Although the complexities of the concept of audience in nonacademic settings are gradually being recognized, audience analysis continues to be viewed primarily as a cognitive, problem-solving activity. Grounded in decontextualizing research--such as protocol analysis--this approach to audience assumes that, to inform appropriate writing choices, the writer can and should determine values, needs, goals, and attitudes of a primary audience. However, recent ethnographic research suggests that, although the writer does make substantive analyses, the writer's main concept of audience is predetermined by contextual constraints. The writer makes choices primarily based on an organization's collective view of the writer-reader relationship, which the writer understands at a tacit level through everyday experience. Audience analysis is thus a social process shaped by both situational and organizational constraints. Students should be equipped with ethnographers' strategies in order to understand their audiences by understanding those around them, thereby viewing their writing in a social context. (Eighteen references are appended.) (MM)