
The audience’s attitude while reading, listening, observing, or whatnot affects how they receive and process the communication they receive. Like authors, audiences bring diverse attitudes to how they appreciate different pieces of communication.

Depending on authors’ purposes, audiences’ specific qualities, the nature of the context, and other factors, any of these attitudes could either help or hinder authors in their efforts to communicate depending on the other factors in any given rhetorical situation. Consider if an author communicates with a flippant attitude as opposed to a serious attitude, or with drama as opposed to comedy, or calmly as opposed to excitedly. But attitude affects a great deal of how a rhetorical situation unfolds. There are as many purposes for communicating as there are words to describe those purposes.Īttitude is related to purpose and is a much-overlooked element of rhetorical situations. Authors’ and audiences’ purposes are only limited to what authors and audiences want to accomplish in their moments of communication. Audiences may seek to be instructed, persuaded, informed, entertained, educated, startled, excited, saddened, enlightened, punished, consoled, or many, many others. The audience of your paper are those who will read what you write. The purpose of your paper is the reason you are writing your paper (convince, inform, instruct, analyze, review, etc). Like authors, audiences have varied purposes for reading, listening to, or otherwise appreciating pieces of communication. Kent Writing Commons Purpose and Audience Sometimes it is easier to consider your purpose and audience when trying to develop ideas. An author’s purpose in communicating could be to instruct, persuade, inform, entertain, educate, startle, excite, sadden, enlighten, punish, console, or many, many others. The following table is not exhaustive authors could easily have purposes that are not listed on this table.Īuthors’ and audiences’ purposes in communicating determine the basic rationale behind other decisions both authors and audiences make (such as what to write or speak about, or whom to listen to, or what medium to use, or what setting to read in, among others). Under each of these two broad purposes, they identify a host of more specific purposes. They suggest that most texts written in college or in the workplace often fill one of two broader purposes: to be informative or to be persuasive. In the textbook Writing Today, Johnson-Sheehan and Paine discuss purpose more specifically in terms of the author of a text.


Authors and audiences tend to bring their own purposes (and often multiple purposes each) to a rhetorical situation, and these purposes may conflict or complement each other depending on the efforts of both authors and audiences. Rhetorical situations rarely have only one purpose. It is the varied purposes of a rhetorical situation that determine how an author communicates a text and how audiences receive a text. The importance of purpose in rhetorical situations cannot be overstated. This presentation is suitable for the beginning of a composition course or the assignment of a writing project in any class.Īuthors and audiences both have a wide range of purposes for communicating. This presentation is designed to introduce your students to a variety of factors that contribute to strong, well-organized writing. Writing Letters of Recommendation for Students.
