Writers and the audiences they write for

TORDA'S SPRING 2021 TEACHING SITE

Writers and the audiences they write for

3/16/2022

This week, the readings are split between how writing creates audiences and writers and how writers and audiences create writing. Complicated as that idea is to begin with, the act of imagining audiences and ourselves as writer is. complicated by the myriad forces that influence those acts of creation.

As you post your reading response this week, react to and critique the idea of "audience" and the role it plays in the creation of text, and, to think of it another way, the creation of writers (or at least the writer's sense of who they are as they are writing--their identity). The different scholars this week, (Ede & Lunsford, Moffatt, Elbow, the various scholars in Threshold Concepts , and Villanueva) give us plenty to think about, ideas that expand, complicate, muddle, and develop the roles of readers and writers in relationship to text production.

11 Comments

Sarah Bond

3/20/2022 05:29:57 am

As Professor Torda has remarked more than once, the academic essay is a peculiar piece of writing, one that has no real place in broader discourse. Clark comments that one reason is, when asked, most students see their teacher as their only real audience (109), yet their essays invoke a third, ambiguous reader rather than represent honest academic discourse. This is because the purpose of student writing is to demonstrate understanding, not to persuade their teachers or peers of a particular perspective or ideology. Honestly, I’m ok with this reality. I encourage free-writing and provide time for private reflection and journaling, but students spend the vast majority of that time solidifying bad habits in conventions and twiddling their metaphorical thumbs. Truly valuable private writing happens, well, privately, and with independent initiative. Other than the few students who actually respond and benefit from such exercises in expressivism (again, I realize their age is a factor), I am attempting to model this valuable heuristic of invention and discovery. More often, though, I read their essays to assess their understanding and to evaluate their skills, in an effort to prepare them for their next audiences (Knoll’s concept of a broader discourse community), but Elbow’s warning is not lost on me. He strongly advises teachers, as the primary audience of their students, to embrace the role of reader, rather than mere critic. In this way, a classroom model can provide a real and relatable audience without squashing student initiative through intimidation.

Elbow’s essay further explores audience awareness as it relates to student weaknesses in writing. He argues that students’ lack of information and context (Piagetian), as well as their underdeveloped ideas (Vygotskian), are both audience-related; this provides a new way to teach “error” as a disruption of meaning. In other words, when student writing lacks cohesion, students can reflect on where and when they lost sight of their audience, whether self or other. In a classroom context, students are learning to “focus the audience’s attention” (Killingsworth), which is a high calling in a scrolling society. Among the many transferable skills we can hope to teach our students, writing with intent and precision is among the most practical. Teaching students the value of writing first for themselves, as they generate ideas, and then for a reader, even if it’s merely their teacher and peers, promotes a balanced understanding of language as both inventive and communicative.

Student writing also solidifies identity. As much as my own 8th grade students spend hours of each day “figuring themselves out” via social media, they are deeply concerned with their academic identities. Roozen argues that we write with certain skills to develop a sense of who we are. I see this tension in my students. They sometimes express frustration with creative writing, because they feel it can’t earn them academic capital and must be convinced of its value. They want to become part of a broader conversation. Surely this is the phenomenon we’re all witnessing and experiencing on social media. People are eager to develop their sense of self through posts that engage an assumed and essentially unknown audience in order to participate in a broader discourse community. The classroom allows us the opportunity to slow down this process, to understand the devastating implications of hurrying through private, reflective discourse, and to consider the actual audience we hope to reach, rather than the impossibly vast and impossible-to-please digital world.

Olivia Limoncelli

3/20/2022 12:20:03 pm

It is interesting to me that we do encourage our students to write for the "audience" when that audience is usually us! We ask them to imagine who will be reading their paper and what the purpose should then be. I feel that part of this is an issue, because although the goal is to write something that will appeal to and please others, isn't the goal to also write for our own pleasure? To write something that we enjoy? So then do we write for an audience or for ourselves and those with common interests? Elbow actually mentions something related to this arguing that "weak writing can help us in the end to better writing than we would have written if we'd kept readers in mind from the start" (p 111). Clarke therefore mentions that this focus on the audience can also lead to writer's block. Similarly, Ong asks the question, "Who do I choose as my audience?" rather than "Who is my audience?" (p 113). I think the idea is then that we do choose who we write for and with that in mind, it is merely an unconscious habit when we write.
On another note, writing is so personal that although an audience is considered, it isn't the focus. I feel that thinking for the audience will also hold back your ideas and things you would not write for a specific group. In many of my own writing classes, I felt that I held back because I knew the views of the class or teacher. Peter Elbow argues that ignoring the audience leads to better writing and I agree (p 131). He says there is something too "staged" about writing for an audience. This is a perfect word to describe my thoughts on this. You write to please that set of readers, so some of it is fabricated or completing fake in order to make that audience happy. This also relates back to setting a prompt for student writers. If they are unfamiliar with or uninterested in a specific prompt, then the only answer is to make it up. If it gets the assignment done and if they get a decent grade, then that's what they care about at the end of the day. As the writer, this isn't fair because it doesn't really help strengthen their writing. They are also not writing out of pleasure, but being forced to. When we relate this back to Tony Scott's text on "identity" and "ideology" within writing, we can see it is crucial. To get the most authentic writing, it must interest the writer. Victor Villanueva talks about the different identities we have as writers and I think this is also interesting. Depending on who you are writing for, you write with a specific tone and voice. Again, we appeal to a specific audience naturally.

Melissa Batty

3/20/2022 07:15:28 pm

The mitigating factors surrounding how one considers audience regarding writing are diverse and complex, not to mention, their existence since the beginning of rhetoric. Central in considering audience is whether students can separate their writing and themselves as writers, from the one audience they feel inherently matters, the educator. As Reid and Kroll argue, the relationship between student writer and educator is imperative to the student because the grade that their writing produces comes from the educator alone; therefore, students are not capable of understanding the nuances of audience outside of the classroom. This becomes particularly troublesome when one reviews the argument by Kevin Roozen which states that writing forms the identity that determines how one interacts within one’s communities –– this becomes troublesome if the community of the classroom differs from one’s own and the course’s curriculum marginalizes the student because of its predisposition for colonial structures within English and writing. Villanueva Jr. posits that this stems from internal colonialism or his view on hybridity; when a student scholastically mimics what they believe the audience wants in their text because that is what their systemic institutions teach is appropriate both culturally and linguistically.

Yancey believes that writing enforces an identity. This correlates with Roozen and Villanueva’s belief that audience may then become oppressive to writers; as audience asserts dominance over writer and text, it “Others” a student producing texts that are representational of what they deem academic, and not a true expression of their authorship or identity. Villanueva Jr. argues that power dynamics reign supreme over writing. If this is the case, students must navigate how an audience grasps contextual power over their text and in what ways they as students avoid rhetorical mimicry. Students need to develop ideologies representative of knowledge systems they learn within their communities, or spaces of safety. Peter Elbow’s argument of ignoring the audience altogether appears to neutralize the role of the colonizing audience. This is especially true during the beginning processes of writing and for First Year Students, who learn to separate their ideas and arguments from the constraints of “good” writing, or Eurocentric beliefs relating to syntax and grammar.

Although all the articles speak to the role of audience pertaining to both writers and texts, the difficulty lies within creating classrooms that teach students how to do this affectively and without colonial implications. Elbow’s assertion seems to reign supreme amongst perspectives of audience whether they are of reality, fiction, cognitive, or “universal discourse.” Educators need to place less focus on the audience in the beginning. There is a time and place for audience, it seems that is when the writer is already confident with their identity –– when one is willing to let the audience read their text, it is not in judgement, but for review. If a student writes the beginning stages of their text without worrying about what the educator or outside audience may think, they are more likely to develop a strong self of identity as it pertains to their academic goals and beyond. When Elbow speaks to the importance of ignoring the audience when first writing, he is speaking to the act of students “un-Othering” themselves from ideologies that suit the status quo of colonial educational systems.

Ashley Merola

3/20/2022 09:18:48 pm

This week, the scholars from the readings come to a general consensus about audience: that writers have a tremendous responsibility to recognize the impact it has on their identities and the texts they compose. The task proves significantly difficult for secondary students according to Clark; she believes they see the audience as “the teacher who will evaluate their work and assign a grade,” leading them to “omit necessary explanations… [or] address the teacher directly” in their writing (Clark 115-116). However, I do not think she gives students enough credit here. From my experience teaching high school English, I would argue that their ability to consider the consequences of audience on the creation of their text depends on how the instructor designs their writing assignments. Clark, drawing on the work of Peter Elbow, finds fighting student assumptions about audience to be most successful when teachers wait to address them, since students who are too aware of their audience while writing their first drafts “may experience writer’s block” (Clark 112). She further recommends that teachers focus on audience during the revision stage by requiring their students to identify who their readers are, what they know, and what they want them to know (Clark 124). This approach toward audience awareness does not align with my understanding of how to best support student writing. For example, RAFT activities that ask students to describe their role, audience, format, and topic before writing often help them feel ready to start the drafting stage, especially those who benefit from extra scaffolding. Such strategies demonstrate how, with the right tools from their teachers, students can handle the responsibility to recognize how audience affects what they write.

Similarly, students must develop an awareness of how audience affects who they are as writers. Villanueva Jr.’s article, “Maybe a Colony: And Still Another Critique of the Comp Community,” speaks to this task. He draws a connection between identity and the concept of internal colonialism, or hybridity, which “tends to include the cultural mimicry that the other is forced to undergo before creative transcendence is allowed expression” (Villanueva Jr. 995). His explanation of how hybridity plays a part in a writer’s search for selfhood echoes Inoue’s words about the white racial habitus. Both scholars seek to expose how certain conventions of Standardized Edited American English (SEAE) make students of color feel as if they have to change who they are in order to meet their society’s criteria for success. Like Inoue, Villanueva Jr. claims “we are still colonial schools” with “curricula that aim at achieving… an assimilation that best serves the needs of those who hold power” (996). I agree with his critical approach to audience, as it challenges the assimilationist attitudes that restrain young writers from reaching - and exceeding - their potential. By encouraging their students to become more conscious of how audience affects both identity and text, teachers can thus contribute to culturally-responsible efforts toward educational equity in their communities, all while improving their writing instruction.

Maura Geoghegan

3/21/2022 08:08:22 am

The relationship between writers, writing, and audience is a complicated one as shown by each of the readings for this week. Audience can play an important role in the creation of text, but similar to Peter Elbow’s argument, I don’t think it should be the most prominent or significant concern of the writer, especially a K-12 writer. Knowing your audience can help strengthen your argument, appeals made, or styles used, but the writer can’t then control how their work is received. Writers can’t control what their audience thinks, how they read a text, or how they react (Clark 121). The writer can only control their writing and how they are articulating their point or expressing their ideas. Audience can be an important aspect to consider, but it should not be the first consideration for students. They should focus first on the expression and clarity of their ideas.

Sometimes having a specific audience in mind can help a student articulate their point, but oftentimes “if writers are too aware of their audience, they may experience writer’s block” (Clark 112) or “the awareness [of audience] disturbs or disrupts our writing and thinking” (Elbow 130). Placing too much emphasis or focus on writing to an audience can make the already challenging task of writing more difficult. Students might have difficulty balancing the act of figuring out what they want to say alongside how they should say it to their audience. I agree with Elbow’s suggestion that in order to effectively tackle each part, students should consider their audience in the revision process after they have figured out what they want to say in their writing. Although this may lead to what some may consider poor writing at first, it will ultimately lead to stronger revisions since students will be able to take their ideas and then revise for style and word choice in order to connect with an intended audience.

Another complication with considering audience that Clark points out is that considering the audience for school related writing is often inauthentic since the teacher will always be the one ultimately reading and assessing their work (109). Even if students are told to write for a specific audience, they are still aware that the teacher will be the one reading and grading it even if others read it. This creates a “reader-writer relationship that is unlike any communication in the real world” and doesn’t effectively prepare students for college writing assignments (Clark 115).

Placing too much of an emphasis on audience can also damage a student’s identity as a writer. If students are overly concerned with their audience, then they will struggle to develop their own identities and voices as writers. Elbow’s claim that writer-based prose is often better than reader-based prose supports this because “sometimes freewriting is stronger than the essays [teachers] get because it is expressive, narrative, or descriptive writing and the student was not constrained by a topic [or argument]” (Elbow 131). Villanueva also points out that a writer’s identity will never truly be realized if they are required and expected to write in a language that is not their own. A multicultural perspective needs to be embraced in order to allow student’s authentic selves to come through in their writing.

Alyssa Campbell

3/21/2022 06:13:46 pm

In reading Victor Villanueva Jr. 's "Maybe Another Colony," I found myself drawn to the line "I want us to complicate our thinking about multiculturalism" (p.992). I kept thinking about how complex any one person and their sense of identity, beliefs, values, opinions, thought processes, interests, dislikes, etc. are. People are so much more than one or two labels would cover, and yet, we as human beings tend to fit people into neat compartmentalized boxes.

I think the idea of human complexity is something that Tony Scott is grappling with, too. He writes, “Writing also functions as a means of displaying our identities. Through the writing we do, we claim, challenge, perhaps even contest and resist, our alignment with the beliefs, interests, and values of the communities with which we engage'' (p.51). The concept of writer, then, is that the writer exists in tandem with a person outside of that identity of the writer, that thinks and feels these things as well. They are only shared when that person puts pen to paper or fingers to keys and makes the thoughts in their brain something that anyone could access. I also see how this means that in some ways a writer is a creator. They are creating a new identity and new beliefs and new thoughts as they express and articulate something about a topic that they had not previously discussed. Even in the act of me typing this response to the reading, I am forming a new sense of opinion and a new hint of identity in how I articulate myself on this point.

Writing and finding the audience is an altogether meta experience and concept. In Clark’s work, I keep coming back to her insistence that students must understand audience to be something other than the evaluator…yet, writing is almost always done in school in such a way that the student is writing to the evaluator and not another audience. I remember hearing “remember your audience” and assumed often that the teacher simply meant to use proper grammar and spelling, professional vocabulary, and not to swear or use “I” or “we.” I didn’t think that when I interacted with the world through a written document, I was also making it possible for a conversation to begin. I put a thought into the world, good or bad, well-articulated or not, and someone that was not just my teacher could have theoretically responded the same way I responded to the thoughts of others who had already responded before me and so on.

Thinking about how I teach writing now, I definitely want to implement at least one of Clark’s strategies for having students understand audience as a concept. I understand the challenge, and see why I myself was confused growing up as well. I also see and understand the shortcomings of every strategy teachers have for explaining it to their students; it makes me want to find a way, a better way, to show them how exactly they are entering a communicational portal way beyond themselves, their words, and their teacher reading it and grading it.

Brian Seibert

3/22/2022 07:48:47 am

The concept of an audience is often overlooked in writing, especially among students in the K-12 grades. Writers at the collegiate level struggle with the audience as well, even though they are more experienced and have learned more skills. Most students only write in the classroom setting with their teacher being their audience. In Irene Clark’s chapter, “Audience,” she says, “Students think of ‘audience’ only in terms of the teacher who will grade their work and lack awareness of how of how audience affects other aspects of a text, such as purpose, form, style, and genre” (109). They write what they assume teachers are looking for. Teachers are looking for proof that students understood the assignment rather than introducing new ideas into certain discourses. Even if teachers guide students to consider their audience, they will unlikely understand what that means unless they demonstrate how to write to their audience.

As a teacher and a student, I have experienced writing from both ends. I agree that my audience was always the instructor when composing essays. I was just trying to prove that I understood the prompt or assignment. This continued to be the case throughout college as well. When teaching my students to write, I mention audience briefly, but it is rarely the main focus. Unfortunately, that stifles creativity and invention. Clark quotes Paretti as saying, “The teacher is always the wrong audience with the wrong needs and the wrong goals” (115). Meaning, writing in the classroom is inauthentic. Students do not have a real life reason to write about.

Teachers can instruct students to imagine a specific audience they are writing to, but that is a difficult expectation to uphold. One way for students to do this, like Clark details, is to create a character who has a strong opinion of a topic. They can engage in a dialogue with that character, which is beneficial for a few reasons. It will help generate ideas, it shows they can recognize another point of view, and there is a different audience other than the teacher. This is a great, innovative idea. Most students I have taught are able to effectively create characters who interact with other characters in narrative writing. This concept of character creation is new to them in expository or argument writing.

In the section titled “Writers’ Histories, Processes, and Identities Vary,” Kathleen Blake Yancey reminds us that everyone has their own experiences and identities that influence their ideas, which manifest themselves in the writing. Teachers who want writing to be uniform across grade levels tend to have difficulty with this concept. Although students in the lower grades can benefit from uniform writing, students in high school or college should be encouraged to experiment and invent. My school has been discussing program changes for the next school year and one of the most controversial is teaching writing. We have discussed whether we want to keep our current writing program, adopt a new one, or just create our own. A decision has not been made, but whatever choice we go with will be uniform across grade level and the school. Furthermore, the program will be the same in the middle school as it is in the elementary school. Therefore, students will build their skills and improve writing as they progress through each grade. From what I have observed, this method has not been as effective as it could be, but I hope it will improve with whatever decision the English department chooses.

Matthew Cutter

3/22/2022 10:02:48 am

Audience plays a large role in the creation of text. Our audience as writers should always be at the forefront. The most important thing about audience is that our writing can shift based on what we perceive our audience to be. For example, my students will craft writing to turn in to me that is far different than text that they may craft for their friends. This is where we can look at audience creating the writer as well. When we think about our audience, it inevitably shapes what we write.

One of the interesting things about audience is that certain audiences we ask our students to write for are rooted in colonial ideals. The typical “academic audience” that we generally prompt our students to write for is rooted in white European culture. As a profession, teachers have been trying to make their curriculum multicultural and invite marginalized groups in. Villanueva says this about the challenge of multiculturalism, “I want us to complicate our thinking about multiculturalism. I want us to consider the multicultural in terms of its effects on literary practices, literacy as the teaching of reading and writing and rhetoric… I want us to consider the possibility That a colonial sensibility remains for us in the United States - in America - and America’s people of color are most affected by that sensibility” (Villanueva 992). Villanueva is expressing the fact that education and writing in the USA is still very much rooted in a white colonial view. If we want true multiculturalism, we need to start thinking about the assessments we give our students and start building them to be more multicultural. Part of this will be making an effort to vary the audiences that we ask our students to write for.

Kayleigh Holt

3/22/2022 12:28:37 pm

When I began looking at the topic of the readings for this week I realized that when I thought about “audience” in relation to writing, I myself did not have a satisfactory explanation of whom that term is referring to. I speak with my students about “audience”, particularly in conjunction with our discussions of word choice or diction, but I’ve found that my explanation often feels far too vague. Students are writing for this nameless and faceless “audience”, but it is difficult to truly conceive of who your writing might be addressing, especially when writing in the classroom. Beyond that, something that I have found in my own classroom that Clark spoke of in her chapter, is that if my students are writing a piece for school the only “audience” they think of is me as the teacher. It is often difficult to get students to take their idea of who the audience is one step further beyond the classroom. Thereby leading to issues such as students omitting details that really should be included in their piece as they assume that the teacher already knows that information. It also can lead to issues in tone, as students don’t think of their work as being of consequence to anyone outside the teacher and student themselves.

Something that the readings spoke to is the nebulousness of the “audience” in writing that is meant for the internet. Whether that be on social media, or an article that is posted online, there is truly no way of knowing the full extent of who is part of the audience for that piece of writing. That uncertainty is something that our students live with daily and it honestly may be a factor in why it feels so difficult in defining a set “audience” to write for when we are doing so at school. One strategy that Clark mentioned as a way to lead students to thinking about and defining an audience that I really liked was having them create a fictional character that they then need to engage in a dialogue with regarding their paper. This is something that I can see my students enjoying, while it would also lead them to thinking about their audience in a far more concrete way, shift it from just being the teacher as the audience, and also allow them to self-reflect and produce new ideas.

Megan

3/22/2022 02:53:58 pm

In the United States there is a traditional formula to creating writers in the literacy classroom. Instruction is rooted in white American ideals which demands students from each background to speak and write in a similar way. Part of this is considering one’s audience and speaking to them in a persuasive tone which will convince them to support the text’s central argument. It is essential to practice argumentative and persuasive writing, but it should be practiced with a multicultural mindset. When we keep our audience in mind as writers, we must reflect the society we are in today.
In “Maybe a Colony”, Villanueva speaks of how the literacy classroom’s demands go against what we want to attain from a multicultural environment. “When we demand a certain language, a certain dialect, and a certain rhetorical manner in using that dialect and language, we seem to be working counter to the cultural multiplicity that we seek” (992). Villanueva reminds us that it is essential to keep our audience in mind not only as writers, but as instructors. If literacy classrooms are not structured in a way that invites different dialects and expressions of language, they will fail to go against the oppressive nature of our nation. Without big structural changes in our literacy classrooms, such as the ones that Inoue proposes, we will not reach the inclusive classroom we aspire to achieve. Villanueva argues that traditional ways of teaching literacy force specific language patterns on to America’s people of color. Colonialism is still alive in society and literacy classrooms today. This must be in our minds as we address audiences in our writing, as colonialism impacts students of color academically and personally. It influences how students view themselves, their voice, and how others view them. This can impact how they write, as they attempt to check all the boxed of the traditional American view of literacy.
While audience is important, it is not the only factor which guides the writing process. Literacy classrooms should also encourage students to write for themselves, since there is not one audience that can determine whether a piece of writing is good or worthy. The more practice students have writing for themselves the more authentic their voice be throughout both their academic and personal work.
In Tony Scott’s “Writing Enacts and Creates Identities and Ideologies”, he explores how writers are “socialized, changed, through their writing in new environments”. What I found most impactful from Scott’s article was his conclusion where there are two guiding questions: “What is being said and what is left unsaid?”. These questions are essential for all students, instructors, and writers to keep in mind, regardless of the makeup of their audience. There must be an acknowledgement of which groups are being represented in or oppressed by the content of a piece of writing. Just those two simple questions can bring about such valuable conversations, that have not been traditionally encouraged in the classroom.

Shauna Cascarella Briggs

3/22/2022 03:00:54 pm

I am instantly drawn to the idea of audience writing, as I approach my final units of the year and expect my students to be writing larger essays than they maybe have before and one which specifically asks them to identify a specific audience for which they are writing. The readings for today bring about an interesting point about writing to an audience and the development of identities when writing. Tony Scott made the statement that “Writing is always ideological because discourses and instances of language use do not exist independently from cultures and their ideologies” (48). This then allows for the assumption that our audience is either: people who share identities with us, or those who oppose our identities. Kevin Roozen addresses this in saying that: “Writing also functions as a means of displaying our identities. Through the writing we do, we claim, challenge, perhaps even contest and resist, our alignment with the beliefs, interests, and values of the communities with which we engage” (51). The assumption there is that the audience will engage with a work either to further support their own identities, or to engage in opposing discourse. This all ties in with one of my favorite pedagogical ideas I have read this semester:

Compositionist James Berlin: “In his taxonomies of epistemological assumptions about writing, he provides essentially three conceptions of how writing can be seen to work: as reflection, a mirror of an objective reality; as intentional, conveying what an author intends so that the reader’s job is to discern that intention; or as constructed, so that there is a negotiation within the reader between his or her own worldviews and the perceived worldviews of the writer” (Villanueva 58).

The higher level thinking skills it requires for students to write to an audience with this kind of deep psychological understanding of their own work and process is endlessly fascinating. While I don’t always believe that it is important to state or otherwise narrow down an audience, the concept of writing to this is intriguing in the classroom. Although I do not know if it is possible in K-12 education. As Irene Clark says: “a writers ability to consider the ideas and views of others — that is, to move beyond the egocentricity of early childhood — reflected a more developed form of thinking” (Clark 111). I don’t believe K-12 students have that ability to move beyond the egocentricity of early childhood, and so it may be a stretch to ask them to consider their audience when writing.

Writers and the audiences they write for

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