Audience, Purpose and Context PDF

Audience, Purpose, & Context Discuss these following scenario with your partners: Imagine you are a computer scientist, and you have written an important paper about cybersecurity. You have been invited to speak at a conference to explain your ideas. As you prepare your slides and notes for your sp...

Audience, Purpose, & Context Discuss these following scenario with your partners: Imagine you are a computer scientist, and you have written an important paper about cybersecurity. You have been invited to speak at a conference to explain your ideas. As you prepare your slides and notes for your speech, you are thinking about these questions:  What kind of language should I use?  What information should I include on my slides? Now, imagine you are the same computer scientist, and you have a nephew in 3rd grade. Your nephew’s teacher has invited you to come to his class for Parents’ Day, to explain what you do at work. Will you give the same speech to the class of eight-year-olds? How will your language and information be the same or different? Thinking about audience, purpose, and context Before we give the presentations in the scenarios described above, we need to consider our audience, purpose, and context. We need to adjust the formality and complexity of our language, depending on what our audience already knows. For example, when we are writing for an academic audience of classmates and instructors, we use more formal, complex language than when we are writing for an audience of children. Before we start to write, we need to know: Who is the intended audience? (Who are you writing this for?) What is the purpose? (Why are you writing this?) What is the context? (What is the situation, when is the time period, and where are your readers?) We will examine each of these below. The rhetorical triangle AUDIENCE Who are you writing for? An effective message is a product of several action steps. One of these is developing a strategy for adapting material to your specific audience. This step involves developing a common ground, building and maintaining audience interest, relating to your audience’s level of understanding, reinforcing or changing your audience’s attitude toward you or your topic, and relating information visually. Your audience are the people who will read your writing, or listen to your presentation. Therefore the speakers should show awareness of their audience’s presence by developing a common ground --- an awareness that the speaker and audience share similar information, feelings, and experiences. Here are some questions you might think about as you’re deciding what to write about and how to shape your message:  What do I know about my audience? (What are their ages, interests, and biases? Do they have an opinion already? Are they interested in the topic? Why or why not?)  What do they know about my topic? (And, what does this audience not know about the topic? What do they need to know?)  What details might affect the way this audience thinks about my topic? (How will facts, statistics, personal stories, examples, definitions, or other types of evidence affect this audience?) To ensure awareness of your audience and satisfy their information needs, you may prepare an audience profile that answer the following questions:  Who is your primary audience?  How big is your audience?  What is your audience’s composition?  What is your audience’s level of understanding?  What is your audience’s probable reaction? It is important to consider the following when planning and writing your message:  How to establish credibility with them  What media they prefer and expect  What information is pertinent to them  What information they require  What they want to know As a speaker with credibility and deserving of respect, being polite is a must. By being courteous to your audience, you show consideration for their needs and feelings. Express yourself with kindness and tact. Venting your emotions rarely improves the situation and can jeopardize your audience’s goodwill. Instead, be gentle when expressing yourself. PURPOSE – Why are you writing? When writing a message, the first thing to think about is your purpose. For a business message to be effective, its purpose and its audience must complement each other. Before writing your message, consider whether your purpose is worth pursuing. Ask yourself these questions:  Is my purpose realistic?  Is this the right time?  Is the right person delivering this message?  Is my purpose acceptable to the organization? To the audience? Audience and purpose work together, as in these examples:  I need to write a letter to my landlord explaining why my rent is late so she won’t be upset. (Audience = landlord; Purpose = explaining my situation and keeping my landlord happy)  I want to write a proposal for my work team to persuade them to change our schedule. (Audience = work team; Purpose = persuading them to get the schedule changed)  I have to write a research paper for my environmental science instructor comparing solar to wind power. (Audience = instructor; Purpose = informing by analyzing and showing that you understand these two power sources) How Do I Know What My Purpose Is? Sometimes your instructor will give you a purpose, like in the example above about the environmental science research paper (to inform), but other times, in college and in life, your purpose will depend on what effect you want your writing to have on your audience. What is the goal of your writing? What do you hope for your audience to think, feel, or do after reading it? Here are a few possibilities:  Persuade or inspire them to act or to think about an issue from your point of view.  Challenge them or make them question their thinking or behavior.  Argue for or against something they believe or do; change their minds or behavior.  Inform or teach them about a topic they don’t know much about.  Connect with them emotionally; help them feel understood. Once you satisfied that you have a legitimate purpose in communicating, take a good look at your intended audience. Here are some of the main kinds of informative and persuasive writing you will do in college: INFORMATIVE WRITING PERSUASIVE WRITING describes argues explains defends tells a story convinces summarizes justifies analyzes advocates compares/contrasts supports CONTEXT ~ What is the situation? When and where are you and your readers situated? What are your readers’ circumstances? What is happening around them? Answering these questions will help you figure out the context, which helps you decide what kind of writing fits the situation best. The context is the situation, setting, or environment; it is the place and time that you are writing for. In our examples above, the first context is a professional conference; the second context is a third- grade classroom. The kind of presentation you write would be very different for these different contexts. Kinds of Communication Context 1. Historical Context The historical context involves the expectation of the speaker and the audience in situations that happen regularly or have happened in the past. 2. Psychological Context The psychological context refers to the mood and emotions of the audience, as well as the speaker to a lesser extent. How the audience is feeling will have an impact on how the speaker's messages will be received, and how they should be delivered. 3. Cultural Context Cultural context is one of the most obvious factors of communication, but it is also one of the most important. Culture relates to the beliefs and values of a group. 4. Social Context Social context is a personal matter. It involves the relationship of the speaker and the audience and the expectations involved in that relationship. 5. Physical Context There is a time and place for everything, and that is where physical context comes in. The physical context involves the actual location, the time of day, the lighting, noise level and related factors. Here’s another example: Imagine that your car breaks down on the way to class. You need to send a message to someone to help you. AUDIENCE: your friends PURPOSE: to ask for help CONTEXT: you are standing by the side of Little Patuxent Parkway, 10 minutes before class begins. Your friends are already at the campus Starbucks or in Duncan Hall. Do you and your readers have time for you to write a 1,000-word essay about how a car works, and how yours has broken down? Or would one word (‘help!’) and a photo be a better way to send your message? Now imagine that you are enrolled in a mechanical engineering class, and your professor has asked for a 4-page explanation of how internal combustion works in your car. What kind of writing should you produce? This would be the appropriate audience, purpose, and context for the 1,000-word essay about how a car works. Exercise 1 On your own sheet of paper, generate a list of characteristics under each category for each audience. This list will help you later when you read about tone and content. 1. Your classmates  Demographics ____________________________________________  Education ____________________________________________  Prior knowledge ____________________________________________  Expectations ____________________________________________ 2. Your instructor  Demographics ____________________________________________  Education ____________________________________________  Prior knowledge ____________________________________________  Expectations ____________________________________________ 3. The head of your academic department  Demographics ____________________________________________  Education ____________________________________________  Prior knowledge ____________________________________________  Expectations ____________________________________________ 4. Now think about your next writing assignment. Identify the purpose. Create a list of characteristics under each category. My assignment: ____________________________________________ My purpose: ____________________________________________ My audience: ____________________________________________  Demographics ____________________________________________  Education ____________________________________________  Prior knowledge ____________________________________________  Expectations ____________________________________________ Collaboration Please share with a classmate and compare your answers. Keep in mind that as your topic shifts in the writing process, your audience may also shift. For more information about the writing process. Also, remember that decisions about style depend on audience, purpose, and content. Identifying your audience’s demographics, education, prior knowledge, and expectations will affect how you write, but purpose and content play an equally important role. The next subsection covers how to select an appropriate tone to match the audience and purpose. Exercise 2 Think about the assignment and purpose you selected, and the audience you selected. Now, identify the tone you would use in the assignment. My assignment: ____________________________________________ My purpose: ____________________________________________ My audience: ____________________________________________ My tone: ____________________________________________ Choosing Appropriate, Interesting Content Content refers to all the written substance in a document. After selecting an audience and a purpose, you must choose what information will make it to the page. Content may consist of examples, statistics, facts, anecdotes, testimonies, and observations, but no matter the type, the information must be appropriate and interesting for the audience and purpose. An essay written for third graders that summarizes the legislative process, for example, would have to contain succinct and simple content. Content is also shaped by tone. When the tone matches the content, the audience will be more engaged, and you will build a stronger relationship with your readers. Consider that audience of third graders. You would choose simple content that the audience will easily understand, and you would express that content through an enthusiastic tone. The same considerations apply to all audiences and purposes. Exercise 3 Match the content in the box to the appropriate audience and purpose. On your own sheet of paper, write the correct letter next to the number. 1. Whereas economist Holmes contends that the financial crisis is far from over, the presidential advisor Jones points out that it is vital to catch the first wave of opportunity to increase market share. We can use elements of both experts’ visions. Let me explain how. 2. In 2000, foreign money flowed into the United States, contributing to easy credit conditions. People bought larger houses than they could afford, eventually defaulting on their loans as interest rates rose. 3. The Emergency Economic Stabilization Act, known by most of us as the humungous government bailout, caused mixed reactions. Although supported by many political leaders, the statute provoked outrage among grassroots groups. In their opinion, the government was actually rewarding banks for their appalling behavior. 1. Audience: An instructor Purpose: To analyze the reasons behind the 2007 financial crisis Content: ____________________________________________ 2. Audience: Classmates Purpose: To summarize the effects of the $700 billion government bailout Content: ____________________________________________ 3. Audience: An employer Purpose: To synthesize two articles on preparing businesses for economic recovery Content: ____________________________________________ Collaboration Please share with a classmate and compare your answers. Exercise 4 Using the assignment, purpose, audience, Remember that content consists of examples, statistics, facts, anecdotes, testimonies, and observations. My assignment: ____________________________________________ My purpose: ____________________________________________ My audience: ____________________________________________ My tone: ____________________________________________ My content ideas: ____________________________________________ Key Takeaways  Paragraphs separate ideas into logical, manageable chunks of information.  The content of each paragraph and document is shaped by purpose, audience, and tone.  The four common academic purposes are to summarize, to analyze, to synthesize, and to evaluate.  Identifying the audience’s demographics, education, prior knowledge, and expectations will affect how and what you write.  Devices such as sentence structure, word choice, punctuation, and formal or informal language communicate tone and create a relationship between the writer and his or her audience.  Content may consist of examples, statistics, facts, anecdotes, testimonies, and observations. All content must be appropriate and interesting for the audience, pur  pose and tone.