Writing to your audience is a good thing but you don't want to be writing as if you are looking down on them because you know more about the topic then they do. The quote on page five that says :
"Once you have your purpose clearly in mind, your next task is to define and analyze your audience, a sure sense of our audience - knowing who it is and what assumptions you can reasonably make about it - is crucial to the success of your rhetoric."
It makes sense to write to your audience. But it seems like their would be a thin line between telling your reading about something and teaching your reader. Its completely understandable why some students write as if the work they are producing is their own genius. I mean who hasn't written and essay talking about something like the Declaration of the Independence and writing it as if you were there. Not like any of us were there but the information is there to speculate.
I feel like I'm rambling at this point because I don't know what else to react to about this article. If I think of anything else I will post another blog about it
The part of writing to your audience does make sence because one of the main things a person should want to get from their writing is for the reader to understand it.
ReplyDeleteYou're right -- it's hard, sometimes very hard, to "write to your audience," especially when you don't know your audience very well. One of the points Bartholomae is making is that student writers don't know their audience very well, but that this shouldn't be too surprising -- students are still figuring out their places in the academic discourse community, after all. But that's why we have classes like English 114; they're to help kick-start that process, at least in theory! :)
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