Journal 3- Ryland Hager

My personal definition of audience is the subject that a writer is conveying their message toward. A writer needs to know their audience to make sure that their work is appropriately written as to ensure that it is effective as possible. Knowledge is the human understanding of different concepts in the world. Writer’s use knowledge to educate their reader and further emphasize their point. Both of these concepts are vital to an author’s ability to convey a message because without tailoring one’s writing to the audience it can come off as too complex or too simple and either bore the reader or have them dismiss the piece entirely. Knowledge is also vital to their work because without any significant information to share with the reader, nothing is accomplished throughout the text because the reader is leaving with the same understanding of what the subject of the writing was as when they came in.

Lunsford’s stance on audience is that it is responsive to the subject of the work. In this way, the author is creating the audience in relation to their work and not creating the work in relation to the audience. Estrem’s view on knowledge is that knowledge is created by author’s writing about a subject. Both of Lunsford’s and Estrem’s views on audience and knowledge help me better understand Anzaldua’s text in the sense that I now see that audience and knowledge can be created throughout a text when before I assumed that a writer started writing with certain knowledge already in mind and an audience to write to.

After reading these texts my definitions of audience and knowledge has not changed but my mindset on these two concepts have. I used to think of an audience and knowledge as a concrete idea that writers have before working and that they would use both of them to ensure that their writing is effective. Now I see these concepts as more abstract ideas that writers can adjust throughout their work to their freedom.