other publications

The Audience: Not Just Mom and Dad

Kimberly Birkland

In the journey from learning how to write your name in kindergarten to the time you hand in your final paper for your Grade 12 English class, you have had words of encouragement and support from your family and friends. You may feel confident in your skills as a writer and are excited at the prospect of receiving straight A's for the papers you will be writing as a college student. But then it is like a swift kick to the gut when your first paper is returned by your university professor and your grade is a C+. The notations and comments on the paper validate that your idea was insightful, the content was well researched, and grammatically you need to work on your comma splices. But the comments also point out that you have alienated your potential audience because the paper outlined a proposal to improve conditions in retirement homes and the language you have used is too informal.

You have just made the proverbial transition from the fast food industry of high school writing to the fine dining of university writing. Material that was considered excellent in high school is now possibly only mediocre in college. What exactly can you do differently to ensure that when writing for your various classes you are not alienating your readers? Well, that's a question that poses problems for many students for the simple fact that there are such a variety of opinions on the subject of who the paper is being written for. William Zinsser observes that

[Soon] after you confront the matter of preserving your identity, another question will occur to you: Who am I writing for? It's a fundamental question, and it has a fundamental answer: You are writing for yourself. Don't try to visualize the great mass audience. There is no such audience - every reader is a different person. Don't try to guess what sort of thing editors want to publish or what you think the country is in a mood to read. Editors and readers don't know what they want to read until they read it. Besides, they're always looking for something new... (27).

This advice is helpful if your desire is to write a narrative, but in regards to writing research papers or feature articles, you have to make a conscious decision to write for a specific audience. Before students pick an audience to write for, they need to understand the relevance and importance of their subject to their readers.

Historically, "[the] word audience has long been familiar as the collective term for the receivers...[and there] is an established discourse in which audience simply refers to the readers of, viewers of, listeners to one or other media channel or of this or that type of content or performance" (McQuail 1). There are several specific types of audience:

1. You, the writer: when writing for yourself there is a freedom that is not always present when writing for others; you pretty much have carte blanche.

2. The Professor will certainly have specific expectations of you and more than likely will want you to conform to certain guidelines.

3. Gender Specific: if writing a paper for a feminism class, you would not want to come at it from a strong male point-of-view. Similarly, for a feature article on a major sporting event, you would not want to make comparisons between the quarterback trying for a touchdown and a jaunt to the mall during the holiday season.

4. Family: last but not least, sometimes writers are influenced by the fact that their families might, or will, read what they've written and tone it down so as not to offend. (Davis)

There are obviously more types of audience than listed above, but for all intents and purposes, these will suffice as a guideline to follow when picking an audience. Another important factor to remember when assessing your audience: you must make some decisions first because that knowledge "can affect the content of your writing" (Agee 214). As outlined in The Basic Writer's Book, there are certain questions - expansions of the principles behind the basic types of audience listed above - to ask yourself when exploring audience:

1. What is the personal background of this audience? (age, sex, social status, education, religious and political affiliation, professional or work experience, etc.)

2. How much does this audience already know about the subject of my writing?

3. What else does this audience particularly need to know about this subject?

4. How favorably or unfavorably does the audience feel about the subject? Or is the audience neutral on the subject?

5. What is the audience's relationship to me, the writer? Am I writing to my peers or to those superior or inferior to me in some way? (older/younger, more/less educated, more/less experienced) Does the audience know me personally?

6. In general, what response do I want from this audience?

By answering these questions, you will narrow down the information you have researched for your paper until only the important material remains. You will have a more focused idea of what kind of language you should use (formal/informal), and a better idea of how you will go about organizing your work (Agee 215).

Some solid reasons to care about who your potential audience will include your desire to inform others about a particular subject, or explain the why's and how's of an unfamiliar topic, or maybe you are trying to persuade your readers into believing or doing something. Possibly, you are also writing about the exploration of ideas and 'truths' in order to get a better understanding of your topic and to see if the process of writing the paper has not only changed the reader's opinion, but your own as well. Entertainment might be your only motive, but after you have engaged the audience and while still maintaining the level of entertainment value, you have the wonderful opportunity to educate and teach as well. (Reid 18)

Now that you have a better understanding of why choosing an audience is essential to a successful paper and how to go about choosing that audience, you now need to know how to engage the reader. Most importantly, you need to have an opening sentence or paragraph that grabs their attention. Once you've got their attention, you need to keep it, and here are some things to keep in mind when writing your paper:

1. Work the common ground: essentially, all this means is that you lead in with information the audience is familiar with before taking them on an adventure into unfamiliar territory (Ballenger 187).

2. Put people on the page: ideas come alive when we see how they operate in the world we live in; so, if you are writing about humankind, you should write about humans (189).

3. Use case studies: by using examples involving real people, as opposed to hypothetical subject A and B, you can inject a more personal flavour into your paper that will entice the audience to see it through until the end (189).

4. Use interviews: this is another strong way to bring people to the page and you should try to look for opportunities to do so throughout your paper (190).

5. Write a strong ending: readers remember beginnings and endings, or conclusions as they are generally referred to. For a formal research paper a strong ending can be a straightforward summary. But for a less formal research essay, the conclusion could be general or specific - you could go either way (190).

"In some ways, the conclusion of your research paper is the last stop on your journey; the reader has traveled far with you to get there. The most important quality of a good ending is that it should add something to your paper. If it doesn't, cut it and write a new one" (191).

There is a pitfall to writing for an audience not always foreseen by inexperienced writers, and that is the simple fact that the evolution of the audience has necessitated the evolution of the material presented to them. People are constantly being bombarded with information from a variety of media and writers have to be even more creative in order to engage the audience and keep their interest. With advances in technology, the pressure increases for writers to be more inventive and exciting. With each new video game or movie that hits the big screen, the desire to sit and read a book diminishes for every child who logs onto a computer.

Paul Virilio makes an insightful observation on the ever-increasing popularity of hyperspace when he says that "[nothing] is ever obtained without a loss of something else. What will be gained from electronic information and electronic communication will necessarily result in a loss somewhere else" (Speed and Information 2). The question remains, where will this loss manifest itself, and will the general public even be aware of it? "Here lies a new and major risk for humanity stemming from multimedia and computers" (Virilio 2), one that writers should acknowledge. Or, as Shawn Wilbur points out, when "[reading] the work of Jean Baudrillard...or Paul Virilio, one often has the sense of having missed something terribly important - some quiet apocalypse which we may sense, but never quite recall. The 'when it all changed'...remains elusive" (Dromologies 1). Competition for your reader's attention can be intense, and it's important to know when you've said your piece so you can move on.

Bibliography

Agee, Anne and Gary Kline. The Basic Writer's Book. 2nd Ed. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1985.

Ballenger, Bruce. The Curious Researcher. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 2001.

Davis, Walter A. Get The Guests. Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press: 1994.

McQuail, Denis. Audience Analysis. London: SAGE Publishers, 1997.

Reid, Stephen, Enid Gossin and Susan Stancer. The Prentice Hall Guide For Student Writers. Toronto, Prentice- Hall, 2002.

Virilio, Paul. "Speed and Information: Cyberspace Alarm!" August 1995. CTheory (http://www.ctheory.net/printer.asp?id=72) 11 Nov. 2002.

Wilbur, Shawn. "Dromologies: Paul Virilio: Speed, Cinema, and the End of the Political State." 1994. (http://www.wcnet.org/~swilbur/culture/dromologies.html) 11 Nov. 2002

Zinsser, William. On Writing Well. 4th Ed. New York: Harper Collins, 1990.

© Kimberly Birkland 2002
Fair Dealing applies

© Dr. Marshall Soules, Malaspina University-College, 2007