument affects the purpose of the writing in general.
Three
different potential audiences for an argument in favor of creating
a homeless shelter are (1) the student body, (2) the college
administration, and (3) community leaders. In the appropriate
text box below, write a sentence or two about the needs of each
audience your article will reach. Then
write a couple of sentences describing how your purpose for
writing would change with each audience. Once you have completed
one audience, click the enter button to see other possible answers
for that audience.
Student
Body
College
Administration
Community
Leaders
As you can see,
each audience has different interests and ideas. In order to address
each audience, you'll have to adjust the purpose of your essay. By
doing so, you'll speak to each group in the audience using terms that
are most meaningful and persuasive to them. Your
writing style also changes as you change your purpose. For example:
Your fellow
students might have a very limited knowledge of the issue of homelessness,
so you need to inform them about the problem, like a peer teacher.
Besides giving them good reasons for creating a homeless shelter,
you also want to call the students to action, so you need to construct
your argument so that it appeals to their emotions and stirs them
to act on behalf of the homeless population.
To address
college administrators you'll need to address them differently.
They are trained, mature professionals, so you'll want to speak
to them with logic, much like an academic argument, while providing
good reasons that their participation in a homeless shelter will
benefit the college and student body. You should assume that they
are experts on campus issues, and that they know something about
homelessness in the community. Your argument must be logical and
must demonstrate an understanding of the issue to be persuasive.
You'll want
to address the members of the community differently still. They
are less likely to be persuaded by a passionate rallying cry or
an academic-style argument then they are by a friendly, logical
argument which takes account of their local fears, values, and concerns.
This audience will need not only good reasons and emotional appeals,
but they will need to trust that you, the writer, has the right
intentions for asking that they participate in a homeless shelter.
The final argument
for each of the audiences above would have a slightly different purpose,
although the ultimate goal of creating a homeless shelter would remain
the same. Each argument would have to address the issues differently
to reach the different readers. [However, it is possible to address
all three audiences in one argument, as you will see in the lesson
called "Writing to Multiple Audiences."]
Summary
Different audiences change your purpose for writing,
because each audience has unique needs, interests, knowledge, and
positions of authority. If you want to speak to an audience in a way
that they will find convincing or persuasive, you must shape your
purpose to match their concerns and interests.
