Introduction to Audience

What is Audience?

The term 'audience' is a very general term, but is mainly defined as any group or persons who receive communication. Derek Ross (2013) writes in his journal that "[t]hey are 'flesh-and-blood individuals who buy, open, and read any printed materials'" (Goodwin, 1991, as cited in Ross, 2013, p. 96) and have "values, beliefs, perspectives, knowledge, authorities, politics, expectations, and constraints than enable or limit their ability to read and use technical documents" (Bosley, 1994, as cited in Ross, 2013, p. 96). It's important to note that while we may think of audience as one large collective, that they are people who have their own biases, ideologies and so forth, and that their opinions are to be taken into consideration when making a piece of technical communication.

Example of Audience in Technical Communications

Here we can see two different models from the same laptop manufacturer. One is built for a business oriented audience and the other is built for a gaming consumer audience. Both are Dell laptops, but are marketed much differently. The most obvious difference between the two product pages is what the authors chose to key in and feature with each laptop. The main aspects featured on the business laptop involve keywords like 'security' and 'reliability' while the gaming one keys in on 'power' and 'twitch-ready'. In fact many of the key words used are great examples of how audience is implemented in technical writing, such as the very heavy use of techie sounding words like 'cryo-tech' or 'intuitive immersion'.

Introduction to Audience

Summary of Research on Audience

References for Audience