Describes a protocol study of 10 professional writers which examined the meaning and influence of purpose on writers in the workplace. Explores the interactions of various purpose considerations derived from situation, reader, and text. Suggests that professional writers have a range of meanings in mind when they think about purpose. (MM)

Details writing problems technical students encounter when they fail to distinguish between model and example and between different kinds of models. Analyzes these problems with reference to inappropriate material in texts. Defines several writing models, and shows how understanding these models gives writers rhetorical flexibility while producing…

Describes how a short exercise in designing greeting cards for a "Teacher Appreciation Day" helps student identify and analyze the four components of rhetoric--purpose, content, persona, and audience. Includes samples of students' greeting card messages. (MM)

Examines the relationships among an audience analysis task, the number of arguments and appeals used in college students' persuasive papers, the level of strategic adaptation of those arguments, and overall persuasiveness. Finds that giving students information about the audience relative to their paper topics significantly affects each of the…

Suggests that conflicts in early Soviet literature over reader's identity and function presages many issues in critical understanding of audiences, especially as reflected in the antithetical Frankfurt and Birmingham School positions. Argues that how the mass reader was invoked, defined, and appropriated for institutional needs in the Soviet…

Reviews and redefines a concept known as the "rhetorical situation" through an examination of the political discourse of China during the 19th-century Opium Wars. Arrives at three alterations to the "rhetorical situation" concerning the role of the audience, the role of the culture's discourse tradition, and the interactive and…

Illustrates ways that the work of some communication scholars with resistant, oppositional, and critical audiences does not, however, endorse active public life. Attempts to realign the language of critical viewing with the goals of participatory democracy by suggesting qualities of critical viewing that are conducive to achieving and maintaining…

Uses a computerized style checker to analyze 14 direct-mail letters used to market books to a middle-class female audience. Outlines methods for correlating stylistic traits with sales success. Finds that letter effectiveness is enhanced by lowering readability levels, as well as by limiting the use of negative words and modifiers. (PRA)

Argues that, before there can be effective criticism of advertising, people must admit that all respond to it in ways that are both pleasing and skeptical, amused and doubting, open and resisting. Discusses listening to the "other reader" and cultural criticism in the composition class. (PRA)

Suggests that technical writing teachers pay closer attention to how students constitute an active and demanding audience. Profiles three different, yet representative, types of technical writing students: institute of technology students, industry students, and liberal arts students. (MG)

Both teaching and scholarly writing make sense only if they are part of an ongoing intellectual dialogue. When the audience for creative legal scholarship is small, as it often is, scholarship becomes primarily self-education, with publication a willingness to share ideas. (MSE)

Presents a classroom activity that will provide students practice in developing the essential skills of developing a profile of the primary audience. Suggests that students should also explore differences in word usage. Concludes that students will better appreciate the significant function of audience in determining the content, tone, and method…

Argues that an effectively designed intranet can become a valuable medium for facilitating work processes and communication throughout a company, and that sound structure and visual appeal are important in attracting users to an intranet. Examines issues, such as creating form appropriate to function, determining audience needs, and implementing…

Argues for the teaching of "visible features of written texts," or document design, in composition classes. Concludes that educators must teach students how to see their own texts through the eyes of the readers they hope to attract, converse with, and persuade. (SC)

Studies problems students face when visualizing a hypertext audience. Traces students' problems with audience analysis to three independent issues: (1) letting operational and functional levels of construction take precedence over figurative meaning; (2) confusing demands of print and oral audience expectations; and (3) conceiving of hypertext as…