Audience

A writer’s purpose may be thought of as the why of the text. A writer must also think about who the audience is. A writer’s audience is the people who will be reading or hearing the message. The audience could be young or old, rich or poor, powerful or vulnerable, male or female or nonbinary. The audience could also be a mix of these. The audience will likely have both shared and unique values, needs, and backgrounds.

Targeting Your Message

The exigence and purpose for writing an argument are intertwined with the intended audience. To get a message across, you need to understand and assess the target of your message. The easiest way to assess an audience is to look closely at their values. People usually make decisions about what they do and say based on the principles they value most. Consider their beliefs, their history or background, and their needs and desires.  

Taking these things into account, a writer will be able to make decisions about what to say and how to say it—decisions that will make the argument reach its intended audience. This skill is at the heart of “rhetoric,” as the famous Greek philosopher Aristotle explained it: “. . .the faculty of observing, in any given case, the available means of persuasion.” The more a writer takes the audience into account, the more tools that writer has available to make a persuasive argument.

Consider how audience influences a writer’s choices by looking on the next page at the two different text message conversations a student might have on a Friday night. Notice that the facts are the same in each exchange—the student doesn’t lie to her mom. The reactions and content of the different exchanges are “adjusted,” though, based on the two different audiences. In this example, the mom values the daughter’s safety above all and the daughter knows it, so she is certain to give a detailed response to her mom’s first question. In the second conversation, Izzy values her friendship and having fun and the student knows it, so she reacts accordingly with excitement and anticipation. 

If the student above gave all of the facts to her mom, including Julio’s interest in her, then the exchange may have turned into an argument. Instead,  without lying, the daughter made strategic communication choices knowing what would concern her mother. While writers generate their ideas and positions from their own values and concerns, they also take the values and concerns of their audience seriously, a key strategy for persuasion.

Remember: An audience of a text has shared as well as individual beliefs, values, needs, and backgrounds. 

Crucial Vocabulary

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