Audience

"Clear writing is universal. People talk about writing down to an audience or writing up to an audience; I think that's nonsense. If you write in a way that is clear, transparent, and elegant, it will reach everyone."

― Malcolm Gladwell

Writing for an Audience by Linda Flower

Linda Flower is professor of English at Carnegie-Mellon University, where she directed the Business Communication program for a number of years. She has been a leading researcher on the composing process, and the results of her investigations have shaped and informed her influential writing text Problem-Solving Strategies for Writing, now in its fifth edition (1999). In this selection, which is taken from that text, Flower’s focus is on audience – the people for whom we write. She believes that writers must establish a “common ground” between themselves and their readers, one that lessens their differences in knowledge, attitudes, and needs. Although we can never be certain who might read what we write, it is nevertheless important for us to have a target audience in mind. Many of the decisions that we make as writers are influenced by that real or imagined reader.

1) The goal of the writer is to create a momentary common ground between the reader and the writer. You want the reader to share your knowledge and your attitude toward that knowledge. Even if the reader eventually disagrees, you want him or her to be able for the moment to see things as you see them. A good piece of writing closes the gap between you and the reader.

ANALYZE YOUR AUDIENCE

2) The first step in closing that gap is to gauge the distance between the two of you. Imagine, for example, that you are a student writing your parents, who have always lived in New York City, about a wilderness survival expedition you want to go on over spring break. Sometimes obvious differences such as age or background will be important, but the critical differences for writers usually fall into three areas: the reader’s knowledge about the topic; his or her attitude toward it, and his or her personal or professional needs. Because these differences often exist, good writers do more than simply express their meaning; they pinpoint the critical differences between themselves and their reader and design their writing to reduce these differences. Let us look at these areas in more detail.

3) Knowledge. This is usually the easiest difference to handle. What does your reader need to know? What are the main ideas you hope to teach? Does your reader have enough background knowledge to really understand you? If not, what would he or she have to learn?

4) Attitudes. When we say a person has knowledge, we usually refer to his conscious awareness of explicit facts and clearly defined concepts. This kind of knowledge can be easily written down or told to someone else. However, much of what we “know” is not held in this formal, explicit way. Instead it is held as an attitude or image – as a loose cluster of associations. For instance, my image of lakes includes associations many people would have, including fishing, water skiing, stalled outboards, and lots of kids catching night crawlers with flashlights. However, the most salient or powerful parts of my image, which strongly color my whole attitude toward lakes, are thoughts of cloudy skies, long rainy days, and feeling generally cold and damp. By contrast, one of my best friends has a very different cluster of associations: to him a lake means sun, swimming, sailing, and happily sitting on the end of a dock. Needless to say, our differing images cause us to react quite differently to a proposal that we visit a lake. Likewise, one reason people often find it difficult to discuss religion and politics is that terms such as “capitalism” conjure up radically different images.

5) As you can see, a reader’s image of a subject is often the source of attitudes and feelings that are unexpected and, at times, impervious to mere facts. A simple statement that seems quite persuasive to you, such as “Lake Wampago would be a great place to locate the new music camp,” could have little impact on your reader if he or she simply doesn’t visualize a lake as a “great place.” In fact, many people accept uncritically any statement that fits in with their own attitudes – and reject, just as uncritically, anything that does not.

6) Whether your purpose is to persuade or simply to present your perspective, it helps to know the image and attitudes that your reader already holds. The more these differ from your own, the more you will have to do to make him or her see what you mean.

7) Needs. When writers discover a larger gap between their own knowledge and attitudes and those of the reader, they usually try to change the reader in some way. Needs, however, are different. When you analyze a reader’s needs, it is so that you, the writer, can adapt to him. If you ask a friend majoring in biology how to keep your fish tank from clouding, you don’t want to hear a textbook recitation on the life processes of algae. You except a friend to adapt his or her knowledge and tell you exactly how to solve your problem.

8) The ability to adapt your knowledge to the needs of the reader is often crucial to your success as a writer. This is especially true in writing done on a job. For example, as producer of a public affairs program for a television station, 80 percent of your time may be taken up planning the details of new shows, contacting guests, and scheduling the taping sessions. But when you write a program proposal to the station director, your job is show how the program will fit into the cost guidelines, the FCC requirements for relevance, and the overall programming plan for the station. When you write that report your role in the organization changes from producer to proposal writer. Why? Because your reader needs that information in order to make a decision. He may be interested in your scheduling problems and the specific content of the shows, but he reads your report because of his own needs as station director of the organization. He has to act.

9) In college, where the reader is also a teacher, the reader’s needs are a little less concrete but just as important. Most papers are assigned as a way to teach something. So the real purpose of a paper may be for you to make connections between historical periods, to discover for yourself the principle behind a laboratory experiment, or to develop and support your own interpretation of a novel. A good college paper doesn’t just rehash the facts; it demonstrates what your reader, as a teacher, needs to know – that you are learning the thinking skills his or her course is trying to teach.

10) Effective writers are not simply expressing what they know, like a student madly filling up an examination blue book. Instead they are using their knowledge: reorganizing, maybe even rethinking their ideas to meet the demands of an assignment or the needs of their reader.