An Overview the Audience Has Long Been Central to the Rhetorical Tradition. Definitions

Sharon E. Jarvis, John Durham Peters, Joseph B. Walther "Audience" Encyclopedia of Rhetoric. Ed.Thomas O. Sloane. © 2006 Oxford University Press. Encyclopedia of Rhetoric: (e-reference edition).Oxford University Press. The Midnight University. 16 February 2007

An overview The audience has long been central to the rhetorical tradition. Definitions of this term

usually refer to a real person or collection of people who see, hear, or read an event or work. A key

assumption in rhetoric is that discourse is composed in light of those who will hear or read it. Because of

this, many believe that rhetors must contemplate the needs of their audiences while speaking or writing.

Just how they should do so, however, is a matter of some debate.

A History of Audience.

The charge to writers and speakers to “consider the audience” is a venerable one, dating back to before

the fifth century bce. For instance, in the fourth century bce Plato's “Socrates” noted that one must

understand the nature of the audience if one hopes to be a competent speaker. [See Classical rhetoric.]

While Plato (c.428–c.347 bce) and his contemporaries were largely interested in oral rhetoric, recent

scholars stress that rhetors crafting other types of messages (written, nonverbal, visual, mass mediated,

virtual) should also take the audience into account. It has been argued that if any feature of rhetoric and

composition can be taken as axiomatic, it is the audience—an entity related to many factors involved in a

rhetorical occasion, including subject matter, invention, argumentative strategy, arrangement,

enthymemes, topics, genres, ethics, style, medium, and even, punctuation (Porter, 1992).

In classical times, the audience was a physical gathering located in a specific place. Although

contemporary theorists extend the definition to consider the many audiences that experience a text (i.e.,

individuals who witness a speech in real time as well as those who read, hear, or see a recorded version

of that speech), the early audience was primarily associated with listeners witnessing an oratorical event

or occasion. These groups were much smaller and more public than modern audiences, which because

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of advances in communication technologies, are often dispersed, fragmented, and privatized. Subject

matter for early audiences varied according to social class and status; educated groups met for literary

and musical works, and larger ones attended fights, races, games, comedies, and circuses.

Evolving terminology. The term audience first appeared in the English language in the fourteenth

century, and its original use referred to a hearing. Its etymological roots derive from face-to-face

communication contexts, interactions that were hierarchically organized; indeed, to be granted an

audience was to be given listeners, to be considered an authoritative source. Over time, the word has

grown to represent an assembly of listeners, including readers or viewers of particular authors, speakers,

or publications. With the advent of electronic media in the twentieth century, the word expanded to

include individuals who experience radio, film, television, and the Internet from a distance.

The exact terms used to refer to the audience can lead to confusion. For example, the words audience

and reader are generally employed to refer to the persons who read a piece of writing (i.e., an identifiable

real reader). At other times, however, these terms carry more specific meanings. In some cases, the

“reader” may refer to the person in the act of reading and responding to a written work (i.e., readerreading,

audience-reading), whereas the “audience” can refer to

(1) the imaginative construction a writer uses while composing a text; (2) something that the writer places

in the discourse itself; or (3) a combination of these. Over the years, other terms have also been used to

refer to the audience, such as receivers, decoders, users, consumers, communities, and forums .

Scholarly attention has also focused on what the audience is not. Efforts to formulate a proper definition

of the term have resulted in the labeling of particular groups with certain characteristics as “audiences”

and the excluding of all other groups of auditors. Groups that have not met these criteria are labeled by

some as “mobs,” “small groups,” “crowds,” “aggregations,” or the like and are excluded as objects of

audience analysis. Features used in the past to distinguish certain types of audiences from others

include, but are not limited to: plurality—when two or more listeners are jointly present and become a

source of stimuli for each other; size—the number of individuals receiving a message; homogeneity—the

extent to which members of the group share a common background of experience, attitudes, habits of

thought, and other traits; group feeling—the extent to which the members of the audience are aware of

and responding to one another; orderliness—the state or context of the listeners; preliminary tuning—the

degree to which the listeners are prepared for a message; common focus of attention—the extent to

which the individuals are attending to the same message; and polarization—a condition when audience

members assume a listening attitude and regard the speaker as separate and apart from their own

situation.

Audience as centerpiece. Several academic communities consider the audience to be central to their

work; for example, the areas of rhetoric and composition, reading theory, literary theory and criticism, and

rhetoric and philosophy; areas related to communication studies, oral performance, and debate; the

disciplines of film, theater, radio, television, journalism, mass communication, and advertising; critical

approaches including those in critical studies, cultural studies, and political economy; and such applied

areas as telecommunications, public policy, law, marketing, and business.

Given such widespread interest in this concept, perhaps it is not surprising that the terms has been

conceptualized in divergent ways. For instance, scholars in the past have viewed the audience as sets of

individuals and as collective groups; as passive entities and as active participants in meaning making; as

fundamentally similar and as idiosyncratic group members; as located in physical space and as residing

primarily in an author's imagination; as something to be written for and something that gets in the way of

writing; as something that should be catered to and—recently from the poststructuralist position—

something that should be questioned. Moreover, another communication-oriented encyclopedia, the

International Encyclopedia of Communication (Oxford, 1989), does not feature a single entry for audience

but encourages readers to consult a variety of articles, including the following entries: crowd behavior,

diffusion, interactive media, mass communications research, mass media effects, models of

communications, persuasion, social cognitive theory, taste cultures; the measurement issues of consumer

research, evaluation research, opinion measurement, poll, print audience measurement, rating systems,

radio and television; and the societal concerns of agenda setting, bandwagon effects, cultivation analysis,

cultural indicators, entertainment, leisure, opinion leader, political communication, politicization, public

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opinion, sleeper effect, and violence. In observing this range of meanings, Anderson (1996) notes that

most definitions of the audience account for these criteria: exposure, content, interpretation, relationships,

the individual, and the collective.

Although the rhetorical tradition has long been informed by the concept of audience, this essay will limit

itself to the consideration of elaborated contemporary forms of audience types and styles of engagement.

To provide a map of contributions on this topic, this entry considers both work conducted inside the

rhetorical tradition (English, composition studies, speech communication, reader response work,

postmodern and critical work) as well as in neighboring areas (mass communication, telecommunications,

political science, marketing). Ideas from all of these fields help to shape the current state of audience

research.

Attention to the Readers.

In the early twentieth century, speech departments and then English departments began to emphasize

rhetorical studies and courses that would train students how to communicate. As a result of these

courses, as well as the work of philosophers, literary critics, and educators of the day, modern

rhetoricians began to shift their attention from the speaker or writer to the auditor or reader. [See

Criticism.] In the 1950s and 1960s, the audience enjoyed renewed interest as a result of the “New

Rhetoric,” an approach espoused by a group of theorists in speech communication, philosophy,

composition, and English, which revived principles from classical rhetorical theory (mainly those

associated with Aristotle) and integrated them with insights from modern philosophy, linguistics, and

psychology. [See Modern rhetoric.]

Types of audience. This movement went beyond analyzing the form or content of discourse to consider

elements of philosophy and sociology, and it led to a central concern with the audience. For instance,

Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca (1969) suggest that all argumentation must be adapted to an audience

and based on beliefs accepted by them. In this text, they describe three types of audiences: self as

audience (arguing or questioning oneself); a universal audience (an ideal audience); and a particular

audience (a real audience). In distinguishing between the universal and particular audience (the two

which have been of greatest interest to rhetorical theorists), Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca draw on

Immanuel Kant's notions of conviction (a judgment grounded in objectivity, valid for every rational being)

and persuasion (a judgment grounded in the character of the subject). They then expand these notions by

associating persuasion with action, and conviction with intelligence. Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca

suggest that the particular audience, which can be distinguished by character, persuasion, and action, is

subject to persuasion, whereas the universal audience, depicted by objectivity, conviction and

competence, holds to its convictions. They admit that the universal audience is both ideal, the incarnation

of traditional reason, and yet unreal because it never really exists. Rhetors can create a construct of a

universal audience in order to persuade a particular one (which will resemble the universal audience in

some, but not all respects), while being guided by its presumptions. The construct of the universal

audience can thus be used to help rhetors distinguish between good arguments (reasonable ones) that

this objective group would accept, and bad ones (specious claims) with which this group would disagree.

[See Conviction; and Persuasion.]

Attention to Authors and Texts.

In the 1960s and 1970s, expressivist scholars, who were interested in writing as self-discovery and the

development of “authorial voice,” and aesthetic scholars, who were fascinated with stylistic concerns,

turned their attention to authors and texts, believing that true and pure artists create for themselves, not

others. Consequently, it became acceptable in these camps to focus scholarly attention on intriguing

authors, or texts, or both at the expense of audience. Others at the close of the twentieth century,

however, became increasingly interested in the audience, specifically researchers from these

perspectives: reader-response critics, who see the audience as active in constructing the meaning of a

text; social constructionists, who view reality or truth as created by the author, text, and reader; mass

communication and cultural studies scholars, who measure and question the effects of media on the

audience; telecommunications scholars, who investigate the size and scope of virtual audiences; and

postmodern scholars, who encourage new conceptualizations of the audience as a community or forum.

These groups advance differing ideas about the audience, but a key product from recent research is that

scholars have imagined the audience as powerful, and not simply a receptacle of rhetoric. Even though

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the idea of a powerful audience is not universally accepted, this perspective has inspired a rigorous, selfconscious,

and meaningful debate as to the nature and agency of the audience.

The Relationship between Speaker and Audience.

Audience analysis is of interest to both scholars and students of oral and written rhetoric. With regard to

oral rhetoric, the basic course in speech communication departments for the past century has been public

speaking. [See Public speaking; and Speech.] Audience analysis—the process of examining

information about the expected listeners for a speech—is a critical component of this course's curriculum

and is viewed by many to be key to a speaker's success. Textbooks for this course draw on time-honored

advice in encouraging novice speakers to locate common themes that would appeal to most of the

listeners; attempt to understand the nature of listeners in order to comprehend their passions; and

physically place themselves in the position of the listeners. More specifically, these textbooks underscore

how the relationship between the speaker and the audience determines the success of the speech, and

they encourage asking several questions about an audience, including: general questions (How receptive

is the audience? What kind of audience is being addressed? How does the audience perceive the

speaker's credibility?); demographic questions (How does the speaker relate to the audience in terms of

social groupings such as age, sex, family identification, sexual orientation, race, ethnic background, social

class, philosophical or political perspectives, or religious orientation?); and psychographic questions (How

does the speaker relate to the audience in terms of attitudes, values, lifestyle, and ideology?). In other

words, the questions stressed in contemporary speech courses are not too different from those asked by

Greek and Roman rhētors.

The influence of audience upon the speaker. Although the majority viewpoint holds that ethical

speakers consider the audience while crafting messages, recent scholars have questioned the ethics of

this process (Porter, 1992). For instance, some doubt whether any particular speech can sufficiently

address the diversity present in actual audiences. These scholars ask such questions as: Should

audience influence a speaker's approach to the topic? Should it determine it? When in the process of

developing a message should concern with the audience begin? While those who question the ethics of

designing messages for audiences are not in the majority, their concerns call attention to how widespread

the support for audience analysis has been in the rhetorical tradition.

Identification and cooperation.

The work of literary critic and theorist Kenneth Burke (1897–1993) also challenges the prevailing view of

the audience, specifically in his notion of identification. [See Identification.] Drawing on Aristotle's notion

of “common ground,” Burke suggests that persuasion occurs when rhetors create connections with their

audiences and speak to them in the audience's own language. Burke pushes the notion of common

ground or identification further than Aristotle, however, because he believed that the process of

identification actually changes the speaker. While it is traditionally believed that speakers should learn

about audiences simply to persuade them, Burke believes that the process of identification allows

speakers to learn from audiences; for him, persuasion is not unidirectional (speaker to listener), but a

“moralizing process” in which rhetors are changed as they try to resemble the actions, words, beliefs, and

writings of their audiences. In Burke's mind, then, persuasion is not simply a linear process, but a

cooperative activity in which the speaker and the listeners become “one in being” (or “consubstantial”;

1950). The notion of identification is employed in persuasion teaching and research, some viewing

identification as the basic preparation for persuasion.

Audience influence during the composition process.

Like their colleagues studying oral communication, composition theorists have considered how much, and

recently whether, attention should be paid to the audience while composing texts. [See overview article

on Composition.] The traditional advice in this field, as in public speaking, has been to “consider the

audience” and make adjustments with regard to the listeners, the occasion, and the desired response

(Booth, 1963). Proponents of this view believe awareness and understanding of audience can improve

the quality of prose produced, reminding writers to communicate something to people in a way that will

really make them wish to read it. Audience analysis is more difficult for writers than speakers, however,

for while audiences of oral rhetoric are regarded as stable entities that speakers can analyze, observe,

and accommodate, audiences of written texts are much less predictable. Accordingly, composition

instructors face several challenges while teaching composition, including: encouraging students to

(1) avoid writing for the obvious or immediate readers (their teacher or classmates); (2) refrain from

assuming familiarity with or special knowledge of their readers; (3) write for a broader educated audience;

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and (4) imagine an audience beyond the demographic audience to guide the invention process (Park,

1986) .

Theorists have not, however, universally advocated writing for the audience or with the audience in mind.

For instance, advocates of expressivist and aesthetic rhetorics have been distrustful of the audience.

These scholars focus on the author (at the expense of the audience), contending that true or pure artists

create for themselves, not others. Expressivists, particularly in the 1960s and 1970s, viewed writing as a

means of self-discovery and preferred that writers develop their own voice rather than creating texts to

please the political and cultural norms of an era. Traces of the twentieth-century aesthetics movement

and its influence can be found in composition and text manuals encouraging writers to please and satisfy

themselves, and in the work of literary critics who prefer to focus on intriguing authors or texts instead of

considering how readers might approach or respond to these works.

Other critics believe that anticipating the likes and dislikes of an audience can interrupt the writing

process by paralyzing and compromising the integrity of the writer (Elbow, 1987) and, sometimes, by