As an instructor of Composition and Rhetoric at TAMU, I’ve
recently been questioning the freshman comp definition of “audience.” In the
packets, lesson plans, and writing prompts given to first semester/year instructors in
the English department, our students are informed to write to an “academic audience,”
and I’m not convinced that audience still exists (or is still relevant to the composition classroom). I’m especially not convinced
that students need to write to the “academy” when increasingly surrounded by a
globalized, digital, and information-hungry society (and job market). Having the fall back of “academic
audience” is, for an instructor, the easy way out. As graduate students and
professors, we write our own prose to academic, scholarly audiences – usually increasingly
specialized audiences. While “academic audience” is easy to define, easy to
communicate, and an easy way to make students write responsibly and ethically
(the “academy” is watching you), following this restrictive definition limits
the amount of knowledge instructors communicate in the classroom.
Isn’t media literacy, and the media/digital audience, just as (more) important in our culture as (than) the “academy?”
I would argue: yes. But I know many disagree. However: we are slowly increasing online
instruction and distance learning at this university; we offer hybrid classes;
we promote the use of blogs, wikis, and multi-media presentations. Have we changed
our conception of audience when we assign these tasks – or are we still asking
our students to write to the “academy” even while creating a blog, using a
digital tool to present an idea, or collaborating with other students through browser-based
software? In addition, with the increasing attention being paid to how “audiences”
are treated in the digital world (as cogs in the online advertising campaign
strategy; as streams of data generated by the cookies resting in your browser),
does the digital world redefine or reconstruct a definition of “audience” or “reader”
that our students should be aware of?
When I talked through this current research/pedagogical idea
in a graduate rhetoric course last week, I was given a few research recommendations. My classmates were incredibly accommodating, and I found Walter Ong’s “The Writer’s Audience
Is Always a Fiction” (read it online here)
immediately helpful to thinking about my pedagogical concerns. Any other
recommendations, friends?
Also: as a sidebar, I’ll be attending a Digital Humanities “unconference” called THATcamp this coming weekend. I’m going to introduce these questions into the DH-Pedagogy sessions, and I’ll report back with any updates!
Fascinating insights here Liz! You are certainly right to note all the various ways in which the notion of 'audience' is evolving.
ReplyDeleteI would like to point out a very practical matter, which is often overlooked. The primary 'audience' of any student's writing is their instructor. This may seem obvious enough but we tend to forget that, especially after receiving their graded first papers back, students will think about you as instructor reading what they have to say. While they may naturally have an 'imagined audience' in mind, whether academic or not, they will necessarily work hard to align their arguments with their instructor's expectations.