In high school, the relevance of audience and genre in writing are not brought to importance. However, to the rest of the world these two factors have a huge effect on how your messages are conveyed. You may not realize it, but at any point that you sit down and write, you subconsciously use both of these terms; although your teacher might not put any emphasis on it throughout grading your papers. As you develop your writing skills, you will start to realize that the effectiveness of your writing will improve if you keep your audience in mind while writing. Choosing your genre carefully will also increase the efficiency of your writing.
The audience is the group you are trying to convey your message to. They are the ones that respond to, or take action based on your ideas, concepts, and beliefs. The audience affects the diction that you use in your writing. Genre on the other hand is also important because it can help you determine who your audience is. Choosing a specific audience or a specific genre determines the other. When choosing a specific audience, there are certain genres that will more effectively convey your message to that specific audience. Choosing a specific genre, however, will determine the audience you’re targeting.
Take Martin Luther King, for example, in his letter from a Birmingham jail, King specifically targets the clergymen. His choice of audience severely affects the manner in which he delivers his message. Because he knows his audience, he addresses them directly and personally. Doing so, the audience, or specifically the clergymen, knows that King is reaching out to them only. So how does genre correlate with the audience? Billy Collins for example uses the genre of speech to address his audience of graduating high school students, in his commencement speech. Realizing that he is giving a speech and that many high school students would not want to sit down and listen to an hour long speech, he keeps in mind that he must keep them interested.
Whereas genre and audience are the most important terms in writing as it shapes your entire work, another important aspect of writing is the rhetorical situation. A rhetorical situation is the reason for writing, or an audience’s call for information. Bitzer talks about rhetorical situations, and comes up with a perfect example, the John F Kennedy assassination. When Kennedy was assassinated, the public called for information as to whom, how, and why. This is the rhetorical situation of the Kennedy assassination. This information soon changed and slowed down as the culprit was arrested and taken into custody, and thus the rhetorical situation was lessened in the process.
Ultimately, when writing your first college paper, or when going out into the work force and writing a letter to your boss, consider the audience, genre, and rhetorical situation and make the best of the scenario and rely your message at maximum efficiency. As a high school senior, you will face many challenges ahead, don’t let writing be one of them.
By: Andreas Adolfsson, Stacey Joseph, Javy Passalacqua
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