Surveys three current perspectives on audience, exploring the strengths and weaknesses of each without arguing for the superiority of one view. Provides a conceptual framework that will clarify some of the things composition theorists can mean when they talk about the writer's audience. (FL)

Surveys research on role of audience in discourse in a series of related disciplines, including cognitive psychology, composition, speech communication, rhetoric, and philosophy. Concludes that writing teachers can achieve a sophisticated, complex understanding of nature and role of audience in written discourse only if they are aware of both…