Audience Awareness

Objectives Define audience.

Explain the connection between audience and purpose.

Discuss the value of knowing one’s audience.

Discuss what type of information a writer should gather about his or her intended audience.

Briefly introduce techniques for locating and mining resources for audience information.

Compile questions to ask before writing.

List additional resources.

Audience

Simply put, audience is for whom you are

writing.

“Every writer can benefit from thinking carefully about who the audience is, what the audience already knowsor thinks, and what the audience needs and expects to find out.” –Andrea A. Lunsford

Purpose->Audience Awareness-> Target

To teach, to move, or to delight, a writer must consider what is necessary to achieve his or her goal(s).

Consider These Factors Demographic

information

Assumptions

Prior knowledge

Bias

Location! Location! Location! A writer will find information on his or her audience

through a variety of resources. He or she must take note of the source itself.

Remember the RHETORICAL APPEALS

Ethos: trustworthiness of the speaker

Pathos: values of the audience

Logos: logic used to support an argument

Tips:

1.Use a mnemonic

2. Think of campaigns

“ADvErtisinG’s FiFtEEn BAsiC AppEAls”

1 The need for sex

2. The need for affiliation

3~ The need to nurture

4. The need for guidance

5. The need to aggress

6. The need to achieve

7. The need to dominate

8. The need for prominence

9. The need for attention

10. The need for autonomy

11. The need to escape

12. The need to feel safe

13. The need for aesthetic sensations

14. The need to satisfy curiosity

15. Physiological needs: food, drink, sleep, etc.

Fowles, Jib. “Advertising's Fifteen Basic Appeals.” Common Culture: Reading and Writing About American Popular Culture. Ed. Michael Petracca and Madeleine Sorapure. Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall, 1998. Print.

Commercial Links

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-XceBQZXHk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FU1WAa5pDi0

Prewriting Questions For whom are you writing?

How interested will your reader(s) be in you topic?

How much prior knowledge will they bring to the text?

How does what you are writing directly and indirectly benefit your reader(s)?

For more information, use The St. Martin’s Handbook and Good Reasons with Contemporary Arguments