Demonstrates why traditional methods of audience analysis in composition have so little practical rhetorical value. Provides a backdrop for a broader and more useful view of what can go into audience analysis. (HTH)

In order for students to write for a general audience, they must be able to address unknown readers. Research into how successful writers perceive their audience suggests that they write to an audience who is an idealized version of themselves. Writing for an unknown audience can be a writer's search for common ground, for a set of beliefs and…

Discusses technology and literacy, in particular the characteristics and qualities of hypertext. Seeks to communicate some of the experience of reading hypertext. Argues that the computer is much more than a new device for displaying textual information or for teaching children how to read and write. (SR)

Describes the folk tale "Iron John" and the attraction it held for the author as a boy. Discusses the author's own reforming of the tale in a picture book version. (SR)

Recounts an interview with Irish children's author Martin Wadell. Discusses how he came to be a writer and how his experiences as a father enrich his stories. (HTH)

Scholars have celebrated the spoken word in King's "Letter from Birmingham Jail," but they have overlooked the significance of the Letter's writing. In this essay I closely read King's act of writing the Letter, along with the figures of speech he employs in it, and I show how both--by enacting the mass media's ability to cross contexts--are…

Writers construct meaning when they compose texts, and readers construct meaning when they understand and interpret texts. Building meaning through reading entails organizing, selecting, and connecting. Readers use previously acquired knowledge to operate on textual clues, organizing mental representations that include material they select from…

Notes that George Orwell's "Shooting an Elephant" is frequently encountered in textbooks that ignore the existence of the original audience. Argues that textbook editors thereby misinform students by failing to show how writers recognize and write to particular audiences, and how writers' specific audiences determine many of the authors'…

Presenting informal interviews, this book opens a window into the writing processes, influences, work habits, and personal backgrounds of 16 poets who write for children and young adults. The interviews in the book provide not only critical discussions of poetry but also ideas about how teachers can help children understand poetry and enjoy…

Drawing on works of literary theory and postmodern fiction, discusses the relationship between reader, writer, and text. Examines the boundaries and frontiers that writers patrol and readers inhabit as they live out their personal lives with texts. (DMM)

Discussions of audience, such as those by Russell Long, Carol Berkenkotter, David Park, Lisa Ede, and Andrea Lunsford, most often do not utilize the research by speech rhetoricians to whom the question of audience has always been central. Chaim Perelman's conception of the "universal audience" and traditional, speech-oriented rhetoric…

In developing an interactive model of composing, this paper discusses three groups of reader-oriented theories, each of which provides composing theorists with some research and theory to use in developing such a model. First the paper discusses the main principle of the literary reader-response theorists--that the meaning and value of texts do…

For much of this century, text linguists have recognized that various tokens called "metadiscourse" may help explain how texts function. In linguistics, metadiscourse has a more concrete meaning than it typically does in composition: it refers to specific words, phrases, and clauses which are primarily intended to help the reader…

Spotlighting a variety of venerable poets, as well as some rising stars, this book is the second series of conversations about the lives and works of poets who write mainly for children and young people. The book presents informal interviews with the writers about their childhoods, the influences upon their work, their writing processes, how they…

Asserts that students who are aware of the generic background in their own writing will more easily develop a sense of genre when studying texts written by others. Presents three rhetorical goals--writing to instruct, writing to delight, and writing to motivate--and discusses how an awareness of these goals influences reading and writing. (MM)