The Evolution of Audience in Composition Theories And

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THE EVOLUTION OF AUDIENCE IN COMPOSITION THEORIES AND

PRACTICES

Jacob Knight

A Project Presented to

The Faculty of Humboldt State University

In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree

Master of Arts in English: Composition Studies and Pedagogy

Dr. Michael Eldridge, Program Graduate Coordinator

Committee Membership

Dr. Laurie Pinkert, Committee Chair

Dr. David Stacey, Committee Member

May 2015

ABSTRACT

THE EVOLUTION OF AUDIENCE IN COMPOSITION THEORIES AND PRACTICES

Jacob Knight

Notions of “audience” have evolved and expanded over the past four decades. This piece will cover how the reader-writer relationship has developed within a framework shifting from cognitive to more socially constructed in nature. It will then detail the 21st century shift toward composing with digital media, and how the relationship between a writer and his or her reader has been significantly altered by bringing both roles into the same discursive space. Ultimately, this piece informs instructors to be aware of the developments in audience theory, and concludes by discussing how the work of Powell and Dangler et al. promotes far more authentic and socially constructed notions of audience within a writing classroom than more standard pedagogical applications.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thank you to both Laurie Pinkert and David Stacey for their wisdom, guidance and

support.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

ABSTRACT ...... ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ...... iii TABLE OF CONTENTS ...... iv INTRODUCTION ...... 1 CHAPTER ONE: (RE)DEFINING “AUDIENCE” ...... 5 Cognitive Notions of Audience ...... 6 Breaking Down “Audience”...... 10 The “Social Perspective”...... 17 CHAPTER TWO: “AUDIENCE” AS DISCURSIVELY SITUATED ...... 19 Socially Constructed Notions of Audience ...... 20 Debating “Audience’s” Usefulness ...... 23 The Multiple, Overlapping Audiences of a Written Text ...... 27 CHAPTER THREE: THE INTERACTIVE AUDIENCE ...... 31 Reducing the “Distancing Effect” ...... 31 The Relationship between a Rhetor and a 21st Century Audience ...... 36 The Increasingly Unstable Roles of “Author” and “Audience” ...... 39 CHAPTER FOUR: PEDAGOGICAL THEORY AND PRACTICE ...... 42 A (Brief) History of Audience Pedagogy ...... 43 The Essay and the “Fake” Audience ...... 48 Incorporating Authentic Pedagogical Applications ...... 53 Conclusion ...... 58 WORKS CITED ...... 60

INTRODUCTION

According to James A. Berlin, rhetoric “arises out of a time and place, a peculiar social context, establishing for a period the conditions that make a peculiar kind of communication possible, and then it is altered or replaced by another scheme” (2). The word rhetoric—which derives from the Greek rhetoricus and refers specifically to speaking skills—came into use in a time when the popular means of communication dictated a heavy focus on oration. Although many canonized written works have come out of ancient Greece, the society was still one based primarily in oral traditions. “Politics was conducted orally,” according to Rosalind Thomas. “The citizens of democratic

Athens listened in person to the debates in the Assembly and voted on them there and then. Very little was written down and the nearest Greek word for ‘politician’ was

‘orator’ (rhetor)” (Berlin 3). Oral communication was not only the most common form of rhetoric in ancient Greece, but also the most effective; therefore, the audience of the ancient Greek rhetor was an immediate and tangible presence. In the over two thousand years between then and now, however, the focus of rhetoric has shifted almost entirely toward the act of writing and, thus, a more removed audience. Nevertheless, rhetors utilizing the medium of composition have continued to operate under Aristotelian concepts of audience, which posit that rhetoric consists of the discovery of the available means of persuasion from emotional, ethical, and rational (pathos, ethos, logos) standpoints. This has been the primary form of composition in recent years: developing writers are taught how to best accommodate the opinions and beliefs of their audience in

2 order to most successfully convince this audience to adopt a particular perspective. In fact, according to Berlin, this has become the “dominant paradigm for composition instruction in American colleges in the twentieth century” (9).

As writing and other forms of discursive media have become more prevalent, however, the need to examine and understand the relationship between a rhetor and his or her audience has become a more frequently discussed topic. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, researchers expanded upon the ideas proposed by Aristotle and other classical rhetoricians, and these revised theories became the framework of what would eventually be referred to as social constructionism. By “rely[ing] on a view of reality as a linguistic construct arising out of a social act,” theorists like Fred Newton

Scott, Gertrude Buck, Joseph V. Denney, and their contemporaries—whom Berlin labels

Romantic rhetoricians—were envisioning a reader-writer relationship in which “meaning arises out of the interaction of the interlocutor [the rhetor] and the audience” (Berlin 80-

83). While classical understandings of the interaction between a rhetor and his or her audience suggest that demonstrating one’s knowledge eloquently and with purpose is the foundation of rhetoric, Romantic rhetoricians and social constructionists would argue that rhetoric has become more centered on the negotiation of knowledge between a rhetor and his or her audience. Berlin notes that these Romantic notions of the rhetor’s relationship with his or her audience were largely disregarded in the classroom of the early 20th century and soon disappeared. Decades passed before notions of a discursively situated audience began to reemerge within the classroom.

Over the past four decades, the relationship between rhetor and audience—and how such a relationship should be approached in the writing classroom—has become a topic of increasingly significant interest among composition researchers, pedagogues, and rhetoricians. Many would argue that the discussion regarding the “true” nature of the role of the audience of a written text began to garner widespread attention in 1975 with the publication of Walter J. Ong’s “The Writer’s Audience is Always a Fiction.” In the years since, however, understandings of audience have been completely reinterpreted.

Periodically, as Berlin prophesied about rhetoric in general, the field of composition is met with a sudden influx of publications regarding audience theory, which results in a complete overhaul of how the relationship between an author and his or her audience is perceived. From cognitive theories to social constructionists primarily concerned with digital media, conceptions of “audience” and understandings of the reader-writer relationship have gone through monumental changes over the past 40 years. Until now, though, little effort has been made to synthesize this information into one cohesive literature review.

This project will provide a review of the literature on audience within the field of composition in order to argue that the shifts in theory have resulted in a view of

“audience” that is far more interactive and dynamic than the ones presented by earlier theorists. While classical conceptions of a rhetor consist of an orator addressing and capitalizing on the preferences and beliefs of his or her audience in order to most effectively accomplish his or her goals, the act of writing is subject to the “distancing effect.” Rebecca Lucy Busker describes the distancing effect in her piece “Virtual Kairos:

Audience in Virtual Spaces,” explaining that writers are “seldom in the same physical space as those who will experience their text,” and that such circumstances call for a different sort of rhetor. Due to the reality of the distancing effect, the act of composition entails a far more complex relationship between a reader and writer than exists between an orator and his or her audience.

This Master’s project will be split into four separate chapters: the first three will detail the progression of “audience” theory, while the fourth is primarily concerned with pedagogical analysis and how to incorporate evolving theories into the 21st century classroom. The first chapter will discuss how the definitions and understandings of

“audience” were dismantled and redefined during the 1980s. Unlike the first chapter, which deals principally with cognitive understandings of composition, the second chapter analyzes social constructionist conceptions of writing and their influence on the field in the 1990s. The third chapter will investigate the effects that digital literacies have had on the reader-writer relationship in the 21st century. Finally, I will conclude by briefly describing the development of pedagogical practices regarding “audience” throughout the decades since the publication of Ong’s work in 1975, and examining ways in which an instructor can effectively incorporate contemporary notions of audience, such as multiple discourses and virtual readers, into the 21st century classroom.

CHAPTER ONE: (RE)DEFINING “AUDIENCE”

When Walter J. Ong published “The Writer’s Audience Is Always a Fiction” in

1975 he was responding to the fact that rhetoric has become somewhat removed from its classical roots in oratory and is now almost entirely concerned with the act of composition. He understood that the shift from oratory to written media had resulted in a corresponding shift in the rhetor’s relationship with his or her audience. As is evident from his title, Ong asserts that when utilizing the medium of composition, a rhetor’s audience is always a fiction—that before beginning any kind of composition, “first…the writer must construct in his imagination, clearly or vaguely, an audience cast in some sort of role” (60). Unlike classical rhetors whose audience is directly present, according to

Ong, writers are subject to a distancing effect; writers don’t know who their audience will be, so Ong asserts they have no choice but to imagine them—to fictionalize their interests, their biases, and their level of knowledge regarding the subject in question. To

Ong, imagining a target audience isn’t just a helpful tool for students, it is a necessary element of successful writing.

Under this type of theoretical framework, accepting the absence of a fixed audience and attempting to counter that with an imagined target audience is an absolutely vital step in creating effective pieces of writing. Despite this move to written media, audience theory in the late 20th century—like Ong’s notion of a “fictionalized” audience—was still largely dependent upon classical rhetoric; this chapter will discuss how, in spite of their efforts to actively revolt against ideas of an imaged reader, theorists

6 publishing in the 1980s only managed to reinforce classical interpretations of the rhetor. I will begin by discussing cognitive perspectives of the writing process and then unpack three different theories of audience that try to depart from such a cognitive framework.

Following my description of each of the theories, I will analyze how all three are relatively unsuccessful in avoiding cognitive leanings. Ultimately, I conclude the chapter by exploring one perspective of audience espoused by Barry M. Kroll that is truly different than the rest.

Cognitive Notions of Audience

As the “dominant paradigm for compositional instruction in American colleges of the 20th century” (Berlin 9), principles of classical rhetoric have obviously continued to influence modern day notions of the reader-writer relationship; in fact, they can even be understood to have evolved into what, today, are commonly understood as cognitive notions of composition. The cognitive approach to the understanding of composition views the audience as being completely distant from the author and, therefore, able only to experience a writer’s ultimate product rather than actually participate in the writing process. Such a view understands the process of composition, itself, as a completely individual and solitary undertaking that must be accomplished before the role of the reader can even exist. Clearly Ong’s belief that audience is a fiction and cannot come into being until imagined by a writer is a cognitive assumption that understands the writing process to be dependent upon a solitary rhetor, but the connection between cognitive

7 notions of writing and classical rhetoric is somewhat more abstract. The parallels between classical rhetoric and cognitive notions of writer’s audience are evidenced in the ways that each operates. A rhetor operating within a cognitive framework will cater to his or her audience’s preferences and beliefs while composing, and then present his or her completed work to that audience, just as a classical rhetor would do. The only differences between these two approaches are that one is written while the other is spoken, and that the rhetor using a cognitive approach is addressing an audience with whom he or she will likely never come into contact. Despite these differences, however, cognitive notions of rhetoric and composition are perhaps the most direct derivative of classical rhetoric.

According to Alecia Marie Magnifico in her article “Writing for Whom?

Cognition, Motivation, and a Writer’s Audience,” “[t]he cognitive process tradition…tends to frame the study of writing as an examination of individuals and how they think as they write.” As a result, audience in such a framework “is seen as an integral cognitive representation” and nothing else (170). In this kind of relationship, the writer does not communicate or interact with his or her audience at all, and if a writer’s rhetorical strategies are influenced by the audience, such influence stems from nothing other than his or her own conception of that audience. According to Magnifico, the cognitive theoretical framework supports the idea “that writers imagine audience members’ interests and use these abstractions as the substrate of schemata that help to activate prior knowledge and constrain the task at hand” (168). Ultimately, to a cognitive theorist, the audience is nothing more than a figment of the writer’s imagination—an abstraction originating from the writer’s own experiences and understandings. Similarly

8 to Ong’s theories—and to classical rhetoric for that matter—knowledge and authority within such a framework remain entirely located within the rhetor; the audience is nothing more than an empty vessel awaiting demonstrations of knowledge.

Cognitive understandings of the writing process posit that because the modern- day rhetor cannot participate in a conversation with a “real,” physical audience, he or she must resort to internal dialogue, which results in a completely internalized view of audience. This notion was further reinforced by Donald M. Murray in his 1982 publication, “Teaching the Other Self: The Writer’s First Reader,” in which he describes the writing process as a negotiation between a writer and the writer’s “other self.”

Essentially Murray is referring to a situation in which a writer’s own internalized “self” is far enough removed from the text to provide critique and support for the actual writer.

Murray’s theory—based almost entirely upon the ideal of the solitary rhetor—is immersed in the cognitive framework and, therefore, descended from classical rhetoric.

Due to this monumental shift to writing as a means of not only communication, but also rhetorical savvy, the audience of the contemporary rhetor has become understood by many as a “construction of the writer’s imagination or a refraction of the writer’s understandings” (Magnifico 168).

In order to get his or her point across as efficiently as possible, a writer must be familiar enough with his or her target audience to address it in a productive way. By definition, rhetors have some kind of purpose—some idea to put forth, or issue to promote—and, in that sense, they are salespeople: they are attempting to sell their readers on a particular point of view. Advertisers rely on their knowledge of demographics in

9 order to most successfully distribute the necessary information. It is rare to see a commercial for denture cream on Nickelodeon, or a preview for the latest installment in the Saw horror film franchise before watching a Disney/Pixar film. The same principle holds true for writing; for example, the language one would use to write a text message to a friend would likely be very different from that used to write a letter to the editor of a newspaper, or an essay for a college-level class. Many would argue that without considering the target audience and catering to their standards and values, a successful composition is virtually out of the question. But is fictionalizing really the most accurate description of this relationship? Is “audience” truly the result of a writer’s own cognitive faculties and nothing else? After Ong’s publication, many researchers began publishing works repudiating such a relationship. Among these theorists was Russell C. Long, who in 1980 critiqued many of the cognitive assumptions regarding the act of composition and the writer’s relationship with an audience.

Long’s “Writer-Audience Relationships: Analysis or Invention” scrutinizes Ong’s notion of a fictionalized audience, declaring that Ong’s view of the reader as a fiction conjured by the writer and restricted to the role imagined for him or her was far too simple. He asserted that by claiming rhetors to be “imagining” their audience, Ong was incorrectly casting the reader in the role of the passive observer. Instead, Long believed than in order to compose successfully a writer “must be consciously aware of the reader’s activity” at all times (221). By contradicting the belief that readers take no part in the writing process except to wear whatever masks the writer has fashioned for them, Long is suggesting that the process of composition is much less individualized than many of his

10 contemporaries tended to believe. The relationship between a writer and his or her audience, according to Long, is not entirely dependent upon the rhetor, and this idea is one example of early attempts to examine composition through a different framework than the commonly adopted cognitive perspective.

Ultimately, Long calls for a complete overhaul and redefinition of the term

“audience,” believing the prevailing interpretations to be inaccurate. This declaration— that the audiences of written works have not been sufficiently investigated or explained— arguably shaped audience theory for the following few years. In fact, three publications in the half-decade following Long’s piece were particularly interested in exploring notions of the reader-writer relationship that extended beyond the commonly accepted principles of classical rhetoric. While the theorists behind these publications all certainly took rhetoric and composition theories in new directions, classical rhetoric remained prevalent, for, as will soon be discussed, their work is still firmly situated within cognitive approaches to writing.

Breaking Down “Audience”

Two years after Long’s publication, Douglas B. Park makes his own attempt at redefining the notions surrounding audience. Park’s belief is that by utilizing the term

“audience,” what composition theorists are actually doing is using a rather concrete image in their attempt to evoke a much more abstract and dynamic concept. Park asserts that two different extremes exist when a writer approaches his or her audience. One

11 extreme occurs when “the audience…is a defined presence outside the discourse with certain beliefs, attitudes and relationships” (248); Park’s other extreme involves an implied audience inside the discourse, which is described as “a set of suggested or evoked attitudes, interests, reactions, conditions of knowledge which may or may not fit with the qualities of actual readers” (249). According to Park, a writer is always approaching one of these two types of readers, and this binary roughly marks the fracturing of the concept of “audience” into multiple interpretations.

In 1984 Lisa Ede and Andrea A. Lunsford further expanded upon the idea of two distinct audiences (one within and the other without a text). Like Long, Ede and Lunsford thought Ong’s conception of a fictionalized audience distorted “the processes of writing and reading by overemphasizing the power of the writer and undervaluing that of the reader” (88). Their belief that “the writer…and reader’s role[s] are both more complex and diverse than Ong suggests” (85) caused them to envision multiple definitions of the role that audience can play within a text: “audience addressed,” where knowledge of the attitudes and preferences of the reader is necessary, and “audience invoked” where the reader is placed into a particular role by the rhetor. Unlike Park, though, Ede and

Lunsford insist that a writer doesn’t write to an invoked or addressed reader only, and that a more authentic description of a writer’s conception of audience involves both views—a “synthesis of the perspectives…audience addressed, with its focus on the reader, and audience invoked, with its focus on the writer” (90). During this period of theoretical transition, rhetorical notions of audience—which had existed for centuries—

12 were being organized into various categories in order to better suit the various situations faced by a writer as opposed to an orator.

Barry M. Kroll, also writing in 1984, continued this trend by attempting to redefine notions of “audience” through means similar to those of his contemporaries.

According to Kroll, there are multiple perspectives that a writer can take when writing to an audience, but three perspectives in particular are more used (and more useful) than the rest: the informational perspective, the rhetorical perspective and the social perspective.

As is evidenced by the works of Kroll and his peers, a great deal of research was being conducted in an attempt to understand the relationship that a rhetor has with his or her audience when utilizing a written medium. While they may not necessarily be in agreement, Kroll and other researchers of the decade all seem to understand that classical principles of rhetoric are no longer wholly relevant to the new rhetor-audience relationship—which is essentially why they are dismantling the cognitive assumptions that have evolved from such thought. Getting away from such ingrained beliefs, however, proved to be a difficult task for many composition researchers in the 1980s.

Remnants of classical rhetoric have managed to stay around long after the medium for which it was designed (oratory) has gone out of favor. For example, Park’s idea of an audience that is a “defined presence outside the discourse” and Kroll’s rhetorical perspective are both firmly rooted in classical oratory traditions. When composing from such perspectives, a writer must tailor his or her stylistic decisions to the

“beliefs, traits, and attitudes” of their readers (Kroll 173); as Park puts it, “[t]he speech

[or the text] shapes itself around the fact of [the audience’s] presence” (249). For a writer,

13 adopting a perspective that is clearly grounded in notions of classical rhetoric involves attempting to persuade the audience of his or her own opinions by manipulating that audience’s common beliefs. In such a scenario, the reader becomes a passive target that is unable to contribute to the discussion much beyond influencing the persona that the writer adopts. Similarly, Ong’s beliefs, which also promote a passive audience, are still extremely relevant to “audience” theory during this period.

While theorists of this decade were not claiming that a writer’s audience is always a fiction, they did contend that such a notion is, nevertheless, a major aspect of the reader-writer relationship. Park’s implied audience and Ede and Lunsford’s “invoked audience” are both firmly situated within such a cognitive framework. Similar to Ong’s theories regarding an imagined audience, both examples portray composition as a solitary act that involves the writer independently deciding who the audience will be and how to address it. When invoking one’s audience, according to Ede and Lunsford, “the writer uses the semantic and syntactic resources of language to provide cues for the reader— cues which help to define the role or roles the writer wishes the reader to adopt in responding to the text” (83). Park depicts a similar relationship between rhetor and audience when he claims that when approaching an implied audience, writers are capable of “conceiving their reader” (248). Park, Ede and Lunsford are asserting that, by envisioning and inventing their reader, writers operating under these rhetorical principles are able to choose their audience and, therefore, able to choose the expectations they must follow in order to appropriately address such an audience. In a relationship of this nature, a reader has very little choice but to accept the role envisioned by the rhetor, which,

14 unfortunately, does nothing but further legitimize the idea of the passive audience that

Long argued so fervently against. Ultimately, although these researchers attempted to break down perceptions of audience in hopes of gaining a more authentic and modern understanding of the rhetor-audience relationship, their continued dependence upon

Ong’s ideas of audience as passive and imagined—despite their numerous complaints regarding the inaccuracy of these ideas—reveals that their efforts have not been entirely successful.

Ede and Lunsford’s “audience addressed,” however, presents us with an understanding of audience that opposes cognitive notions of the passive reader. By asserting that “writers conjure their vision—a vision which they hope readers will actively come to share as they read the text—by using all the resources of language available to them to establish a broad, ideally coherent, range of cues for the reader” (90)

Ede and Lunsford are envisioning for one of the first times in the history of composition theory a relationship where the reader and the writer are working together. While Ede and

Lunsford do, indeed, discuss a writing scenario in which the reader “actively comes to share” in the rhetor’s vision, they are simultaneously suggesting that a writer “conjure[s]” his or her audience. But how can a reader, conjured from the mind of a rhetor, possibly become a truly active member of the writing and learning processes? By claiming that writers still imagine their own vision of the reader(s) even when addressing an “active” audience, Ede and Lunsford’s “audience addressed” evokes ideas often present within cognitive views regarding the solitary rhetor.

Ede and Lunsford also postulate that writers who envision an addressed audience participate in an “internal dialogue…through which [they] analyze inventional problems and conceptual patterns of discourse” in order to best approach their audience (81). This belief that 20th century rhetors must often participate in an “internal dialogue” in order to compose successfully, further clarifies how dependant theories regarding audience were upon cognitive frameworks of composition in the early-to-mid 1980s. The concept that in order to “analyze inventional problems and conceptual patterns of discourse” a writer must conduct a conversation with him or herself is reminiscent of Donald Murray’s 1982 publication, and it only further reinforces the cognitive notion of the isolated writer.

Despite the many critiques of Ong’s work, coupled with the growing awareness that writers approach their reader in a manner distinctly different from that with which an orator approaches an audience, notions of classical rhetoric as well as cognitive thought are evidently still a major aspect of audience theory during this transitional decade.

Partially as a result of Russell Long’s critique of Walter Ong, composition theorists in the early 1980s were compelled to deal with the notion that the act of writing is not a solitary experience and that the reader-writer relationship is different from that of an author bestowing knowledge upon a passive audience. It was precisely this idea—that writing is not a wholly individual act—that prompted Park, Ede and Lunsford, and Kroll to publish their respective works. Park, for example, claims that “audience” is a far more accurate term than “reader” because it implies that an author is writing toward a

“collective entity” rather than a single person (250). Park also understood that

“‘audience’ essentially refers not to people as such but to those apparent aspects of

16 knowledge and motivation in readers and listeners that form the contexts for discourse and the ends of discourse” (249). Ede and Lunsford’s publication presented a similar argument, declaring that the term “refers not just to the intended, actual, or eventual readers of a discourse, but to all those whose image, ideas, or actions influence a writer during the process of composition” (92). These statements exemplify how notions of

“audience” had begun to change in the 1980s and depart from the more cognitive understandings that had evolved out of classical rhetoric. Rather than an act performed in complete isolation, the process of writing had begun to be viewed as dependent upon outside influences, but it is worth reiterating the fact that removing themselves entirely from the cognitive framework that has dominated rhetoric for centuries proved to be an incredibly difficult task.

All four theorists attempt to depict the composing process as more than just a solitary act, but, due to their overdependence on analyzing the contemporary rhetor- audience relationship through the scope of classical rhetoric, they are unable to completely succeed. Since rhetors utilizing a written medium are not actually speaking to an audience, the common understanding of this period was that, in order to appropriately address their readers, writers have no choice but to imagine one—to use “the semantic and syntactic resources of language to provide cues…which help define the role or roles the writer wishes the reader to adopt in responding to the text” (Ede and Lunsford 83).

However, when a writer imagines his or her audience and proceeds to utilize “internal dialogue” in order to address such an audience, the writing process can no longer be influenced by outside discourse at all, and the reader remains a passive observer.

The “Social Perspective”

Arguably unique among the theories posed by composition researchers thus far is

Kroll’s concept of the “social perspective.” According to Kroll, those adopting a social perspective recognize writing as a fundamentally social act and view their reader(s) as a

“constructive participant” (181) in the composing process; as a result, the audience is able to discernibly influence the actual argument rather than simply the manner in which the writer decides to argue. The social perspective regards the audience as an entity with the ability to shape a piece of composition to a degree comparable to that of the writer by

“actively construing—and misconstruing—a text” (181). Kroll asserts that by adopting a social perspective when composing, authors are actually writing for their readers. This particular approach is described as being a “fundamentally social activity” that recognizes writing as a form of communication between a writer and his or her audience, and, as a result, requires “processes of inferring the thoughts and feelings” of everyone involved in such a communication (179). In Kroll’s analysis of the social perspective, there is no mention of fictionalizing an audience or conducting an internal dialogue. The social perspective’s primary concern is that a writer analyze and react to his or her audience’s input and knowledge; therefore, it is one of the first theories capable of embracing a writing scenario that exists without a solitary rhetor.

Kroll does not allege, however, that all writing and all audiences are socially situated, but rather that it is one possible approach a rhetor may choose to adopt while in the process of composing. Kroll’s and his contemporary researchers’ instinct to try and

18 break away from classical rhetoric and redefine “audience” was a valid and productive one; a rhetor using the written medium operates in ways far different from those of an orator, and to overlook such a fact would have been irresponsible. Unfortunately, though, far too many of the definitions that initially resulted from this research were largely influenced by cognitive frameworks. Clearly, while the “social perspective” is certainly a sign of the changes occurring within “audience” theory, this was still an era that was heavily reliant upon cognitive views of composition. But is this truly such a productive view? Is the belief that the writer is alone and addressing a fictional audience a beneficial concept for writer’s to internalize as they develop their skills? In the following years, many theorists would begin to disagree and publish works recognizing “audience,” far from a rhetorical construction, to be an entirely socially situated and active member of the writing conversation.

CHAPTER TWO: “AUDIENCE” AS DISCURSIVELY SITUATED

Many of the theories discussed so far have been heavily influenced by cognitive notions of composition, but these notions harbor one major flaw: “[w]riters write differently in different situations for reasons that are difficult to understand in a cognitive model that centers on the individual” (Magnifico 173). Because cognitive theoretical models view audience as a rhetorical construction and the writing process as dependent upon a writer’s internal dialogue, they are ill-suited to explain why a rhetor is subject to the situation in which their writing is composed. This oversight led theorists of the time to delve deeper into what Berlin referred to as romantic rhetoric. While the ideas of Fred

Newton Scott and his contemporaries had survived in somewhat “attenuated form” up to this point, it was dissatisfaction with the theories of the 1980s that ultimately led to romantic rhetoric rising to popularity by the end of the 20th century. During this second major incarnation of romantic rhetoric, “its implications are explored to create a new species of rhetoric” (Berlin 11). One of these new “species” of rhetoric that Berlin discusses is known today as the social constructionist model: a framework that takes into account a writer’s discursive influences while acknowledging that the role of the reader is far more active and influential than previously conceived. These developments occurred not because writers were altering composition practices, but because researchers had begun to adopt different perspectives from which to investigate such practices. In this chapter, I will discuss how cognitive views of writing in the latter part of the 20th century were being replaced with socially constructed ones, and the relationship between a writer

20 and his or her audience was being understood as more dynamic and complex than ever before.

Socially Constructed Notions of Audience

The refocusing of audience theory upon a writer’s social influences can perhaps be best represented by a piece written by Ede and Lunsford critiquing their own well- received and widely read publication “Audience Addressed/Audience Invoked.” In

“Representing Audience: ‘Successful’ Discourse and Disciplinary Critique” Ede and

Lunsford profess that their biggest oversight while composing “AA/AI” 12 years earlier was that they failed to “pursue the multiple ways in which the…writer’s agency and identity might be shaped and constrained…by the ways in which both she and [her audience] are positioned within larger institutional and discursive frameworks” (170-1).

Essentially, they are claiming that writing is a communicative act entirely dependent upon a writer’s discursive influences. By this decade, Ede and Lunsford understand the act of composition to be a reaction to one’s surroundings, and they argue that to assume that a writer only invokes and/or addresses his or her audience would be failing to take into account that the writer is actually establishing far more complex connections than originally perceived. According to Ede and Lunsford, the notion that writers must consider the expectations of their culture when evoking their audience is a much more accurate reflection of the writing process than the one they presented in 1984.

This time, Ede and Lunsford are able to further distance themselves from cognitive notions of writing by contending that writers are “not free individual agents writing their own destinies but rather constructed subjects embedded in multiple discourses” and subject to “ideological and institutional influence” (173). Unlike their previous work, which held that a successful writer always invokes his or her audience on some level, Ede and Lunsford’s “Representing Audience” describes a scenario in which the writers are a construction, themselves—created by the “institution” (or the discourse) by which they have been so heavily influenced. According to this interpretation, both the reader and the writer are subjects imagined by the discourse of which they are a part—or, at least, both are actively adopting roles imagined by the discourse. By the time Ede and

Lunsford revised their ideas regarding audience, not only was writing—and, therefore, audience—seen as socially constructed, but the role of the writer itself was becoming understood as a creation of “the institutional and discursive frameworks” by which they are influenced. The belief that writers are inherently part of these frameworks is the central tenet of what has become known as the social constructionist theory, and it proved to be the driving force behind the work being done in audience theory in the following years.

Social constructionist scholars focus “on the writer’s position in the world,” and, as a result, their work is chiefly concerned with the “social factors that make up” a writer’s experiences (Magnifico 173). Magnifico explains that, unlike the cognitive perspective, social constructionist theories tend “to frame the study of writing as an examination of the explicitly communicative practices in and around writing” (170). In

22 complete disagreement with cognitive interpretations that embrace the image of a solitary rhetor, social constructionists believe that writers do not and cannot write alone and are inevitably influenced by the discourse to which their culture subjects them on a daily basis. The discourse (or multiple discourses) of a writer’s culture not only determines how a writer approaches his or her audience, but also determines the very situation in which a writer composes. The act of composition, then, within such a framework, is less a reflection of how authors think while writing and much more greatly affected by how authors communicate while writing, both with their audience and within the discourse that has prompted and fueled the discussion. Essentially, theorists analyzing composition under a socially constructed lens contend that a writer doesn’t choose his or her audience; instead, they insist that the situation chooses the audience, and all the writer can do is use his or her knowledge of both the situation and the audience to communicate as competently as possible with each.

While “audience is rarely discussed explicitly” by theorists who favor a socially constructed view of composition because “it is implicit in the definition of writing as communication” (Magnifico 170), many theorists operating under this framework believe that a more accurate understanding of a writer’s audience focuses on the community being approached, rather than a fictionalized individual. Similarly, social constructionists argue that the writer’s relationship with such an audience is dependent upon discourse— upon the knowledge an author has accumulated as a result of his or her social interactions. Unlike cognitive theories, social constructionist theories hold that writers must be aware of the discourse(s) of their readers in order to effectively approach the

23 community they are addressing. While such a relationship may echo previous theories— such as Ede and Lunsford’s addressed audience, for example—it does not involve the use of internal dialogue to decide how to best address a reader, but instead relies upon the assumption that a writer allows the social discourse of his or her audience to influence the rhetorical strategies he or she will incorporate. In short, rather than conducting a dialogue with him- or herself, the writer is conducting one with his or her readers—a notion completely foreign to the cognitive view, which holds that a reader isn’t much more than a passive observer of a text.

With the increasing exploration of socially constructed writing practices in the

1990s, the medium of writing became understood as a fundamentally communicative act that is firmly situated within the discursive influences of a writer’s community. Along with this shift, however, came even more complex interpretations of audience and the composition process in general. As audiences began to be viewed more as entire communities, they began to fluctuate, overlap, and even conflict; as a result, the distancing effect that cognitive theorists believed obstructed their relationship with the rhetor was significantly reduced, in the sense that writing became understood as a more communicative task.

Debating “Audience’s” Usefulness

From a cognitive perspective, a writer is successful when he or she gains a mastery of “writing knowledge, topic knowledge and writing skills” (Magnifico 173),

24 whereas a social constructionist would contend that novice rhetors become experts by becoming members of the community to which they are writing, and by

“mastering…[the] particular forms and particular skills of that community” (174). The socially constructed belief that “when a writer writes, she seeks to become a member or maintain membership in a certain community” (168) further substantiates the fact that the role of “audience” was no longer being viewed as a solitary individual. Invoked or addressed, by the 1990s the reader of a written text was understood as a completely social entity. It was this very notion, though—that a writer is writing for a community—that caused the term “audience,” itself, to be scrutinized during this same period. In 1992

James Porter suggested that the term “audience”—believed by many composition researchers to have “outlived its usefulness”—be replaced entirely, claiming that the concept of a “discourse community” better reflects the role a reader occupies within the act of composition (Lunsford and Ede 5). By asserting that writers are targeting a discourse community as opposed to an “audience,” social constructionists like Porter are essentially claiming that the term “audience” is too monochromatic and individualized and doesn’t adequately address the complex decisions and multiple discourses that all writers must consider when composing. Twelve years after Long made his appeal for the redefinition of “audience,” Porter seems to be advocating the abandonment of the term, altogether.

Rosa A. Eberly’s views regarding composition appear to be directly influenced by

Porter’s idea of a “discourse community.” Eberly is another social constructionist who believes the term “audience” to be an insufficient description of the writer’s target,

25 advocating instead that the term “public” is more fitting, given the communicative nature of the reader of a text. In her 1999 article, “From Writers, Audiences, and Communities to Publics: Writing Classrooms as Protopublic Spaces,” she claims that viewing

“audience” as a number of “overlapping publics can help [a writer] realize the particular and situated nature of rhetoric and the need for effective writing to respond to particular needs of particular publics at particular times” (167). Eberly understands the theories surrounding the concept of the reader as “audience” “to focus predominantly on [the readers’]…psychological constituents…or… demographics,” but she argues that this is not nearly as necessary as an understanding of the “discursive processes through which publics come to recognize themselves, form, act, and, perhaps, disentigrate” (175).

Instead of encouraging a writer to focus on the personality and demographics of his or her readers, employing the term “public” can result in the consideration of more pertinent information, like what the readers actually do, how members of a discourse actually communicate with one another, and the rhetorical tactics they prefer (and would prefer a writer) to adopt in order to participate in such a communication.

Many theorists of this period favored the usage of “discourse community” and

“public” over “audience” because they felt that such terms more accurately represent the reader-writer relationship by both emphasizing its social nature and taking into account the multiple perspectives a writer must consider when composing. Far removed from cognitive theories of “audience,” phrases such as “public” and “discourse community” evoke notions of a socially constructed writing situation by suggesting a relationship in which writers communicate with their readers and these readers also communicate with

26 one another. The relationship between a writer and his or her audience is finally being understood more accurately; however, this does not mean that the concept of “audience” is unable to conjure a socially situated writing scenario, nor does it mean that terms like

“public” and “discourse community” are without flaws. Earlier understandings of

“audience” tended to focus primarily on an imagined reader, but this does not prohibit social constructionist perspectives from being applied to the word.

Mary Jo Reiff is a social constructionist who does not embrace the term

“discourse community”; in her 1996 publication, “Rereading ‘Invoked’ and ‘Addressed’

Readers Through a Social Lens: Toward a Recognition of Multiple Audiences,” she claims that “such a view is…inadequate for describing the complex interactions of readers and writers in social settings” (421). Reiff hesitates to endorse this term because she feels that when composing for a “discourse community,” there is no way for a writer to discern what role a particular reader occupies within that community. Which member of the discourse community is a writer expected to address for each distinctive writing scenario? The author’s decisions regarding what rhetorical strategies to employ are undoubtedly influenced by what type of member—e.g., authoritative, academic, passive—of the discourse community he or she is targeting. When addressing an “expert” within a field, for example, an author is expected to use the jargon of that field’s discourse, whereas a rhetor addressing a “novice” would be expected to explain such jargon. The idea that different members with different roles exist within a single community is not explored within many of Porter’s or Eberly’s theories, which emphasizes the fact that the term “audience” is still extremely relevant to the process of

27 composition and, when used flexibly, can still accurately describe the communicative nature of the reader-writer relationship.

The Multiple, Overlapping Audiences of a Written Text

In her work, Reiff details a list of potential readers an author can write toward that goes far beyond the “addressed” and “invoked” dichotomy presented by Ede and

Lunsford a dozen years earlier. “External audiences,” for example, are defined by Reiff as being outside the writer’s community; “horizontal audiences,” on the other hand,

“consist of people in the same office or project group or persons in adjacent groups,” while members of a “vertical audience” are “still within the same organization,” but occupy a position of authority over the writer (415). Reiff doesn’t stop there, however, but continues to describe yet more audiences, including the “gatekeeping audience,” who has the ability to stop production of a text or (at least) regulate it, and the “watchdog audience,” which consists of “external industry reviewers” (416). Such a theory is so far removed from notions of a solitary rhetor that, to Reiff, these are all distinct audiences that can exist within a single discursively situated community and can communicate with each other just as readily as they are able to with the writer. In order to effectively approach these multiple audiences, a rhetor can no longer be expected to rely on his or her individual knowledge alone.

Each particular type of audience calls for the author to utilize a different rhetorical approach, and, as Magnifico noted, this concept is one that has not been fully explored by

28 cognitive theorists. When writing for a “gatekeeping audience,” it is vital that a writer be professional and accurate because such an audience has the power to inhibit the piece, whereas because “horizontal audience” essentially consists of the writer’s peers, a writer might submit work to this type of reader that is not even finished—let alone polished and precise—for review. Furthermore, these multiple audiences also often overlap; for example, Reiff explains that when focusing on a primary audience, writers “frequently consider the watchdog audience,” as well (416). When audiences and discourses overlap, writers must adopt even more complicated rhetorical strategies to successfully approach their readers, and satisfying these “differing disciplinary training and…adher[ing] to differing theoretical perspectives and methodologies” of the “multiple subjectivities of the audience members” (410) is a far more accurate representation of the author-audience relationship than those offered by Walter Ong and other cognitive theorists.

When addressing an audience in person, a classical rhetor in ancient Greece would likely have been fully aware of that audience’s mood and perhaps even their personal beliefs and principles. The same cannot be said for composers of written texts, however, and although Ong and his contemporaries were cognizant of this, they neglected to account for the fact that while reading is an individual act, writing is a much more social process. Writing is a discursive act, and discourse is socially situated; a writer communicates with not only his or her audience, but with multiple, overlapping audiences simultaneously. Social construction theorists like Eberly and Reiff understood that writing involves a multitude of interconnected perspectives, and that audience theory should reflect this.

Reiff and Eberly’s beliefs and theories symbolize how far audience theory had come in the 21 years since Ong published his work. The “concept of multiple, layered and potentially conflicting audiences” (Reiff 415) that had begun to be accepted during the 1990s presented authors with an understanding of the audience as a socially constructed entity. At the tail end of the 20th century, composition theorists finally began to accept that writers are influenced not only by their audience, but also by their respective cultures. Thus, cognitive assumptions that had been attached to the term

“audience” for decades had begun to subside; this made room for more socially constructed perspectives on the subject, and, in the process, contradicted the many social construction theorists who had deemed “audience” outdated or useless.

It has become a widely accepted notion that writers shape their text around the knowledge to which they are exposed and use such knowledge to adopt the rhetorical strategies and utilize the “textual cues and [other] resources of language” (Reiff 412) that will most effectively secure their acceptance within a discourse community. It is not the audience that a writer constructs during the composition process, but, instead, the writer must construct the rhetorical strategies that will allow him or her to best approach such an audience. According to Mary Jo Reiff, “the writer’s knowledge of the social situation that has brought the audience into being shapes…[and guides] the writer’s rhetorical, organizational, linguistic and stylistic decisions” (409). Writers and audiences, alike, have become understood as members of a larger community; therefore, writing, itself, is now generally viewed as an interaction within that community and in which writers are subject to the restraints and expectations of the discourse to which they are writing.

Furthermore, it has become understood that writers are influenced by multiple overlapping discourses that they must constantly and simultaneously appease.

Ultimately the social constructionist claim “that examining the cognitive process by which a writer writes is not enough” (Magnifico 174) is proven to be accurate. Reiff asserts that “a social model that accounts for the multiple and shifting roles of readers better captures the complex and dynamic interaction of readers, writers, and texts in the communicative process” than previous models. Moreover, she explains that social perspectives of writing “[enlarge and complicate] our understanding of audience” (417).

Why, however, does Reiff consider this a good thing? Why would one want to even further complicate a definition that has already been debated for decades, if not centuries?

The answer is simple: there isn’t really much of an alternative. Long’s proposal to redefine “audience,” should not be mistaken for a proposal to simplify it; notions of

“audience” cannot and should not be simplified. An audience’s relationship with a rhetor is in constant flux; it is perpetually adjusting to fit the situation at hand—a situation dictated not by the writer or the reader, alone, but by a series of components. The author and the audience are integral elements, of course, but discourse and the medium of composition factor into the decision, as well. In the 21st century, however, the medium a rhetor chooses to adopt will prove to have an incredible degree of influence upon the reader-writer relationship.

CHAPTER THREE: THE INTERACTIVE AUDIENCE

Socially constructed views regarding composition and audience have continued to develop into the 21st century as modern-day writers participate with and “self-organize into what seem to be overlapping technologically driven writing circles, what we might call a series of newly imagined communities” (Yancey 796). This relatively recent explosion of digital literacies has resulted in a comparable explosion of composition theory—which, by this century, holds that the discursively situated nature of the writing process is an incontrovertible fact. Similar to the shift from classical rhetoric, though, the introduction of digital media presents a rhetor with new media in which to compose, which positions the rhetor in an entirely different relationship with the audience than would occur with more traditional forms of writing. This chapter will explain that despite the fact that socially constructed theories of composition are still applicable to 21st century rhetors, the relationship between a reader and writer has been further complicated as the distancing effect between them has been reduced, and, as a direct result, the two roles have begun to shift and merge like never before.

Reducing the “Distancing Effect”

With the publication of “Virtual Kairos: Audience in Virtual Spaces” in 2002,

Rebecca Lucy Busker became one of the first composition theorists to discuss the effect that digital literacies have had on perceptions of audience. Before the possibility of digital

32 communication, Busker explains, the reader-writer relationship was dictated by “the distancing effect”—the fact that writers are “seldom in the same physical space as those who will experience their text.” Since writing has become the most common medium for rhetorical communication, the assumptions that composition theorists have made regarding the reader-writer relationship have been entirely based upon the distancing effect. Now, in the 21st century, those assumptions are “complicated vastly [as the] rhetor and audience are…brought into the same discursive space” (Busker).

Busker details how the “dialogic nature of [digital literacy] allows participants to actively resist the roles required of them,” and how new digital writing media allow readers and writers to operate within the same “discursive space” despite being a computer screen away. Simply possessing the ability to “actively resist” the role presented to them by a text—to actively do anything—implies that the audience of digital media is such an integral part of the composition process that it now has the power to literally communicate with and influence the rhetor. With this development, the audience of a digital text has become an interactive body, able to interface directly with a rhetor and thus enter the same discursive space. Readers are no longer passive observers, as cognitive theorists of the 20th century contended; now they are fully recognized as active members of the composition process.

Unlike readers operating within more standard frameworks of writing, a reader within a chat-room, online forum, Facebook, et cetera, can now directly and instantly communicate with the author of a text and the author can respond, “gaug[ing] audience members’ reactions directly, answer[ing] questions, and respond[ing] to comments that

33 have been made” (Magnifico 168). Just as readers are no longer perceived as passive bystanders, rhetors are no longer seen as solitary composers. As a result of digital media, a writer today has no choice but to have his or her work subject to the critique and feedback of an actual, real-life audience. “When composing with electronic media,”

Magnifico explains, “writers and readers are no longer trapped in the traditional one- sided relationships of print media…Under this new media paradigm, writers and readers can become active listeners and conversation partners for each other” (168). Ultimately, no matter how abstract or vague a rhetor’s notion of his or her audience is at the beginning of the writing process, feedback and commentary form a basis of interaction upon which are established the actual, physical members of that audience.

New media of composition have so completely altered the relationship between reader and writer that in 2009, Ede and Lunsford were compelled to, once again, reexamine the subject. In “‘Among the Audience’: On Audience in an Age of New

Literacies,” they claim that digital media challenge conventional understandings of authorship and “audience,” and point to the difference between the “physical industrial” mindset of traditional media and the “cyberspatial-postindustrial” mindset of newer media as the source of this conflict. Grounding their work in the theories of Michele

Knobel and Colin Lankshaer, Ede and Lunsford assert that a reader within a physical industrial framework might mistakenly attribute the ideas in a given work solely to the writer, rather than to the discourses and communities from which the writer is drawing— clearly a concern that has been shaped by cognitive theories of composition. The cyberspatial-postindustrial mindset, though, takes a socially constructed perspective, in

34 the sense that writers of this mindset “tend to view expertise, authority, and agency as

‘distributive and collective’” (4). When composing online, a writer is now capable of instantaneous exchange with an interactive audience, the effects of which have a drastic influence over his or her position within the discourse and his or her relationship to the audience. These newer literacies promote a cyberspatial-postindustrial mindset that allows writers to envision a composition scenario that is “more participatory, collaborative and distributed” and far less “expert-dominated” (Lunsford and Ede 3). A writer doesn’t need clout or an advanced degree to compose online; rather, “writers who are active in these spaces are seen through the lens of what they contribute,” so “it is much easier for them to gain recognition for their expertise and accomplishments”

(Magnifico 180).

Kathleen Blake Yancey is another theorist concerned with the influence that this shift to digital literacies has had over composition, most notably in her 2004 work, “Made

Not Only in Words: Composition in a New Key.” Yancey here refers to a “shift in the means of delivery” that she claims gives writers utilizing digital literacies strikingly different opportunities from those they were allowed when composing in more traditional media. “As we read the pages of an article,” she begins, “we typically do so line by line, left to right…page one before page two. This is the fixed default arrangement.” In contrast, however, “the creator of a hypertext…[composes]…almost as in three rather than two dimensions,” and is able to “move horizontally, right branching” and then “left branch[ing]” (Yancey 815). Since the writer of “the page has fundamentally different opportunities than the creator of a hypertext,” the “shift in means of delivery” (Yancey

814-815) from written communication to digital communication brings the author and his or her audience into a new, less distanced relationship.

The new methods of discourse being made possible by digital media have an inevitable affect on a writer’s opportunities and his or her perception of audience. The ability to incorporate a hyperlink into a piece—which is impossible unless composing digitally—is just one example of how the arrangement of a digital text can influence a

21st century rhetor’s relationship with his or her audience. A hyperlink is a word, phrase, or image that can be clicked on or hovered over in order to link to a different file or location within a file. Because virtual audiences can be directed to specific parts of a piece—or to another piece entirely—via hyperlinks, writers no longer have to speculate on whether their audience possesses an appropriate knowledge of the subject matter, and the rhetorical strategies and textual cues he or she utilizes can be altered accordingly.

Authors using hyperlinks no longer have to worry about overwhelming an uninformed audience with complex terms or ideas, or underwhelming a more advanced audience with basic language and tedious explanations; instead, hyperlinks and other similar tools of digital media allow modern day rhetors to assume their readers possess—or at least have access to—the essential knowledge of the discourse community(s) being addressed, and to proceed in whatever way best suits their own beliefs and purposes.

The changes brought on by digital literacy have clearly been significant and have resulted in the development of a new sort of audience of which rhetors must now be aware: a virtual, interactive, and extremely complex audience. Unlike the fictional reader that Ong suggested 40 years ago, the various interactive audiences that digital media

36 accommodate are subject to and influenced by overlapping and conflicting discourses.

Due to the opportunities for intercommunication and collaboration to which rhetors are now accustomed (like hyperlinks), writing in the 21st century has become a truly communal act. Moreover, with the growing accessibility and immediacy of media and communication, the distancing effect that has influenced rhetoric for centuries has been even further reduced. Consequently, in order to effectively analyze the modern day reader-writer relationship, a composition theorist must adopt a socially constructed perspective. The types of interactions that take place between a rhetor and his or her audience have changed so drastically in the last century—and the distancing effect has been reduced so radically—that cognitive notions of writing that promote a solitary view of the composition process have become obsolete.

The Relationship between a Rhetor and a 21st Century Audience

No matter how significantly the distancing effect has been reduced, rhetors utilizing digital media are still believed by many 21st century theorists to imagine—if only to a small degree—his or her audience. In fact, Yancey claims that “what and how you arrange” digital media “is who you invent” (816), which implies that it is merely the strategies authors are now able to adopt that have changed so dramatically, rather than their perceptions of audience. The situation Yancey is describing, however, is not one in which a writer “invents” his or her audience, but rather one where what and how a rhetor writes ultimately determines who can and will read a digital text. Authors operating in

37 this era are using the formatting and arrangement options that are only made possible by digital literacies in much the same way as an author of more traditional literacies uses textual cues. Both kinds of writers are adopting rhetorical approaches that they believe will best appeal to their intended audiences, and while on the surface this may sound rooted in cognitive theories of writing, an author using digital media is simultaneously writing both toward and within a discourse community.

It is true that writers utilizing the internet or any other new form of digital literacy often write for a completely random audience; anyone can read any digitally published work if his or her web surfing happens to lead to it. To claim, however, that the author of a digital text has absolutely no idea who is reading his or her work would be untrue.

While the 21st century audience is often a screen away—and, therefore, not directly present—the fact is that the discursive spaces of most digital media have the potential to attract very specific and discernible discourse communities. This repositions the 21st century rhetor in a relationship with “audience” that is entirely unique and removed from how rhetors using more standard media are understood to operate. For instance, When writing for athleticsnation.com—an online forum that allows the members of its community to submit articles and converse with each other—an author knows that the

“real” reader of his or her text is going to be a fan of the Oakland Athletics Major League baseball club and a member of that particular discourse community simply because of the name of the site. In contrast with an academic journal that specializes in a particular discourse, however, these digital spaces—as noted earlier—are much less expert-

38 dominated. Every member of an online discourse community is allowed to participate in the conversation—not just the most experienced and prestigious.

Knowledge of the entire community occupying a space will certainly influence how an author composing in digital media chooses to write, as well as the rhetorical strategies a writer adopts in order to most effectively address such an audience. Writing to baseball fans, for example, implies that one would need to be knowledgeable about the sport and its players, as well as its discursive practices. Furthermore, addressing a fan of a particular team—as one likely would on athleticsnation.com—means that a rhetor would need to be aware of that team’s history, standings, rivalries, et cetera. A contributor who is unaware of such vital information would immediately be conspicuous and would likely be perceived as an outsider by “real” members of the community. This fact is particularly relevant for a rhetor using digital media, though, because of the digital audience’s ability to respond directly to a text. On athleticsnation.com, for example, if a writer were to make a minor mistake, the feedback and comments received from the other members of the community would impel him or her to revise the previous statement so that it more accurately reflected the truth—or, in some cases, the prevailing opinions of the community. If the mistake were more conspicuous, though, a writer could even find him- or herself shunned from the community and marked as a “fraud.”

The relationship between a rhetor and his or her audience is even further complicated by the fact that “frauds” like this do exist, and by the fact that the accessibility of digital sites often results in interaction between a multitude of overlapping discourses and discourse communities, some more informed than others.

Busker claims that “the fluidity of [digital media] makes any attempt to analyze the concrete audience problematic,” and details how even with a “web forum like USPCE

[U.S. Pork Center of Excellence],” which is usually “held to have a relatively stable set of participants, the arrival (invisible to the general group) of a new participant can quickly disrupt what the writer believes to be her or his audience.” In the case of the athleticsnation.com example, even the potential that a fan of the New York Yankees or

San Francisco Giants—or someone who knows nothing about baseball, entirely, for that matter—might read his or her work would likely give an author cause to question the subject knowledge of his or her audience and alter his or her entire rhetorical approach.

Clearly, the 21st-century audience is situated in a complex and largely discursive framework, and knowing how to best navigate such a discourse—as well as the communities surrounding it—has become increasingly necessary.

The Increasingly Unstable Roles of “Author” and “Audience”

The reduction of the distancing effect brought on by newer media seems to be resulting in a shifting of the reader’s and writer’s roles within the composition process.

Now that a rhetor’s audience has become yet more “real” and attainable, and now that it has the ability to actually communicate with the rhetor and become an active member of the discourse, the roles of the reader are far less black and white than those proposed by earlier theorists. By allowing the audience to critique, edit, and, in some cases, even add to what previous authors have already written, digital spaces like athleticsnation.com and

40 even Wikipedia—and the formatting possibilities that such spaces provide—attribute to the reader many of the qualities that more standard literary mediums only ascribe to the writer. Many composition theorists publishing in the 21st century have commented upon this occurrence: Busker states, for example, that the “fluidity of participation” between a writer and his or her readers in digital media “make defining a collective audience impossible,” and she even goes so far as to claim that participants in the digital writing process can “interchange roles within minutes.” Ede and Lunsford would agree, for they too view the “distinction between author and audience” in a cyberspatial-postindustrial mindset to be “much less clear” than in traditional media (4). What these theorists are commenting on is that, when interacting with a virtual text, the audience is in many ways becoming a co-author, in that it can now directly influence the shape and scope of the piece. Ultimately, the instability (or “fluidity”) of the author-audience relationship in the

21st century fits perfectly into the social constructionist notions of writing that have been prevalent within composition theory for decades now. Writing is truly a communal activity when all participants are allowed active roles in the composition process, and the continuous shifting of roles that is both permitted and encouraged within digital media is undoubtedly the most dynamic interpretation of the reader-writer relationship that audience theory has presented thus far.

In the 21st century, the act of composition is still considered to be socially constructed; many of the theories regarding audience have not gone through any significant changes, but, instead, are simply being applied to different literary media. The functions of digital media that were not possible in more traditional literacies have

41 significant influences over how discourse can be disseminated throughout a community.

Hyperlinks and open online forums like Wikipedia and athleticsnation.com are just a few digital devices that enable rhetors to approach multiple audiences in multiple ways and receive feedback at the same time. The collaborative and participatory nature of interactive virtual audiences fosters collective discourse and allows for a writer’s text to become a communal document—influenced by readers who are just as active in the writing process as the rhetor. Digital media are gaining popularity at an unprecedented rate, and, as a result, “[a]ll of these trends suggest that writing skills are becoming more vital than ever in the technology-rich environments that have begun to infuse all spheres of our lives” (Magnifico 167). The ability to effectively approach most audiences in this century clearly requires a considerable amount of knowledge concerning digital literacies.

CHAPTER FOUR: PEDAGOGICAL THEORY AND PRACTICE

The research that has been conducted regarding the nature of the reader-writer relationship has unquestionably impacted how notions of audience have been applied to the classroom. The typical pedagogical approach of teaching students to first construct and then proceed to address a passive, fictional audience was gradually influenced and altered by social constructionist views of writing that had begun to first emerge in the early 20th century with theorists like Fred Newton Scott and his contemporaries. Whereas theorists like Russell C. Long and Douglas B. Park argued in the 1980s that the idea of

“audience” was not being properly taught in composition classrooms and that writing assignments should be more open and unstructured, Rosa A. Eberly and Mary Jo Reiff claimed a decade later that such assignments should encourage students to write toward more socially constructed, discipline-specific readers. Despite all of the progressive research that has been done on the subject, however, concepts of “audience” within the classroom are still largely one-dimensional.

Fortunately, the emergence of 21st century media—and the fact that writers must now be well-versed in digital literacies—has given writing instructors reason to break away from many of the classical and cognitive notions of audience that are still attached to more standard writing genres and, instead, give their students the opportunity to write for multiple, overlapping authentic audiences. For an instructor to ignore the fact that the modern audience-rhetor relationship has become far more complex would be harmful to the development of student writers. It is ultimately the instructor’s job to make sure the

43 changes being made to audience theory are being incorporated into the classroom, and that students are not receiving and referencing outdated notions of the reader-writer relationship. This chapter will attempt to expand upon these ideas and suggest more authentic pedagogical applications that can better situate developing 21st century rhetors within a discourse that includes a variety of readers who actively participate in negotiating knowledge rather than simply observing it as it is being demonstrated.

A (Brief) History of Audience Pedagogy

Scott believed that “failing to ground education…in the social experience of the child…[can lead] to the denial of significant areas of human experience” (Berlin 79).

Published in the early 1900s, many of Scott’s theories unfortunately took more than a half century to be further explored by academia. It was not until 1980 that Long accused teachers of ineffectively incorporating notions of “audience” into their writing classrooms and claimed that “applying some current literary theory to the teaching of writing might serve to solve [such a] dilemma” (224). While he may very well be advocating notions of romantic rhetoric, Long’s suggestions regarding how to properly incorporate audience into the classroom seem to be in direct conflict with his main argument: readers of a text are being portrayed as far more passive than they truly are. Long advises instructors to encourage students to ask themselves “who do I want my audience to be?” rather than

“who is my audience?” While Long may believe that such a question supports the development of a more accurate reader-writer relationship, in reality it prompts students

44 to, on some level, invent an audience—a largely cognitive process that is discordant with the idea of the active audience that Long wished to promote.

Just two years later, Park continued Long’s critique of the common pedagogical practices of writing instructors by claiming that students should be writing not just for an audience of teachers and the occasional peer group, but also for a much wider variety of audiences. He asserts that teachers should “place specific assignments…within a larger frame of reference” and allow students the opportunity “to write in relatively unstructured situations where little is given in the way of context and much remains to be invented by the writer” (256). Park’s theories regarding pedagogical approaches to audience instruction echo Long’s in that he is calling for a classroom where students are given the opportunity to invent their audience according to the writing situation in which they find themselves—which, again, begs the question: how active is an audience that is being invented? While suggesting that students be given the opportunity to practice navigating relatively unstructured discursive situations may be a step in the right direction, the cognitive notions of audience present within the pedagogical theories of the 1980s don’t properly recognize the true impact that a reader has on the composition process.

Despite the flaws of earlier theories, Park’s assertion that instructors need to

“place specific assignments…within larger frameworks of reference” and encourage their students to write to audiences beyond just teachers and peers is precisely what many social constructionist researchers further investigated and expanded upon in the 1990s.

Both Eberly and Reiff, for example, propose that students practice approaching multiple disciplines while composing. Eberly urges composition instructors to have their students

45 write toward discipline-specific publics so that the students learn how to utilize the particular rhetorical approaches and strategies that are adopted for each distinct audience.

The most promising aspect of such an assignment, Eberly claims, “is the idea that students writing in the disciplines have to write…for discipline-specific publics that have formed in response to different problems” (173). Reiff’s own pedagogical ideals regarding audience are quite similar to Eberly’s in that she, too, believes students should be instructed to practice writing for multiple audiences. Above all, Reiff recognizes the

“disparity between nonacademic and academic” writing in the college classroom and calls for teachers to incorporate more “real-world contexts” in which their students can develop as writers (418). For instance, she believes that by placing a greater emphasis on the study of workplace writing, teachers would be supporting the types of writing skills that prove beneficial to students long after they have left the world of academia.

Ultimately, Reiff claims that “students stand to gain much from the process of negotiating multiple audiences, perhaps becoming more aware of how the process of meaning construction is truly a social negotiation, as well a potentially conflictual negotiation” (419). In their respective works, both Reiff and Eberly assert that without the ability to adopt the discursive writing conventions of multiple discourses, writers can scarcely be expected to compose successfully in the many genres they will encounter outside of the classroom. Due to the socially constructed nature of writing, Eberly declares that this transition from “expressive or representational to presentational or public discourse should be a concern for those who teach writers at any level” (171).

Essentially, she is advising that cognitive views regarding composition (representational

46 discourse) be effectively replaced in the classroom by socially constructed understandings of writing (presentational discourse).

Robert R. Johnson is a contemporary of Eberly and Reiff who also recognized that the “community model [which] envisions the act of writing as a collaborative activity” had begun to challenge more conventional models of the composition process.

He claims that, as a result of this shift, notions of an “involved” audience are for more beneficial to teach student writers than the idea of an “addressed” or “invoked” audience.

According to Johnson’s 1997 article entitled “Audience Involved: Toward a Participatory

Model of Writing,” “the involved audience is an actual participant in the writing process who creates knowledge and determines much of the content of the discourse…bring[ing] the audience literally into the open [and] making the intended audience a visible, physical, collaborative presence” (363). Johnson’s conception of an “involved audience” parallels Eberly’s beliefs regarding presentational discourse in that the involved audience is, essentially, a “real” reader actively participating in and presenting their ideas to a public discourse. Reducing the “invisibility” of the audience is beneficial for student writers because it reinforces the socially situated nature of the writing process. By allowing students to approach readers who are more tangible and less abstract, the implementation of an “involved” audience has the potential to aid developing writers in understanding that their readers are real and have real expectations that must be met.

During the 1990s, the gradual departure from classical notions of the rhetor led writing to be understood as discursively situated, and theorists of this decade finally begin advocating the incorporation of this departure into the classroom. Unlike Long,

47 who claimed that instructors should encourage students to analyze the writings of others

“with a very detailed examination given to the signals provided by the writer for his audience” (225), researchers like Eberly, Reiff and Johnson felt that creating an actual writing scenario in which students write toward a community they are a part of—or wish to become a part of—is a far more productive pedagogical task. The notion that the audience often “creates…and determines much of…the discourse” in which a writer participates has led researchers to advocate the implementation of authentic writing activities in which students are communicating with more discipline-specific audiences and, as a result, practicing and developing real-world skills.

This ability to communicate with a variety of discipline-specific communities has proven to be an even more necessary skill-set for writers composing in the 21st century.

Navigating the vast array of overlapping discourse communities which exists and operates within the framework of the internet and other forms of digital media can be an overwhelming task for a writer. Due to the widespread prevalence of digital literacies that exists today, theorists have begun to claim that “the screen is the language of the vernacular,” and that if the skills necessary to use this language are not included “in the school curriculum, [composition instructors] will become as irrelevant as faculty professing in Latin” (Yancey 801). In the words of Elizabeth Daley, “[n]o longer…can students be considered truly educated by mastering reading and writing alone. The ability to…[combine] words with pictures with audio and video to express thoughts will be the mark of the educated student” (Yancey 801). It is absolutely vital for a writer operating in this day and age to be able to successfully utilize digital media because without such a

48 skill set they cannot realistically be expected to successfully approach a virtual, interactive audience. Neglecting to address such a fact within a writing classroom would be doing a great disservice to the students within it. Not only are such skills necessary for a rhetor operating in the 21st century, but they can also prove more beneficial to the development of beginning writers than more standard media. According to Magnifico, for example, incorporating digital media into the writing classroom gives “students opportunities to interact with multiple real critics of their work” and “motivate[s] them…to take on new literacies and see themselves as writers in ways that would be near impossible in a traditional classroom with traditional assignments” (169). As is evident from the research presented thus far, the various changes to “audience” theory have inspired similar transformations in the pedagogical theory of the writing classroom, and this most recent shift to digital media is no different; the change has already begun, and instructors and institutions, alike, must begin implementing pedagogical practices that reflect this development.

The Essay and the “Fake” Audience

Despite the now widely accepted notion that writing is socially constructed, many researchers claim that “audience” is still largely perceived and taught as though composition entails only a single author writing to a single reader, and that an overdependence on the essay can be understood as a primary effect of this phenomenon.

The most common audience for a student writer is his or her teacher; in 1982, however,

Park pointed out the inauthentic nature of such a dynamic, and the fact that 21st century theorists like George Gopen and Alecia Marie Magnifico felt compelled to further Park’s argument demonstrates that this outdated approach to composition is still prevalent.

Magnifico states that much of the writing done in college classrooms “is constructed to assess students’ knowledge of school subjects rather than to make an argument or write a narrative for a real, or authentic, audience…The primary audience in school is thus the teacher, and the students know that” (179). In a similar vein of thought, Gopen refers to the teacher as the “fake” audience and claims that a writer’s peers are a far more authentic audience than his or her teacher. By promoting the “fake” audience—by giving students no other alternative than to think of their teacher as the only reader of their work—instructors are failing to introduce their students to authentic writing scenarios that will benefit their development as writers.

The “fake” audience is a manifestation of the concept of the individualized audience against which social construction theorists have been arguing for decades. As

Yancey puts it, “if we believe that writing is social, shouldn’t the system of circulation— the paths that writing takes—extend beyond and around the single path from student to teacher?” (807). Teachers are not an authentic audience—Magnifico and Gopen prove as much—and acquiring the necessary skills to address them, solely, is neither natural nor helpful; unfortunately, however, many students are still compelled to participate in this practice in the form of the standard essay. When writing a traditional essay, students have little choice but to write toward the source of assignment—most commonly the instructor. Learning to compose within such a limited context makes it extremely difficult

50 for student writers to acquire the skills necessary to effectively approach a discourse community, much less multiple, overlapping communities. According to Gopen, the solution to this problem is “not to get rid of writing assignments, but rather to get rid of the fake audience” (25); or, in other words, to resist the temptation to depend too heavily on the essay. Students succeed when writing about something they need to say to an audience who needs to hear it (Gopen 26), so it is absolutely vital for teachers to give students every opportunity to practice navigating such a situation. An essay, though, which asks students to “control a modest amount of that which [their] teacher knows expertly” (Gopen 25), does not present a developing writer with an audience who needs to learn anything. In order to create a productive writing scenario, Gopen asserts, an instructor must “produce an audience that will learn something new from students by having them write for each other, in groups; and have the response to that writing be exclusively from them” (26). Such a task introduces students to more authentic writing circumstances and discursive expectations and allows them to practice utilizing more effective rhetorical writing strategies.

Although the essay allows a student to exhibit his or her rhetorical mastery and knowledge of the subject matter in question, this requires the student to have already accumulated such expertise. Especially for an instructor of developing writers, an essay is an instrument much more aptly suited to assess a writer’s skills than promote them; as a result, the essay is often an inauthentic task that is unable to situate students in a “real- world” writing scenario. Why, then, would a teacher want the reader-writer relationships associated with the standard essay to be the only kinds of relationships to which his or her

51 students have been exposed? The audience Reiff refers to as “vertical” readers is just one type of audience that a writer will have to approach, so incorporating assignments like a blog post or letter to the editor, which require students to communicate with different audiences, can oftentimes be more productive than the traditional essay. Encouraging students to approach a wider variety of readers allows them to practice situating themselves within multiple discourses—which, in turn, further sharpens their rhetorical skills. At the same time, incorporating a variety of media through which a student can write to a variety of audiences can better prepare a developing rhetor for authentic, real- world writing situations.

While the pedagogical theories being suggested here may seem on the surface to be new and progressive, the truth is that they’ve been around for decades. In 1926, in fact, Scott advocated for nonacademic writing scenarios, stating that writing “topics should…suggest a typical situation in real life.” Scott also declares that these topics

“should suggest a particular…set of readers who are to be brought into vital relationship with the situation” (Berlin 83), which directly supports Gopen’s claim seventy-nine years later that writing situations are most beneficial to all involved when they are significant to the author and audience, alike. Scott’s advice is still extremely relevant today, and instructors who care to follow it must learn to rely far less heavily on standard forms of literacy and outdated notions of audience. This overdependence on traditional literacies like the essay was very likely what prompted Reiff to critique the disparities between academic and nonacademic texts within the classroom. Student writers need to learn how to follow the conventions of many types of genres beyond just the essay; as they leave the

52 relative safety of the classroom to enter a nonacademic workforce, writers are required to know how to approach a wider variety of readers than simply their teachers. This need to gain familiarity with more authentic, real-life tasks, like composing a letter, research paper or business memo, for example, must be addressed within the classroom. While an instructor may not have time to cover every possible medium during a single course, what he or she can do is reveal to students the shifts in audience that naturally accompany different writing situations.

When developing writers participate in authentic and/or non-academic tasks they

“learn how to align themselves as members” (Magnifico 180) of a discourse community and more effectively communicate their ideas to an audience outside of the classroom. As a result, students are able to “think more carefully about what they have done and learned

[and] consider what [a] specific kind of audience wants or needs to hear” (Magnifico

180). An authentic writing scenario is of the utmost importance within a classroom because it allows students to acquire and practice valuable skills and creates the

“potential for transfer of learning beyond the classroom” (Magnifico 177). Being able to find success composing outside of an academic community is crucial for a student, whereas the skills necessary to properly address a teacher will become obsolete upon graduation. Perhaps the activity that proves the most effective is learning how to rhetorically approach multiple, overlapping audiences.

Incorporating Authentic Pedagogical Applications

There is a significant amount of research investigating the types of “alternate” writing assignments with the potential to situate students within a more authentic, real- world context than the ones promoted by more conventional assignments. In 2010, for example, Beth Powell, Kara Poe Alexander, and Sonya Borton observed a classroom that introduced students to the kinds of writing assignments they believed to be more authentic, but which are generally considered to be largely nonacademic. In their article

“Interaction of Author, Audience, and Purpose in Multimodal Texts: Students’ Discovery of Their Role as Composer,” Powell et al. depict a classroom where students are instructed to compose a multimodal project. Students were assigned a “standard” essay and then directed to have the same discussion (i.e., cover the same material) using an entirely different medium. Over the course of this study, the researchers were particularly interested in observing the various rhetorical approaches that writers use when addressing audiences with different media. Upon analysis of their investigation, they found— perhaps unsurprisingly—that the students “shifted elements (audience and purpose in particular) of their rhetorical situation when changing modes” of composition. While this concept may not be revolutionary in terms of audience theory, the understanding that a writer addresses different audiences and utilizes different media with different rhetorical approaches could prove quite beneficial if incorporated into the classroom. Not only would learning and developing these skills and ideas be helpful, but simply informing student writers to the fact that they are even permitted to approach an audience other than

54 the teacher can enable and encourage developing writers to explore new writing possibilities.

A participant within the study named Christina—who wrote an essay and then composed a video essay discussing the research that she did on a local animal shelter— was discussed at length by Powell et al. because of how differently she approached each piece. According to the researchers, Christina’s essay followed “the basic format of an academic essay” in that her purpose was to inform her audience, which was

“predominantly [her] teacher.” The purpose of her multimodal project, on the other hand, was to persuade a wider audience “to care about the overpopulation of abandoned animals.” While her essay relied heavily upon personal narrative, Christina’s video essay incorporated multiple rhetorical strategies—including images, music, and text—to address a much broader audience than her instructor, alone. Whether or not it was her intention, Christina seemed to alter her entire rhetorical approach based on the change in media. Even though she covered the same exact material in both projects, the multimodal piece was meant to persuade, while the intention of the more traditional essay was to inform. Practice utilizing both approaches is necessary for a developing writer; in order for a rhetor to be successful, he or she must to know how to both inform and persuade a variety of audiences.

According to Powell et al., the shift in audience associated with multimodal projects allows students to recognize that they determine their own audience, “which they can then apply back to their print essay, in hopes of moving beyond the vague, general

(undetermined) [view of] audience” that students often adopt. They also assert that it is

55 up to the teacher to “help students recognize how they can (and do) determine audiences.” Ultimately, Powell, et al. are hoping the knowledge that students are fully capable and in complete control of determining their own audience will intrinsically lead to a “greater ownership” of such audiences “in print modes.” The type of activity being described here has yet more advantages to offer, though. The multimodal project as a pedagogical approach can be useful simply due to the fact that it presents developing writers with the opportunity to practice an absolutely vital skill in today’s world of digital literacies: composing in multiple genres. Prompting students to write for multiple genres and multiple audiences can be an authentic task if for no other reason than that it allows students to envision an audience that—unlike those of many academic genres—can be

“extended to include people beyond the classroom” and the world of academia in general.

Doug Dangler, Ben McCorkle and Time Barrow are a few other researchers who also recognized the importance of encouraging students to write toward an audience that is outside the classroom, and these three are particularly concerned with investigating the ability of podcasts to facilitate such a scenario. A podcast is an audio file that is often episodic and supplies its listeners with specialized content. Dangler et al. acknowledge that by the 21st century, “composition studies” have recognized a “range of distinct audiences,” and contend that using “podcasting to engage” their readers can result in a better “understanding [of] the different motivations, ideology[ies], and lingua franca” utilized by the many audiences present outside the classroom. Such an assignment, they hope, will not only expose students “to a new mode of composing” for an outside

56 audience, “but also [provide] a critical opportunity for them to reflect upon the needs and expectations of…that audience via the rhetorical elements specific to the medium.”

In “Expanding Composition Audiences with Podcasting,” Dangler et al. examine the in-class work of Dickie Selfe in order to evaluate the legitimacy of podcasting as a pedagogical approach. Selfe is a teacher at Ohio State University who instructs his students to make their own audio podcasts, which encourages them to “move outside of the somewhat artificial environment of the classroom and into wider venues” of composition. Selfe states that one of the greatest pedagogical advantages of podcasts “is that they are a combination of push/pull technologies” (Dangler et al.). Because listeners can subscribe to a podcast and be notified of any updates or additions to it, a rhetor utilizing the digital medium of podcasting does not “have to rely on user action”; in other words, rather than requiring its audience to “pull” in the information of the discourse, a podcast “pushes” knowledge to its listeners (Dangler et al.). This “push/pull” relationship between podcasters and their audience is much more akin to the interaction that takes place within a discourse community than cognitive perceptions of rhetoric, and is, therefore, far more conducive to social constructionist notions of composition.

Pedagogical applications like the ones being practiced by Selfe can create writing scenarios that the essay often cannot, and can render a “product more real for students

[and]…creat[e] a more authentic motivation for composing…than instructor evaluation”

(Dangler et al.) For example, Dangler et al. discuss how students might utilize podcasting to “create a series of audio ethnographies…documenting literacy practices in their local community,” or to “produce public service announcements addressing a pertinent social

57 issue.” Pedagogical applications that promote in students the sort of rhetorical negotiation that Dangler et al. are describing “help to build the collaborative, interactive environment necessary for a successful active-learning classroom” by helping “foster a more dynamic and less abstract model of audience that better reflects a real-world context.” By urging writers to address virtual readers (or listeners) beyond the classroom, podcasting assignments are able to create authentic, real-world composing situations, and provide student writers with a model of audience that will ultimately prove more beneficial for their rhetorical development. Furthermore, “podcasting assignments that rely on peer feedback” or that are put online and “made available to a wider public” can illustrate the socially constructed nature of writing by serving “as a vivid reminder that [students’] communication, whatever the mode or medium, is received by an audience” (Dangler et al.). Assignments like these allow student writers to practice approaching overlapping and discursively situated audiences—a vital skill in the 21st century. By discussing how an instructor can facilitate a context in which students gain familiarity using a variety of media to approach multiple audiences, Dangler and Powell et al. are describing just a few pedagogical applications that often prove to be more authentic and beneficial than ones that promote a more singular ideal of audience.

Podcasting and video essays are just two of the many ways in which new media can be successfully introduced into the writing classroom. Teachers and curriculum designers shouldn’t be discouraging digital literacies; instead, they should be actively incorporating them into the curriculum because digital literacies situate developing writers in relationships with their audiences that are far more interactive and, therefore,

58 authentic to most nonacademic, real-world writing scenarios. In short, by focusing almost exclusively on interactive readers outside of the classroom, most digital literacies have the potential to rid academic writing of the “fake” audience entirely. Contrary to Gopen’s assertion that a student’s peers are an authentic audience, the work of these two sets of researchers prove that composition instructors need to encourage the types of rhetorical situations that call for overlapping audiences that extend far beyond those present within academia.

Conclusion

The typical audience promoted by the essay and other traditional media echoes the finite definitions of audience that were critiqued in the late 20th century. Learning to write for an audience is obviously crucial, but learning to write for only one audience is an idea that instructors need to distance themselves from. If nothing else, the development of audience theory has made it clear that when composing, a writer targets many distinct, overlapping and even conflicting audiences—often simultaneously.

Socially constructed understandings of the reader-writer relationship have become even more prevalent with the recent increase in digital literacies and interaction between a rhetor and his or her audience. There is little to gain from instructing students to approach only a single audience, as many traditional composition practices often dictate. While the essay certainly has its place—being able to successfully approach what Reiff refers to as a “vertical” reader is a fundamental skill that should be taught—it should not be the only

59 form of composition that a developing writer practices. Especially in the 21st century, with the overwhelming variety of media that rhetors are now expected to utilize efficiently, limiting students to communication with only “vertical” readers inhibits the development of skills necessary to succeed in most real-world writing scenarios.

Overall, the medium in which rhetoric is customarily presented is far different today than it was in ancient Greece. Rhetoric is now dependent upon digital media—and digital media is dependent upon it—and, as a result, the notion of “audience” has not only been completely reassembled, but the methods a rhetor can now use to approach an audience have also been altered just as drastically. The pedagogical writing situations described by Powell and Dangler et al. are conducive to the development of skills that a

21st century rhetor is expected to possess by creating the sort of authentic, real world environment to which a student writer must be exposed in order to succeed. Instructors and universities, alike, need to end their overdependence upon the single-audience model of composition and begin to incorporate a more dynamic audience into their classroom, one that is more reflective of an authentic, 21st century reader-writer relationship. This task can be accomplished by introducing student writers to the types of assignments that will allow them to practice composing in multiple media for multiple audiences, thus supporting the development of the rhetorical skills that will ultimately prove more useful to them than the outdated notions of the classical rhetor.

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