PURPOSE

When I am not writing specifically for a class assignment, I have always struggled with the concept of audience. I have traditionally understood audience as the people who read what you write. But you don’t always know who is reading what you write… And if you don’t know who your audience is, how can you direct your voice to a specific audience?

The way someone (an audience) understands writing is dependent on “the context as he perceives it” (19). Unless you’re writing for a professor, or in response to a specific assignment, it is nearly impossible to figure out who your audience is. Take for example, a public Twitter profile. My close friends follow me on Twitter, my peers, my parents, my brother, my extended family, a couple of my teachers, and some people I don’t even know.

For most other situations outside of Twitter, to aid the fact that I don’t know who is reading my writing, or when, I construct an audience. I construct this audience using the knowledge I have about why I am writing to begin with. My constructed audience and my voice are largely dependent on my purpose for writing. Sometimes this purpose is to inform, critique, or to entertain. I construct my audience and choose my voice depending on what I want my message to be.

In trying to create a voice that my audience can “access, engage with, and interpret” (Voice), I try to play the roll of the person reading my writing from an outside perspective. I like to think that my ability to captivate an audience’s attention has gotten better since I’ve come to college. One night before I gave a presentation in high school, I did a practice run-through for my mom and she fell asleep while I was talking. Taking the role of an interpreter, or someone from an outside perspective, I can change my voice and my writing depending on how I want it to come across to an audience.