Journal 3: Aracely Aguilera

After reading Heidi Estrem's “Writing is a Knowledge-Making Activity,” Andra Lunsford's “Writing Addresses, Invokes, and/or Creates Audiences” & Anzaldua's “How to Tame a Wild Tongue,” write in response to the following prompt.

• How do you define "audience" and "knowledge," and how are these concepts important for writers? How do Lunsford and Estrem define these two terms, and what connections do they make between these terms and writing? 

An audience is the person/people the message is geared towards to. Knowledge is prior education and experience. For writers, these two concepts are important since without knowledge, who will the audience? Without an audience, who do you share the knowledge to? 

Lunsford defines audience as the imaginary group of people that you want to write to, while Estrem defines knowledge as what you think about when writing. The connections between these two terms are that what you are thinking about when writing, you would want your audience to think that as well.

• What do these definitions of knowledge and audience help you to understand about Anzaldua’s text? What does Anzaldua's text contribute to your understanding of audience and knowledge that you hadn’t considered before?

Based on the definitions of the knowledge and audience, it helped me understand what Gloria was thinking about when she was writing her narrative. I haven't considered that she used her language to put the audience in her shoes and how she went through situations that the audience may not have dealt with.  

• Finally, after reading these three texts, have your definitions of audience and knowledge changed? if so, how? if not, why not? Be prepared to discuss your answers in class and to draw our attention to passages from the texts that support what you’re saying, that confuse you, that are illuminating for you, etc.

I believe my definitions for audience and knowledge has changed. I thought that an audience was a group of people you are present your work to, but it's more like they will put themselves from your perspective to learn what messages you want to convey. As for knowledge, it is more than prior education and experince, we write to think, and that builds knowledge.