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?
The definition of audience to me is the group of people reading a certain piece of writing that an author has written for them. Each author holds a special demographic in their mind as they invision the reader understanding and analysing their text. Knowledge is something that is gained from reading or learning about experiences and topics in everyday life or possible a classroom. Knowledge can be shared from person to person through word of mouth or more commonly in this day in age, on the internet. Any problem or solution or question can be searched and the answer discovered. These two concepts are extremely valuable to authors as writers look to give their audience knowledge. Lunsford defines audience as a group who share similar ideas from a certain piece of writing's principles and thoughts as the writer of the piece. Estrem defines knowledge as a positive consequence writers gain when they create a piece of text. Some important connections they make between these terms is without identify an audience, the knowledge could be lost. Let's say an adult reads a child's book- no knowledge would be gained because the audience doesn't match the demographic the author had in mind.
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?
These two definitions of audience and knowledge help me realize that Anzaldua's text can address any type of audience who is willing to accept cultural hardships people of a native country experience. Knowledge about her struggles with identity due to her inability to blend in with a predominantly white community, like her teacher, is gained when an audience such as myself begins to realize. Her text was able to reach out to the reader and expose insecurities about her native language and personal experiences she chose to share with an audience so they can appreciate her hardships. Her text also offeres a variety of additional knowledge within the text. She writes about her Spanish heritage and ancestors. Also about how her culture can to be when they were mixed with another. She offers a variety of different languages and slang she might say in her daily life. The audience walks away from the text with an immense amount of knowledge about her community and life as a diverse Spanish/English speaker.
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 would have to agree with my orginal thoughts before about audience and knowledge. These pieces I read only offer more support to my defintion, although Lunsfor did offer a different opinion that an audience should share the same ideas and opinions of the author. But I believe that the author doesn't necessarily want everyone to agree with his or her ideas and sometimes it's the people who disagree that end up creating more knowledge by refuting past statements or ideas. My idea of knowledge doesn't change either as knowledge is a personal growth one experiences by making mistakes, reading, or educating themselves on a certain topic they are interested in just to name a few.
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