Journal Three - Samantha Murphy

Prior to examining the articles, I would define audience as a witness to a piece of work. They are behind the fourth wall of the piece, but are affected nonetheless. For a writer, knowing your audience is a key aspect in the tone and format of your text. Knowledge, in writing, is the information set in the text. It doesn't have to be necessarily scholarly information, but knowledge about any subject or topic from the authors perspective would be considered knowledge. 

Lunsford's personal definition of an audience is the a fictitious group of people that share a "relational and responsive" connection with the author, the text and themselves. (20) Clearly different from my original definition, Lunsford claims the audience is within the rhetorical triangle, and they are not separated by the fourth wall as much as I previously believed. To a writer, the audience is always fiction because an author needs to imagine their audiences infant of them, like a speech audience. According to Estrem, knowledge is "coming upon new ideas as a result of writing." (19) Writing is a knowledge-maker, for knowledge is derived from writing. There is a difference between creating knowledge and finding it, and this differentiates true knowledge. 

To start analyzing Anzaldua's text, I must say that the original link we were given did not work for me, so I found the next best link I could find of this piece. The introduction states that "identity is intertwined with the way we speak." It clearly encapsulates what an audience is in a few words. This idea that identity effects how we communicate with others is discussed throughout Anzaldua's work, with the discrimination of her language in a classroom to the first time she heard the word "nosotras" identifying a group of women. After reading the text in full, it is clear to me why I would have needed to read Lunsford and Estrem's works beforehand. They put the idea of how audiences have such an impact on a piece of writing and in life in general. The barrier between audience's meaning is nonexistent from writing to real life. 

Through examining these texts, my definitions have altered slightly. I will keep my definition of the  purpose of an audience to a writer; being a key influence in the way an author addresses certain topics and the tone they use. However, I take back the idea that an audience sits behind a fourth wall because they need to be as involved as the writer and the text is. I believe my definition of knowledge is alright, as it was quite similar to Estrem's own definition.