Audience of Writing Audience is a very important concept for writing. You need to analyze your audience in terms of the foll

Audience of Writing
    Good morning. Today we will talk about the audience of writing. Before you write something, you need to have a clear idea of the topic, the audience, and the purpose of your writing. In this lecture, we’ll concentrate on one of these elements, the audience. This is a very important concept for writing. The term audience usually refers to viewers of movies and TV shows and listeners of radio programs. Here we expand it to include readers of written materials or any discussions of writing activities. The importance of a keen awareness of your audience throughout the writing process can not be overemphasized. Audiences can be examined from three different perspectives:
    1. Your social relations to your audience;
    2. Your audience’s knowledge about your subject;
    3. Your audience’s attitudes or viewpoints to the subject and your position in the writing.
    Let’s discuss them one by one. Now, first point, analyze your audience in terms of your social relations. Whenever you write, you are interacting with other members of the society. Are you writing to a friend of yours? To a colleague? To the director of your business firm? To the admission office of an American college? In each situation, you have a different social relationship with your audience and this relationship has a definite impact on the shape of your writing. No one in his or her right mind would write a letter of application to the dean of the graduate school as if the dean was one of his or her buddies.
    The second point, analyze your audience in terms of their knowledge of the subject you are writing about. This analysis is valuable particularly in informative and explanatory writing. Suppose you are writing a paper comparing the Mid-autumn Festival and Thanksgiving. How much knowledge would you assume your American readers already have about the Chinese holiday and how much about their own? Obviously, very little about the former and a whole lot about the latter. In such a paper, you need to take care not to bore your readers to death by telling them what they already know while leaving them tantalizingly unsatisfied about what they are so eager to learn. The emphasis here should be to show the striking differences and subtle parallels rather than to give exhaustively detailed information on each holiday.
    Now, the third point, analyze your audience in terms of their attitudes or viewpoints to the subject and your position in the writing. This analysis is vitally important in writing persuasive or argumentative essays, which is much more complex and challenging. In a persuasive essay you present reasons and arguments to convince your readers that they should accept a belief or to take a position or a specific action. For persuasive or argumentative writings, you can classify audiences into three groups: those who agree, those who are neutral or undecided, and those who disagree.
    When writing to an audience who already sees eye to eye with you about a controversial issue, is there much you need to do? Not much. If you are addressing an audience who already shares your view about developing and maintaining a mature and constructive relationship between China and the United States in the 21st century, all you need to do is restate why such a relationship is in the vital interests of both countries and of the whole world.
    When writing to audiences who are neutral or undecided, you have the most to do and can hope to achieve a lot. Say you want to propose that a new financial aid system be established to help those bright students in rural and less prosperous areas of the country. You are concerned that with today’s new tuition policy and practice, those students will be priced out of a chance for the high education they deserve so much. Some people may be undecided because they have some doubts and concerns: Where does the money needed for such an aid come from? What are the specific standards whereby to award scholarships? Are there more fair and efficient alternative solutions? Once you find out why your audiences are undecided, you need to address their doubts and concerns as directly and fully as possible. You have a fairly good chance of winning them over when their questions are answered satisfactorily.
    And audiences who disagree are the most difficult to write to. Different people disagree with you for different reasons. Some of them may have already given the issue a thought and have already made a choice; therefore, it is extremely difficult to change their minds. Others who disagree may not have had the time to think it over seriously.
    There are two main possible reasons why your audiences may disagree with you:
    1. because they don’t have the "facts" or because they look at the same "facts" differently;
    2. because they are influenced by their personal opinion, prejudice, and political or religious beliefs. Once you have found why they disagree, you can decide what is the best approach to such audiences. If it is a lack of information, your job is to give them the relevant historical as well as up to date information as accurately as possible. If it is for personal, political and religious reasons, you need to recognize them, understand them, and address them accordingly.
    Now, we can see that audience awareness is so crucial to the success of your writing. In actual practice, you may need to analyze your audience in terms of three factors: social relations, knowledge, and viewpoints in order to decide the best approach for your writing. And in the next lecture, we’ll discuss the writing purpose and your role in the writing. Thanks for your attention!