Blog #2

In Douglas Park’s “The Meaning of Audience,” he explores the elusiveness of the word audience that is evident within written discourse. He notes that because of its ambiguous nature in relation to construction and creation of a work, the presence of a rhetorical situation or lack thereof often shapes in the clarification of an audience. It is possible that an audience may be readily identifiable; however, it is all contingent upon the author’s intent, content/subject matter and overall purpose of the work. Park references Baxter’s article and emphasizes that the more structured a rhetorical situation is (with reference to the example of Reagan), the more specific the features of the audience can be determined. Therefore, a context must be constructed for the creation of the audience. Park determines that it’s possible for an external audience to be readily identifiable, but also an implicit audience that is constructed within the discourse itself.
In responding to the author’s article, I was initially even more confused with regard to the differing possibilities of audience and the implicit/explicit qualities that are associated as a result. However, throughout the article, the primary message of the work began to become clear; specifically, the relation of the ambiguous audience to composition in the classroom and the possibility of oversight or misunderstanding due to the unaddressed nature of audience. This particularly applies to this course in relation to editing and composing in print and online, since it is not extremely apparent who/what the audience may be in any form of composition, let alone the blogs we are required to maintain. It is therefore necessary to consider differences in context and reception of an audience, and to regard the audience not necessarily as a singular entity, but one that may encompass a wide variety of assumptions and beliefs.