)
Teaching Technical Writing:
Teaching Audience
Analysis and Adaptation
Edited by Paul V. Anderson
Anthology No. 1
J\
The Association of
,.,.,Teachers of Technical
L . . .ting
TEACHING TECHNICAL WRITING:
TEACHING AUDIENCE ANALYSIS AND ADAPTATION
Anthology No. 1
This anthology series was established to provide another service for
members of the Association of Teachers of Technical Writing. The
Association hopes that the series will encourage members to do
research and writing that reflects some of the major concerns of the
Association--foremost of which is the improvement of the teaching of
technical writing .
Anthology Series Editor:
Donald H. Cunningham, Morehead State University
Issue Editor:
Paul V. Anderson, Miami University
ATTW Officers:
President--John A. Walter, University of Texas
Vice-President--John H. Mitchell, University of Massachusetts
Secretary-Treasurer- -Nell Ann Pickett, Hinds Junior College
Editor--Donald H. Cunningham, Morehead State University
Copyright o 1980
Association of Teachers of Technical Writing
FOREWORD
Paul V. Anderson
Miami University
This anthology is intended to provide teachers of technical
writing with ideas and material for teaching audience analysis and
audience adaptation. Readers will learn various ways of teaching
their students how to increase the effectiveness of their writing by
first analyzing the important characteristics of their audiences and
second adapting to those audiences the contents, organizatiOJk~yle~
an~er features of their communi~tions .
Teachers who are new to technical writing wi ll find t he five
essays in this anthology very useful. Although these teachers may
have taught audience analysis and adaptation in other writing courses ,
such as freshman composition , they will discover that the two topics
are usually treated much more intensively in technical writing.
Experienced teachers of technical writing will also find this
anthology valuable because, in all the essays , the authors proceed
beyond the standard wisdom on their subjects to suggest new ways of
thinking about and teaching audience analysis and adaptation .
Thomas E. Pearsall opens the collection by offering a simple yet
elegant way of explaining to students ~they must tailor their
communications to the specific reader they are addressing . He also
supplies a worksheet that helps students focus their attention on the
information they must have about their reader if they are going to be
able to tailor their communications effectively . Like other
worksheets of this kind, Professor Pearsall's asks students to provide
information about the reader's background, such as the reader's job
title, educational level, and familiarity with the subject at hand .
It also asks students to do two other, very important things. First ,
it asks them to di,;tingui~ between their purpose in wrjti..ll9...a.llil.their
reader's ourpose in ' reading. a distinction that students too often
overlook. Second, the worksheet asks students to think about the
specific effects they intend their communications to have upon the
reader: what should the reader know after reading and what should he
or she be able to do then? Professor Pearsall is particularly helpful
when he explains the high degree of specificity that teachers should
require students to provide when describing the effects they intend
their communications to have.
In the next essay, Myron L. White joins Professor Pearsall in
urging teachers to teach students to look beyond such background
information as the reader's educational level when analyzing their
audiences . Professor White argues that students should also determine
what information the reader needs from the communication being
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prepared. Using the example of a series of reports on a damaged
turbine in a power plant, Professor White shows how completely the
reader's info~ational needs degend UQQD the reader's reason for
readjog. ,Thus, the plant manager of the power plant would need one
kind of information in a report written when the turbine stopped
working, and an entirely different kind of information if the repairs
to the turbine fell behind schedule. At the conclusion of his essay,
Professor White tells how to design assignments that require students
to analyze the jnformation~l nee~s qf their reader and then use what
tbev have learned to determine the contents of their comm~ications.
Merrill D. Whitburn broadens the discussion by reminding us that
teachers have developed three distinct type~technical wri!ing
courses, each designed for a particular kind of student: students
majoring in such disciplines as accounting and engineering who want to
learn how to do the writing that accountants and engineers do on the
job; students majoring in any discipline who want to become
professional communicators; and students preparing to become teachers
of technical writing. Professor Whitburn describes several techniques
for teachin9 audience analysis and adaptation that are appropriate in
courses for all three kinds of students. For example, he tells how
teachers can serve as models for students to emulate--by learning
about the students in the classroom (the teachers ' audience) and then
adapting their courses to those individuals. In addition, Professor
Whitburn offers some very interesting suggestions for teaching
audience analysis and adaptation that would be suitable for only one
or two of the three kinds of students.
David l. Carson begins his essay by pointing out that for the
writer, the reader is always fictive. Even when describing a reader
he or she knows personally, the writer is creating an artificial
mental image of the reader. The writer's task is to make that fictive
description as realistic as possible . As Professor Carson explains,
this realism can be especially difficult to achieve when the writer is
addressing a reader the writer cannot observe directly. Professor
Carson then proposes one possible method for overcoming this
difficulty . While the details of his plan will be particularly
interesting to those who are teaching students to become professional
technical communicators, Professor Carson's description of the problem
and his general strategy for solving it can enrich any technical
writing teacher's ability to discuss with students the aims and
techniques of audience analysis.
Michael L. Keene and Merrill D. Whitburn round· out this anthology
with a selected, annotated bibliography. This bibliography is
especially valuable because of the wide range of material the authors
discuss. They include the little-known along with the widely read,
the theoretical along with the practical, and useful items from other
disciplines along with items that focus specifically on technical
writing. Thus, their essay serves not only as a starting point for
v
further study, but also as a portrait (thanks to their informative
annotations) of the wide range of materials that can be drawn upon for
use in the classroom--and as a basis for research.
It is, of course, impossible to guess the directions to be taken
in coming years by the people who will be developing new pedagogical
techniques and conducting research in audience analysis and
adaptation. Nevertheless, two trends appear to be emerging. First,
there seems to be a trend toward advising students (and other writers)
to learn about their reader in greater detail than was thought
necessary in the past. Evidence of this trend appears in each of the
first four essays: in Professor Pearsall 's insistence that students be
very specific when describing what they intend the reader to know and
to be able to do after reading; in Professor White's suggestion that
students determine very precisely what the reader's informational
needs are; in Professor Whitburn's differentiation among the kinds of
students enrolled in technical writing courses; and in Professor
Carson's suggestions for achieving greater realism in the fictive
portrait that students create of their reader. The second trend is an
increasing desire to discover what other disciplines can teach
technical writing about audience analysis and adaptation. Evidence of
this trend can be found in the range of material included by
Professors Keene and Whitburn in their bibliographic essay, as well as
in the breadth of the material drawn upon by the authors whose work
they cite. If this trend continues, technical writing teachers (and
technical writers) may soon find themselves asking what they can learn
about audience analysis and adaptation by reading the literature and
using the research techniques of cognitive psychology, sociology, and
other disciplines that previously had seemed unrelated to technical
writing.
Whatever trends develop in the coming years, the essays in this
anthology will remain a good starting point for teachers wish ing to
learn how to teach audience analysis and audience adaptation in
technical writing courses .
*
*
*
For help they gave me during the preparation of this anthology, I
wish to thank the authors of the five essays, as well as Professors
Donald H. Cunningham, Mary Sohngen, James W. Souther, Dwight W.
Stevenson, and C. Gilbert Storms. In addition, I am very grateful to
Pamela Harris and Deb Schoenberg , who helped prepare the final copy.
The first four essays were originally written for a special session
sponsored by the Association of Teachers of Technical Writing at the
1977 convention of the Modern Language Association. Professors Keene
and Whitburn prepared their bibliographic essay expressly for this
anthology.
•
C0 NT ENT S
THE COMMUNICATION TRIANGLE
Thomas E. Pearsall
1
THE INFORMATIONAL REQUIREMENTS OF AUDIENCES
Myron L. White
6
AUDIENCE: A FOUNDATION FOR TECHNICAL WRITING COURSES
Merrill D. Whitburn
18
AUDIENCE IN TECHNICAL WRITING: THE NEED FOR GREATER REALISM
IN IDENTIFYING THE FICTIVE READER
David l. Carson
24
AUDIENCE ANALYSIS FOR TECHNICAL WRITING: A SELECTIVE,
ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Michael L. Keene and Merrill D. Whitburn
32
vii
THE COMMUNICATION TRIANGLE*
Thomas E. Pearsall
University of Minnesota
A piece of tecb.Jlica.l or occl.WationaL.wt:Lttng_does_not_c.QJDe
into bejng unless there is an occasion for jt. The occasion
includes the message to be transmitted, the receiver of the
message, and the purpose of the transmission. Technical and other
occupational writing is usually generated by a specific piece of
information that has to be transmitted: Your bicycle has been
repaired; please come pick it up •••• The HRW-14 computer is
superior to the BBF-198 •••• We attended the convention in
Seattle •••• This is how vou build the 86204 Heat Exchanger.
Occupational writing is not generated for the joy of personal
expression, though the writer may enjoy doing it. In the world of
work, people write when they have something to say.
When a writer prepares to send a message, he must think of
his audience. Messages are not merely sent; they are sent to
someone. The writer must always be concerned with these
questions: "Who wi 11 read my report?" "Why wi 11 they read it?"
"What will they want from it?" "What do they already know about
the subject?" "What is 1eft to te 11 them?" Writers of sa 1es
letters try to fix in their minds the typical buyer of the product
being sold. A person writing a letter of application should know
something about the employer. How else can he emphasize the
skills the employer needs?
Suppose an inventor has designed a new product--a heat
exchanger for getting more heat from an open fireplace into the
house. He would explain the heat exchanger one way to the bankers
from whom he hopes to borrow the money needed to manufacture the
product. They need to know only enough technical details to be
sure the product will work. Mostly, bankers will want convincing
evidence that there is a market for the product. The inventor
would explain the heat exchanger another way to the people who
will manufacture it for him. They need step-by-step instructions
about the manufacturing process. He will explain the heat
exchanger still another way to the people to whom he intends to
*Portions of this paper first appeared in Thomas E. Pearsall
and Donald H. Cunningham, How to Write for the World of Work
(New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1978).
1
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sell it. They \vill want to know what the heat exchanger will do
for them in their homes. How much, for example, could it save
them in fuel bills?
As you have perhaps noticed, purpose is usually closely
meshed with the audience chosen to receive the message. The
inventor writes a certain way for bankers so that the bankers can
get the information they need. But he went to the bankers in the
first place because his purpose was to get a loan.
It is not always quite that simple. Sometimes writers don't
recognize the multiple purposes that should govern their work.
Suppose, for example, a writer is sending someone bad news,
perhaps that his automobile insurance rates are going up. If the
writer's purpose were only to announce the new rates, he could
send out a printed table showing the increase. But he will have
another purpose as well. His additional purpose will include
keeping the policyholder with the company. To do this, he must
maintain goodwill. Therefore, he must do more than merely
announce the rate hike. He will have to justify the hike--to show
how conditions beyond his company's control have forced it. He
would probably take the time to mention the good service his
company has given in the past and intends to give in the future.
None of this justification and explanation would be necessary if
the \>Jriter' s purpose were only to announce the rate hike •
.
Message •••• audience •••• purpose •••• the basic triangle of
technical and uccupational writing.
I have found the worksheet reproduced as Figure 1 an
effective device for helping students sort out message, audience,
and purpose. It brings home the message that we are never merely
writing; we are writing for someone. The worksheet leads the
student to answer questions such as those that follow.
What is the reader's educational level? If it's eighth
grade, for example, sentence structures had better be fairly
simple, about Reader's Digest length and style. Information
should be personalized through example and anecdote. If the
reader is college educated, perhaps Scientific American is the
model. If the reader has the necessary technical background to
understand the subject, the student need not supply it.
3
REPORT WORKSHEET
(Fill in completely and attach as cover sheet)
llriter:
For
Primary Grade - - - - instructor Mechanics
use only
Final Grade
Subject:
Reader
(person assumed to actually use information presented)
Technical level (education, existing knowledge of subject, experience,
etc.) :
Job title and/or relationship to writer:
Attitude toward subject (interested, not interested, hostile, etc.):
Other factors:
Reader's Purpose(s)
\1/hy will the reader read the paper?
~hat
should the reader know after reading?
1\'hat should the reader be able to do after reading?
l~riter's
PUl'pose(s)
Primary purposc(s):
Secondary purposc(s):.
Content and Plan
:SOurce-mat~rials (direct study, library research, personal knowledge,
etc) :
Primary organizational plan (exemplification , definition, classification,
causal analysis, process description, narration, argument, etc.):
~.fedium
prescribed or desirable (mass mediun, 1 imi ted medium, company
report, memorandum, correspondence, etc.):
Available aids (visuals, tables, etc.):
Figure 1.
Report Works heet.
4
What is the reader's attitude toward the subject? Knowing
this can govern much of what the student does. Not every report
needs an attention-getting introduction--only those for
uninterested people do. Is the reader an executive and someone
likely to be receptive to the report's conclusions and
recommendations? Then the student knows he should give the
conclusions and recommendations first. If the reader is likely to
be hostile, the student holds his conclusions for last.
In the section on reader's purpose, I urge the students to be
quite specific. The
following would be an unsatisfactory answer
for the question, 11 What shou 1d the reader know after reading? ..
The reader should understand about stress and distress.
The following answer is excellent:
The reader should be able to {1) define good mental
health; {2) recognize the clues that let us know our
minds and bodies are becoming distressed; {3) use
problem-solving techniques to release stress; and
(4) identify the sources of expert help available
in case this is needed.
The writer of the first objective demonstrated no clear idea
of where he was heading. The second writer not only demonstrated
his objectives but probably organized his paper as well.
The student should be equally specific about what the reader
should be able to do and about his purposes. A common experience
for me before I began using this worksheet was to have students
supply far more information than their purposes called for or the
wrong information. A student might , for example, be trying to
persuade someone that controlled burning in our forests is a
feasible process that promotes a healthier forest. But in his
paper he would de~cribe the process at a level suitable for a
technician who actually had to control the burning--material that
is both more and less than that needed for the student's purpose.
Using the worksheet, he is more likely to recognize that what is
really needed is an argument that demonstrates the salutary effect
of controlled burning on forest growth and wildlife and that also
demonstrates the process to be economical and environmentally
safe.
This section also helps the student to recognize the
secondary pur~oses th~t may exist--such as maintaining the
goodwill of t __e reader.
The Content and Plan section concerns standard material dealt
with in most composition classes, but now it is seen in the light
5
of the audience and purpose analysis that has been done. For
example~demonstraJJLOR feasibility is the major purpose of the
paper. an analytical organization is called for, such as
classification, causal analysis, or argumenr:--PrOcess descrrption
would be the wrong approach.
Considering the medium suggests the flexibility available to
the student. It lifts the assignment out of the usual student
report category. It suggests that perhaps for certain purposes a
newspaper article is the best approach. In other situations an ad
or a direct mail letter might be what is needed. These are
considerations that bring the world of work into the classroom.
For far too long, the student has had an audience of one--the
teacher. The purpose has been to get a good grade. Considering
the communication triangle gives the student a new outlook and a
more realistic set of objectives. Teachers for their part gain a
new set of criteria upon which to grade--criteri a much closer to
those the student will face when he leaves the classroom.
THE INFORMATIONAL REQUIREMENTS OF AUDIENCES*
Myron L. White
University of Washington
Perhaps I can get most quickly to my subject by repeating two
points which Cleanth Brooks and Robert Penn Warren make in their
book Modern Rhetoric. In discussing the problem of adjusting tone
to different audiences, they say, "Writing which demands that the
author take into account his particular audience is •• • always
'practiGal • writing--writing designed to effect some definite
thing."l Then they go on to advise, "If such writing is to be
effective, the author must, of course, keep his audience
constantly in mind."2
Now, for my present purpose, Brooks and Warren's first
statement characterizes technical writing very well. Technical
writing is "practical" writing; it always has a definite purpose
and goes to a particular audience, which the writer must take into
account. Consequently, the admonition to keep the "audience
constantly in mind" is one of the best pieces of advice which
teachers of technical writing can offer to and demonstrate for
their students.
But just what does it mean to keep an audience in mind? I
ask the question because in so many textbooks the discussions of
audience seem unfortunately limited in scope. Usually they
emphasize how audiences can differ in matters of age, interest,
prejudice, amount and kind of education, experience, familiarity
with a subject, and so on. In other words, the stress lies on the
variations in background which different audiences may bring to a
given subject matter. Then, as a consequence of this stress,
writers are advised on little more than how to adjust their
language so that they can meet the expectations of a particular
audience. What so often is missing, of course, is discussion of
how particular, or special, audiences can affect the conteQ!_£!___
J!ritins, as well as it~ ~pression. To be sure, some texts do
mention that reaching one type of reader, rather than another, can
require adjustments of content. Moreover, a smaller number of
texts push this idea somewhat further, noting, for example, that a
*Parts of this paper first appeared in James W. Souther
and Myron L. White, Technical Report Writing, 2nd ed. (New
York: John Wiley &Sons, 1977).
6
7
lay audience will require more background on a speciali zed subject
than will an audience of experts. Seldom, however, is it possible
to find discussions of audience which recognize that each special
audience can, and usually does, have its own very real demands for
specific kinds of information.
The point is that most efforts to instruct writers about what
to do for their audiences simply do not go far enough . In
technical writing, at least, audiences differ not only in their
backgrounds but also in their needs for information, or what I
have called their informational requirements. Thus, for technical
writers. keeojng an audim in mind includes two major concerns:~ting a content which will meet its informational requirement~
aru1-choosing_language to suit its background.
WHAT INFORMATIONAL REQUIREMENTS ARE
What these informational requirements can mean in practice
becomes clear if we watch technical writers at work . Actually,
most of the writing which scientists, engineers, and other
professionals do in industry and government results from specific
assignments. The assignment may be a direct one, as when a
supervisor in a hydroelectric plant says, 11The boss wants a report
on Turbine No. 2 by day after tomorrow. 11 Or the assignment may be
clearly implicit in the way an organization normally conducts its
activities. For example, a research team attempting to develop an
electrical array for guiding fish in a stream seldom has to be
told that eventually it must produce one or more reports on its
work.
At first glance, it may appear that in either case the
writers have little choice of subject matter. Whoever gets the
assignment must report on the grave condition of Turbine 2 (if it
is grave), even though he or she would prefer this week to
describe the principles for designing the perfect turbine. And,
at report writing time, members of the research team must set
aside their schemes for breeding the ideal fish and inform the
Director of Research about what they have done and what they
believe they have accomplished by doing it. Yet appearances can
be deceiving. There is, surprisingly enough, a great deal to be
said about a turbine or about shocking fish into the right path.
Consequently, our imaginary writers, as do real ones, face a
serious question of what to write about.
Many technical writers, unfortunately, take care of the
question by ignoring it, reporting as much about turbines or
shocked fish as their knowledge, time, and patience will permit.
They do so because, in part, they are insufficiently aware that
they are writing to special audiences. They do not realize or pay
8
too little attention to the fact that managers of hydroelectric
plants and research directors do not ask for or expect reports
because of a deep personal desire to learn all there is to know
about electricity, fish, or turbines~ ~at these audiences do
want most often is the io.formation they reqjJi..r._eJor making
decisions themselves or for recommending_decisio~~_ta snmeac~
else.
Recognizing that managers want information for decision-making
should prove helpful to the engineer who must write the report on
Turbine 2. Nevertheless, such understanding is not likely to be a
sufficient guide in selecting the content which the report should
contain. Understanding the immediate situation is also important.
Why did the plant manager ask for this report? In reality, of
course, the answers to this question will differ as widely as the
situations which give rise to it. So let us suppose, for example,
that, because it had been damaged, our troublesome turbine was
shut down yesterday and that the period of highest demand for
electrical energy is just beginning.
Under these circumstances, it becomes reasonably clear that
the plant manager must make decisions about ordering parts and
materials, recalling personnel from vacation, requiring overtime,
and requesting expert help either from outside the plant or from
outside the utility company which owns it. In order to make these
decisions, the manager requires information about what kind and
amount of damage the turbine sustained, who and what are required
to repair it, and whether or not the plant has the people and
other resources available in order to carry out the repair.
Equally pressing will be other decisions about the need for
budgetary transfers and the problem of meeting an increasing
demand for electricity. For these also, the engineer must prepare
the manager by providing realistic estimates of cost and time for
the repair.
Naturally, w~ could have supposed a number of other possible
situations. Because repair of the turbine was behind the
estimated schedule, for example, the manager could have wanted to
learn what difficulties were being encountered in order to decide
what, if anything, should be done about them. Or, with the
emergency taken care of, the manager could have wanted to
determine if there were an economical way to prevent such damage
in the future. The list of occasions requiring a report on
Turbine 2 could go on. However, three examples probably are
enough to make the point: the informational requirements of a
special audience (in this case, the manager of the hydroelectric
plant) can differ each time the audience asks for a report.
Hence, selectin_g_t~ ap_Qropriate content of each report deQends_
very greatly on why the audience asked for it in the first place.
9
At the same time, these observations generally hold true for
a research director who may seldom ask for reports, but expects to
receive them anyway. It may be customary in a research
organization, for example, that, when a major project reaches a
certain stage, the director must get a progress report so that he
or she can determine the advisability of continuing the project.
Facing this situation, the research team attempting to guide fish
by means of electrical impulses not only must describe what it has
done but also must provide careful answers to such questions as
the following: Does the original concept still appear to be
feasible? What problems has the team encountered? Can it solve
them? How much more time and money will be necessary to conclude
the project successfully? Are the potential benefits worth the
time and money required?
On the other hand, let us suppose that the team has
successfully guided fish with a system which it has devised and
the director is waiting for the final report on the project. Once
again, the informational requirements of the audience have
changed, for the decision to be made has shifted from whether the
project should continue to what should be done with the final
result.
Ordinarily, the latter decision is one which research
directors do not make, but they must have enough information on
the system, its operation, its safety, its reliability, its
probable costs, its advantages, and its disadvantages to guide the
decision-making of others. In any case, the absence of a direct
assignment should not tempt the technical writer into overlooking
the informational requirements which a special audience can have
on each occasion it expects a report.
At this point, I trust that my handful of examples has made
reasonably clear what I mean by informational requirements and how
important they are in technical writing. I must grant that the
examples come fro.~ a limited area of the field--reports, written
to a relatively well -defined type of audience, managers, who are
known to make all kinds of decisions. Yet close observation will
show that fulfilling the informational requirements of each
special audience is equally important in preparing effective
instructions to operators of equipment, repair and maintenance
manuals for the technicians who must keep the equipment running,
sales brochures for potential customers, and proposals to funding
agencies--to cite just a few of the different writing tasks which
scientists and engineers may face.
10
WHY WRITERS AT WORK DON'T LEARN
It can be argued, of course, that technical writers must
learn the nature of their audiences' informational requirements on
the job. And, to a degree, this point is a valid one.
Unfortunately, the occasions when they do learn enough about their
audiences represent the exception, not the rule, in their work.
There are two major causes of this circumstance. The first is the
supervisors and managers who assign writing (and, at the same
time, complain about the poor writing of the engineers and
scientists who work for them). The second cause is inadequate
writing instruction at school, which leaves the graduating
scientist or engineer unprepared to distinguish one real audience
from another.
(~)
Poor Guidance on the Job
So far as managers are concerned, either they are
unacquainted with the idea of writing for special audiences or,
having learned themselves to write effectively for such audiences,
they assume that everyone else knows as much as they do. As a
result, they usually ask for reports in an offhand manner, with
little, or no, recognition that one occasion for writing differs
from another. And those who, by the rules of the game, expect
reports on given occasions seldom talk about what they
expect--until they must review and approve a completed report with
which they are displeased. Then, of course, the atmosphere of
confrontation between manager and writer does not encourage anyone
to teach or learn anything about audiences .
Very often, also, the origins of writing assignments (and,
hence, the readers) are at some level above the writer in an
organization's managerial structure. By the time that information
about an assignment has descended through the "chain of command"
to the writer, it is highly abbreviated and even garbled.
Moreover, the technical writer's message must travel upward to its
audience by the same route which the assignment took in coming
down. As it does so, it runs an obstacle cpurse. Each manager
standing between the writer and the true audience assumes that he
or she is that audience and asks for revisions of the message with
too little regard for its final destination. The result of all
this message handling is not just that writers learn very little
about what their readers have asked for or expect but also that
they become confused about who their true readers actually are.
In effect, then, technical writers can be screened off from
audiences within their own organizations because the persons
transmitting the assignments are not the ones who truly need to
learn something from what they write. This handicap can become
11
even greater when those assigning writing tasks are not the true
audience or among its members--that is, when the report, document,
or whatever it may be is directed to an audience outside the
organization. On these occasions, the screen may not be a
kaleidoscope of partial and conflicting information; it may simply
be blank. Management itself may know nothing of consequence about
an audience which it is trying to reach, or, if it does, the idea
of providing writers with this kind of information may never occur
to anyone, may be overlooked, or may be considered unimportant.
Furthermore, when the knowledge of an audience is inadequate, too
few managers make the effort to increase it. Nor do they
encourage writers to learn enough about an audience so that
reasonable assumptions, at least, can be made about its background
and its 11 informational requirements. The result is 11 TO Whom It May
Concern writing which may satisfy everyone involved, except the
readers. And surely all of us have experienced how this kind of
writing fails to serve a special audience. At one time or
another, haven't we all exhausted our four-letter-word
vocabularies on the instructions included with a knocked-down toy
or piece of furniture which we had to put together?
Poor Preparation in School
No doubt, while we were damning the writer, we did not
overlook the manager or managers who approved a set of
instructions fit only for mind readers. But it is unfair to hold
that managers are entirely responsible for the failure of
scientists and engineers to learn about their special audiences on
the job. To take this view, we must assume that technical writers
are prepared to learn about these audiences in the first place,
that they understand what a special audience is and what to do
about it. The fact is that too many of them are ill prepared to
distinguish among audiences, to determine what each one may need
at a given time, and to write accordingly.
Too often, young technical writers can treat communication as
if it were simply a matter of writing their messages down on paper
and delivering them to someone else--presumably anyone will do.
What happens after that is someone else's problem, or so they
believe until they have had to revise several reports drastically
in as many different ways. At this point, they can become
defensive, even cynical, about learning to play a game which
apparently has no rules. In some organizations, of course, their
view of the matter can be an accurate one, but technical writers
also can have too simple and rigid a view of how to write
effectively. They can fail to understand that, as someone has
said, communication only begins when the message truly reaches _i~t~s_______
reader. Or, if they do accept the idea of carefully identifying
12
each audience and keeping its special requirements in mind, they
can have difficulty with putting this advice into practice.
HOW WRITING TEACHERS CAN HELP
Whatever may happen to technical writers on the job, teachers
of technical writing should prepare their students as well as they
can to communicate effectively with a variety of audiences in many
different situations. Doing so does not mean briefly introducing
the concept of audience and citing an example or two of its
importance to effective writing. It means developing implications
of the concept in detail, illustrating these with concrete
examples~ and demonstrating how specific audiences should affect
whatever the scientist or engineer writes.
What to Teach
Opinions can differ, of course, about what aspects of
audience are most important for students to learn. My own
prescription includes the following.
First, students should become well acquainted with the
general types of audiences for which they are likely to write as
professionals. At a minimum, the types should include fellow
experts, executives (or managers), technicians, operators of
equipment, and laymen.3 In learning about these audiences, the
student should become familiar not only with their general nature
and probable backgrounds but also with the reasons which they
usually have for reading what an engineer or scientist may write.
In other words, what are the basic kinds of information which an
audience of experts, managers, or technicians usually requires?
Second, it also is important to extend one step further the
student's under~tanding of the general audience types. On the
job, technical writers do not face types of audiences. They write
to particular individuals or groups which may be of one type or
another. Moreover, on a given occasion, each of these particular
audiences probably will have very specific informational
requirements. Normally, such requirements fall within the basic
kinds of information which operators, for example, usually need,
and frequently a writer can deduce from a situation and a general
knowledge of operators what it is that a group of them requires.
Certainly, when writers are screened off from a special audience,
they may be able to make reasonable assumptions about i t if they
know into what type it seems to fit and, thus, what information it
is likely to need or want. On the other hand, guessing at the
nature of a particular audience, and especially its informational
requirements, is never as good as knowing. Consequently, before
13
technical writers fall back on generalizations about audience
types, they should attempt to discover as much as they can about
each special audience and its needs . The more accurate the
knowledge about an audience which writers have, the more clearly
they can identify and define it, and, hence, the more readily they
can keep it in mind.4
Third!.. students should learn the importance, and acq_yire the_
habit, of defining as well as they can the nature and needs of a
jhar~icular audience at the beginning of each wr1ting a~men~
They should recognize that only this definition can provide a
reasonable basis for decisions which they must make throughout the
writing process. The answers to questions about the background of
the audience, for example--what is its education? what is its
general experience? what is its experience with the company? and
so on--help to guide the gathering, evaluating, and selecting of
content for a piece of writing. They aid writers in determining
how much background on a subject, how much in the way of
mathematical concepts, and how many other technical details are
appropriate for a particular audience. And they become very
important at the time of writing a first draft and revising it,
for they affect the manner of presenting content in many ways,
ranging from choice of vocabulary to the design of illustrations.
Finally, students must realize that the answers to questions
about a particular audience ' s informational requirements are basic
to determining the content of what they write. About these
requirements, technical writers should seek clear answers to at
least three questions. ILthey have received a direct assi.wlme.nt,
they should be sure that they fully understand what the audience
has asked tor. Conside~afion of tnis question should not be taken
-rightly. Managers who make or transmit assignments are not always
clear in doing so. On the other hand, writers can receive
assignments carelessly and have an incomplete and hazy
understanding of them. Incidentally, if the assignments are not
direct ones, the question of what the audience asked for can be
translated into what does the audience want. In either case, if
writers are in any doubt about the essential information which an
audience needs, they should not hesitate to ask for or otherwise
seek clarification.
Once they are clear about what an audience has asked for or
wants, writers should consider the answer to another question:
what additional information should they provide so that the
audience can fully understand or make use of the essential
information it needs? Answers to this question can take many
forms, but perhaps a simple example will suggest its significance
for technical writers. A manager has asked for information about
three pieces of equipment in order to decide which one should be
purchased. Knowing what the manager expects, the scientist
14
responding with a report has recognized that comparative data on
performance and cost are essential content. After some thought,
however, the writer also concludes that, although the manager did
not ask for them, the requirements which the equipment must
satisfy should also be in the report. They also are important to
making a decision.
Conveniently enough, this last example introduces the third
question which writers should raise about the informational
requirements of an audience. Will what they write provide the
basis for decisions, and, if it will, what kinds of decisions?
Very often, the kinds of information which scientists and
engineers possess do get used to support a variety of decisions
made by a variety of audiences. Managers are only the most
prominent among them. In any case, how sound these decisions are
may well depend upon whether or not technical writers provide
enough of the right kind of information in a manner that is
accessible and understandable to their readers. Consequently,
they should consciously raise and answer the the third question
whenever they write.
How to Teach It
Perhaps my prescription of what a technical writing course
should include about audiences seems overly full of ingredients.
However, I b~ljev~ th_a_t the teacher•s_g_oal should be to make the
technical writer so conscious of readers that writing for them _
becomes almost second nature. Furthermore, attempting to achieve
tnTs goal means that teachers should avoid organizing courses so
that the matter of audience becomes a separate segment, largely
set off from what comes before and after. Concern for readers
should pervade a course from beginning to end . It should be
present explicitly in discussions of selecting content, organizing
it, handling graphic illustrations, choosing report or other
forms, drafting o ~d revising content, and seeking appropriate
styles and ton~s. It also should be present in every, or almost
every, writing assignment of the course.
And throughout, the teacb~r should put a significant stre~s
£nLthe informational requirements of audiences._ It is very
helpful, naturally, if the course•s text takes up these
requirements in some detail. Indeed, teachers of technical
writin_g could very well include an adeg_uate handling of audience
needs among the criteria which they use in selecting their textbooks. "Yet, even without such help, the teacher can gTVe
informatio-nal requirements adequate attention by means of class
handouts, lecture, and class discussion. This third teaching
device, incidentally, is rather important. For many students, the
idea of writing to particular audiences, let alone taking care of
15
their special informational requirements, can be an unheard of
notion which complicates unnecessarily the writing activity.
Liberal amounts of classroom discussion, however, permit students
to air their objections to the idea, to pursue its implications
for themselves, and gradually to become accustomed to it.
Whatever they do, teachers should ensure t_hat no discussion of
audience remains at_a hi~Y- abstract lev~ Handouts, lectures,
and class discussions should contain or focus on concrete examples
of particular audiences having specific needs which must be met in
specific ways. Coming up with such examples is not so difficult
as it may sound. It would be a highly unusual teacher who had
never faced practical" writing situations in his or her career.
11
But talk about audiences and their informational requirements
is not enough. Students need to work with the ideas they have
read or heard about special audiences. In order that they may do
so the exercises and writing assignments of a course in technical
writing should simulate the actual kinds of situations in which
engineers and scientists must write. In other words, each
assignment should be set within a particular context which
establishes a special audience for the students to define and keep
in mind. The information provided for such a context should be
sufficient so that they can learn directly or can infer the
answers to such questions as what the audience has asked for or
what it wants, what additional information it needs, and what
decisions, if any, the audience will be making. At the same time,
students should be made to realize that how well they succeed in
meeting an assignment will depend upon how well they answer these
questions and then follow through by fulfilling their audience•s
informational requirements in what they write.
~s_ome_assi
gnments, teachers c.ao...provjde the. fulLcontex.t_
can provide a class, for example, with a set of
data on the comparative performance and costs of two or three
pieces of equipment, describe the circumstances under which the
equipment will be used, and then ask the students to report on
this equipment to the manager of an office (or a manufacturing
plant or whatever) so that the latter can intelligently decide on
which piece of equipment to buy. Putting together assignments of
this sort takes some ingenuity and labor, naturally, and not all
effective assignments need be so demanding on the teacher.
the~~elves ..... They
Others, in fact, offer the advantage of having the student
define the requirements of an audience largely from his or her own
knowledge . One of these is to write a set of instructions on how
to assemble, operate, disassemble, or repair a relatively simple
piece of equipment, or on how to perform any operation with which
students are familiar. The choice of subject can be theirs, and
about audience the teacher need only require that it be one which
knows as little as the students did before they learned how to
16
prepare slides for a microscope, adjust a carburetor, or bake
bread. Students usually are able to identify with such an
audience and to determine rather well what it wants and needs to
know. Incidentally, this assignment has an additional advantage
in the fact that the teacher usually qualifies exceptionally well
as the inexpert audience. Hence, evaluation of the assignment not
only is relatively easy (if I can't understand how to do it, then
the instructions are faulty) but also leads to the acquisition of
many fascinating, if not always personally useful, bits of
knowledge (ranging all the way, in my own case, from how to repair
pieces of diving equipment to a method of cutting out and
assembling hand puppets from scraps of cloth). 0
The two examples which I have just cited obviously do not
exhaust the possibilities for "practical" assignments in a
technical writing course. The important point, however, is that
the assignments be "practical." What students do in a course is
as vital to their learning about the informational requirements of
special audiences as what a textbook or teacher says. Indeed,
both aspects of teaching students about readers' needs deserve
careful attention.
As I suggested at the start, satisfying the informational
requirements of their readers is critical to the success of
technical writers. Unfortunately, they get too little help with
this problem on the job; .,oreover, too few are now well enough
prepared to learn much there anyway. On the other hand, the
latter deficiency need not be a fault of tomorrow's technical
writers. Today's teachers of technical writing can do much, if
they will, to see that it is not.
17
FOOTNOTES
1.
Cleanth Brooks and Robert Penn Warren, Modern Rhetoric (New
York: Harcourt Brace and Company, 1949}, p. 476.
2.
Brooks and Warren, p. 476.
3.
The classifications come from Thomas E. Pearsall, Audience
Anal}sis for Technical Writing (Beverly Hills: Glencoe Press,
1969 •
4.
11
0oing research on 11 and writing to an audience can become
especially complicated when it includes persons who fit into
different audience types (a combination of experts and
managers is frequent). In this case, technical writers should
determine which part of the audience is primary and aim at it,
making some special provisions for the secondary readers as
best they can.
5.
For further discussion of the kinds of writing assignments
suggested here, see James W. Souther, Developing Assignments
for Scientific and Technical Writing,,. Journal of Technical
Writing and Communication, 7 (1977), 261-269.
11
AUDIENCE: A FOUNDATION FOR TECHNICAL WRITING COURSES
Merrill D. Whitburn
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
For several years, I worked as a communication specialist in
Western Electric, the Gelman Instrument Company, and other
organizations. Again and again I would go to engineers about
quality control experiments or purchasers about cost reduction
cases only to find them utterly incapable of providing the
information I needed. They were unable to simplify their
vocabulary or concepts so that I could comprehend them; they
lacked a knowledge of other techniques of audience adaptation that
facilitate understanding; they chose not to simplify because they
wanted to impress rather than inform; or they seemed incapable of
selecting from their knowledge of a subject what was relevant to
my needs. I gradually came to realize that a key chdracterist~
t~ distinguished admjnistrators from_s~Qedinates was this v~y
ability to adapt to different audien~ The engineer who could
adapt his information about a product innovation so that an
Executive Committee was persuaded to support him would invariably
be considered favorably for promotion. When I left industry to
come to the university--a rmed with the conviction thatjiudie~
qdaptation was the mo~t serious communication problem faced by
employer~ -~ was delighted to see audience awareness being
emphasized by a number of teachers and scholars, perhaps most
notably, Tom Pearsall .
In this paper, I will suggest some ways of making audience
adaptation the very foundation of technical writing courses. I
speak of technical writing courses--in the plural --because a
number of universities are developing courses for three different
groups of students:
1.
The first group includes students majoring in
such disciplines as engineering and accounting
who intend to work in these fields . As professionals,
they will face such communication tasks--both
written and oral--as proposals and progress reports.
2.
The second group includes students majoring in
any field who intend to become full-time
professional communicators.
Such communicators
might edit annual reports, manuals, and brochures
or write slide talks, news articles, and product
stories.
18
19
3.
The third group includes graduate students
intending to teach technical communication at
colleges and universities. In addition to
teaching, they will be developing courses,
making contacts outside their schools, and
conducting research in the field.
Although each group must address the problem of audience
adaptation in its own special way, several techniques of
emphasizing audience adaptation are appropriate in courses for any
of the three. For example, eSfb teacher can serve as a model__by
adaptin~his teaching to the SRecific students in his classroo=
m~
· ---­
In order to do so, he must discover as much about them as he can.
Three of the most common ways of obtaining this information are
the letter of introduction, the letter of application and resume,
and conferences. If _audience awaren~ is to be the foundation
for courses, the concept ~ould be iDtroduced on the very first
rlay of class, the most prominent time in the entire semester. meconcept can be clarified through use of examples, and the students
can be motivated through stories of inadequate audience adaptation
in industry. When the students have grasped the concept, the
teacher might remind them that they are his audience and that he
must adapt to them. He might assign a letter of introduction to
teach one acceptable form of the business letter, and, more
importantly, obtain samples of their writing and information about
their backgrounds in communication, areas of specialization,
employment plans, and attitudes toward the course. When this
letter is handed in a few days later, the teacher might assign the
letter of application and resume. Invariably, his knowledge of
each student is strengthened through both repetition and
information that did not surface in the letter of introduction.
As the semester progresses, the teacher might hold two conferences
with each student to discuss the student's progress and explore
individual needs or changes in attitude.
All thi s information is without value, however, unless the
teacher uses it in actually adapting the course--within the limits
of course goals--to the individuals in the classroom. The teacher
might approve the subject for each paper after the letters, and he
should try to assist the students in choosing subjects that--given
their backgrounds and goals--will prove interesting, motivating,
and useful. He might devote special attention to those writing
problems that appear most frequently in the students' papers, and
he might use examples of good and bad writing from these papers as
a basis for class discussion. At a student's request he might
sometimes furnish information that he would not normally include
in the course. By showing his concern for individual students as
an audience, then, he would encourage them to concern themselves
with their audiences.
20
Technic~l writing_~ourses,
like
~t~er cours~~~n composi~n.
~be or~an1zed acco~d1ng to the three rhetorical_~tegorie~of
invention~ organization, and style~ In courses for all three
groups of students, a fruitful means of approaching these
categories is to explore the impact of audience on each. For
instance, with regard to invention, an audience of stockholders
might well require considerably more background information to
understand an experiment than a group of chemists. As another
example, the organization of a paper designed for an audience
interested in the functioning of an automobile will differ from an
organization designed for a group interested in the assembly
process. Finally, the style of a paper intended for engineers
might contain many more technical terms than the same materials
written for public relations specialists. Many similar examples
can be explored in class, and each assigned paper can be used as a
basis for generating more. Assignments should specify audiences,
and an important part of the evaluation process can be an analysis
of the extent to which the writer has made the appropriate choices
in content, organization , and style for the intended audience.
Other techniques of emphasizing audience adaptation may be
appropriate for only one or two of the three groups of students in
technical writing. In courses for students hoping to become
professionals in fields like engineering or accounting, the very
make-up of the class is critical to promoting audience awareness.
In some universities classes are designed for students from a
single major. For instance, one set of classes will be limited to
engineers, and another to students in business administration.
This approach is being used with success in various parts of the
country and has a number of advantages. Textbooks can focus on
the specific kinds of communication that a student will be working
with in future job situations. Classroom discussion can be
conducted with an assumed level of knowledge in the students'
major. And the teacher can specialize in one area of
communication and may be able to work out cooperative arrangements
with professors in that area.
.~
Howogencous classe~ however, are not as inheLently effect~
in_Qfomoting audience awareness as classes contain~ students_____
from different majors. In many universities a class can obtain
students from such-niajors as animal science, engineering,
accounting, architecture, computer science, horticulture, and
finance. This mix of majors more nearly approximates the mix of
disciplines found in actual working environments. In such
heterogeneous classes, the future accountant has the opportunity
to inform the future industrial engineer that he had difficulty
understanding him, and that kind of confrontation can have far
more impact than the words of a teacher. When, in future years,
the engineer addresses the Executive Committee of his company, one
of whose members is an accountant, his earlier experience with the
21
student in accounting could make him more sensitive to the need
for audience adaptation.
Speeches can also be used to promote audience awareness in
courses for future professionals fn fields-TiKe eng1neErring or
accounting. Each student might be assigned two speeches drawn
from two different writing assignments, perhaps a process paper
and a major report. The audience for these speeches should be his
classmates. Ample time should be set aside at the conclusion of
each speech for a thorough evaluation by the student audience.
Again and again classmates will confront a surprised speaker with
the simple fact that they haven•t understood him. Terms and
concepts that have come to seem commonplace to the speaker, he
discovers, go over the heads of a group of non-specialists. He
attains the realization--occasionally for the first time--that he
has truly become a specialist. Such a bracing experience can
convince him that he must begin developing the techniques that
will enable him to communicate with the whole range of audiences
that he will encounter in his career.
Classes of students intending to become full-time
communicators might also be heterogeneous, and, to the extent that
they are, speeches might also prove effective in suggesting the
importance of audience awareness to them. But my own belief is
that nothing in the classroom can prepare such students for their
future audiences as well as on-the-job experience. For this
reason, at Texas A&M we are encouraging these students to enroll
in our new cooperative education program. Under this program
students work for one or more semesters as full-time communicators
in industry. In such positions they learn the tact that is
necessary in working with an engineer to edit his manuscript.
They learn how difficult it is to acquire information from
professionals who have not learned the techniques of audience
adaptation. They learn how uninformed administrators and other
employees can be about the very organization for which they work.
They learn how much less laymen outside a company know about
company matters. All of these lessons can help motivate students
to attempt to master the techniques of adapting to various
audiences.
The third group of technical writing students, those in
graduate school intending to teach technical communication at
colleges and universities, should not only spend one or more
semesters working in industry but also must concern themselves
with three additional audiences. Like all professors they will be
involved in teaching, research, and service. As teachers, they
will probably--at least at the beginning--devote most of their
time to students from the first group, those future professionals
in fields like engineering and accounting. At Texas A&M we help
these future teachers acquire a sense of their students as an
22
audience by scheduling our graduate course in the teaching of
technical communication after a class of these future
professionals. We involve the graduate students in the
undergraduate class to the greatest extent possible. They correct
all papers--the corrections subject to revision by their
professor--and they have the opportunity for visitation. When the
student has completed the graduate course--if he has successfully
taught Freshman Composition and is currently a Ph.D. candidate--he
may be given the opportunity to teach a class of technical writing
students from the first group, assisted by an advisor from the
technical writing staff. No other experience can give a future
teacher of technical communication as good a grasp of his future
student audience.
If these graduate students are to become publishing scholars,
they need to discover what their scholarly audience already knows.
They need to develop as great an awareness of past and present
research as possible . This need points out a serious omission in
technical writing scholarship to date--the lack of review articles
about research in the field . The recent publication of Teaching
Composition: 10 Bibliographical Essays suggests the value of such
work. This book explores the history of research in composition
as it relates to traditional courses, and it should be on the
shelf of every writing teacher. Unfortunately, it does not
evaluate research in the field of scientific and technical
writing, a serious omission. Years ago Don Cunningham issued a
call for more bibliographical work in our field, and until more
bibliographies and reviews are produced, we will find it difficult
to convey an adequate awareness of scholarly audience to our
graduate students.
Another important future audience for our graduate students
will be their colleagues in English from the various literary
fields. With the demand for courses in business, scientific, and
technical writing growing, future teachers in our field will
increasingly be called on--as part of their service activites--to
develop courses and programs. If they are to obtain approval for
these activities, they usually need at least resignation on the
part of their colleagues . Those involved in such course and
program development are no doubt aware of the negative reactions
that such activities can generate. A few of these reactions are,
I suspect, valid. Too much of the research in our field
represents restatement rather than advance, and evaluations of
publications in our field--where they exist at all--are often not
as rigorous as they might be. BQ! I believe that most negative_
~ions from our colleagues in literary fields stem from an
inadequate understanding of the depth and e~tent of the
___
~le research that now exists in ftelds like traditiona __
l __
composition and scien~ific and technical writing. In addition,
too few literary scholars recognize that we often work in the same
23
A scholar researching the history of scientific and
writing in the seventeenth century may well be working
with the ideas of such scholars are Morris Croll and Richard
Foster Jones, the same ideas used by many scholars of seventeenth
and eighteenth century English literature. Graduate students need
to be made aware that the audience of their colleagues in literary
fields is both important and sensitive.
~reas.
t~~ical
Audience adaptation, then, can provide a foundation for
technical writing courses. A consideration of the concept can
affect the kind of students in a class, the teacher's relationship
with the individual students, the approach to basic subject
matter, decisions about combining speech and writing or
introducing cooperative education programs, and the preparation of
our future professors of technical communication for teaching,
research, and service. If audience is to become the foundation of
technical writing courses, however, more textbooks that emphasize
audience need to be written. Too many textbooks are written
without a clear sense of the kind of students for whom they are
written, and too many neglect even to mention audience adaptation.
Teachers selecting textbooks for the fir-st time should be very
cautious in determining whether a textbook is designed solely for
engineers, primarily for students in business, or for
heterogeneous classes . They should look, too , for an emphasis on
audience adaptation. To help inform textbooks, more research on
the relationship between audience and business, scientific, and
technical writing is needed.
IN TECHNICAL WRITING: THE NEED FOR GREATER REALISM
IN IDENTIFYING THE FICTIVE READER
David L. Carson
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
One of the more distinctive characteristics of technical
writing lies in its traditional emphasis, in the pre-writing
phases, on audience analysis . Certainly all expository writing
must make concessions to the audience if it will be truly
expository, but the functional demands placed upon written
technical communication require considerably more attention to the
audience than is common for many other species within the genre . l
Because, as John Walter has pointed out, "the writer ' s purpose (in
technical writing) is not only to inform but also to provide a
basis for some sort of immediate action,"2 the goals of modern
t~nical writing are ver~ similar to those of Aristotelian
rhetoric.
Although Thomas Wilson, in coming at Aristotle through Cicero
and Quintilian, wrote in 1553, what he had to say about the "end
of rhetorique" is not much different from what most technica 1
communicators would judge as the "end of technical writing."
According to Wilson, the purpose of rhetoric was to treat
All such matters as may largely be expounded for man's
behove ••• [in a way] that the hearers may well know
what he meaneth and understand him wholly , the which
he shall with ease do if he utter his mind in plain
words ••• and tell it orderly without going about
the bush • • • • [For the rhetorician] is ordained to
express the mind that one might understand another's
meaning •••• that [his hearers] shall be forced to
yield unto his saying.3
Obviously, Wilson is exhorting his readers to analyze their
audiences, but even though his own words on the printed page would
spread far beyond the audience he had imagined as he wrote The Art
of Rhetorigue, his approach to audience is primarily bound by time
and space. To him an audience was a group of people whom the
rhetor might a1ready know, or whom the rhetor might get to kn0\'1
from their response to his exordium. Modern communication
technology has, however, made audience analysis a much more
cOMplex task. The more rapidly one may communicate a wide variety
of complex ideas to an exceptionally diverse and widespread
audience, the more difficult is the identification of a particular
person who epitomizes the characteristi~s of the group of people
to whom the writer directs his message.
24
25
THE STATE OF AUDIENCE ANALYSIS IN TECHNICAL COMMUNICATION
At a time in which electronic mass media have developed
audience measurement systems to provide nearly instantaneous and
reputedly accurate data on an audience's reaction to almost any
message, more technical writers operate with no more information
to guide them than was available two decades ago.5 Consequently,
far too many technical writers find themselves forced to rely
solely upon their intuition to create the necessary, if fictive,
construct of the universal audience of one to which they will
write. Worse than this, these same writers often receive only
mini mal feedback from their invisible audiences and hence are
denied opportunity to infuse reality into even their haziest
audience constructs.6
The Audience Is Always Fictive
Although t eachers of technical writing routinely insist that
students write whenever possible to a real audience , no such
"real" audience exists . Even when an author knows very intimately
the person to whom he or she writes , t he image of audience whi ch
the writer carries in his or her mind is merely a fi ctive
construction based upon available data . ?
If this assertion seems to contradict my earlier criticism of
technical communication for its practice of forcing writers to
construct audiences out of whole cloth , I assure you it does not.
To one degree or another, the writer's image of any pa rticular
universal audience of one is always a mere figment of imagination.8
My criticism aims only at those organizations which fail to supply
the writer with the most complete data avai l able upon which to
base an imaginary audience construct .
A Creative Trad1tion
Despite such handicaps, technical writers have exercised
sufficient creatiVity to communicate relatively well to a wide
variety of disparate readers. They have created such forms as the
double report to reach mixed audiences, they have used "plain
words ••• without going about the bush," and they have used
simile, metaphor, analogy, first person point- of- view and even
dialogue to assist them in communicating effect i vely . 9 Moreover ,
technical writers have improved the efficiency of their written
communications by supporting them with illustrations, tables,
graphs, charts, diagrams, special typography, and even audiovisual
supplements.
26
Nevertheless, this creative tradition has been and continues
to be hampered by the inability of technical communication to
establish the writer to a managerial position central to the
communication process. To function with maximum efficiency, a
writer must be able to control a communication project from
inception through dissemination, and he or she must also have the
authority not only to demand pertinent data from a variety of
sources but to define what data in what forms is necessary.
To do this, technical communicators must learn to make use of
the instruments and methods of communication research as they
apply to the assessment of written communication. Although a
writer's image of audience based on empirical data will remain
fictive and hypothetical, the image should begin to approach a
higher order of fictional realism.
EMPIRICAL RESEARCH IN WRITING
For over fifty years scholars from various disciplines have
conducted empirically oriented research on the communicative
effectiveness of expository prose .IO From these studies have come
at least fifty so-called readability formulas. Unfortunately, few
of these can measure much more than sentence length or syllable
density. As a result, a writing sample on a complex subject \'Jhich
contained a high frequency of exceptionally abstract, if short,
technical words might test out at the same readability level as a
ninth grade science text.ll
This is one of the reasons, I suspect, that writers and
teachers of writing have not, generally, made much use of
readability tests beyond accepting the two most useful bits of
information the tests have produced . For better reader
comprehension, use short sentences and short words. Another
reason relates to the fact that readability tests only measure
certain narrow d ~mensions of a prose artifact after it is written
and are hence predictive . Writers and teachers of writing, on the
other hand, are predominantly concerned only with how to or
causal factors in the writing process .12
11
11
Nevertheless, readability formulas are still important
adjuncts to the writer in assessing the aptness of a prose style
for the reading level of its intended audience. This is
particularly true today when computerized word - processing
technologies make automatic readability analysis of a text almost
effortless .13
27
Beyond Readability
Aside from the sheer complexity inherent in analyzing writing
from other than a predictive basis, research in causal analysis is
hampered, as well, by the plethora of narrowly applicable, but
extremely abstract specialized vocabularies within each particular
technology. What this means is that the results of applied
writing research in one technology have tended to be of little
value to another. Hence a two -thousand word vocabulary designed
for the readers of Caterpillar's publications might not be
effective for Data General's readers.
In consequence, the directions which meaningful research will
take should be defined more and more by the agency of greatest
interest, publications management. The following broad scheme
outlines one way in which information flow to the writer might be
improved, and it also outlines as well a method which the
imaginative teacher may use to good advantage in the classroom.
See Note 18.
A PROPOSED APPROACH
As George R. Klare suggests in A Manual for Readable Writing,
a writer in analyzing an audience must take into account two major
variables in addition to reading level:
* The reader's level of competence, and
* The reader's level of motivation.14
Reader Competence
Although, ~s Klare defines it, reader competency consists of
a complex of ~everal variables, I suggest we consider it mainly as
a measure of the reader's comprehension of the technical
vocabulary of his or her particular sub-branch of a particular
technology. One might expect to find overlaps between job
categories within a single technology, but it is reasonable to
assume as does Thomas E. Pearsall that most jobs require mastery
of certain levels of technical vocabulary.15 This is to suggest
that a design engineer's technical vocabulary would be more
extensive than that of a supply clerk, and that the technical
vocabulary of a manager might fall somewhere in between the two .
28
Reader Motivation
As the Yerkes-Dodson law suggests, the level of difficulty
that task learners will attempt varies with their level s of
motivation.lb However inconstant and difficult it may be to
measure motivation, the following reader characteristics usually
indicate high levels of motivation:
High interest in subject matter,
Relatively high knowledge of content, and
High personal stakes in mastering the information.17
From these criteria, we would expect managers and engineers
to be motivated to master the language of a new technology more
quickly than the supply clerk.
Gathering Data
Following Klare•s criteria, I would suggest that publication
managers attempt to establish information banks for each major
reader category (based initially on job title and level) which
would include at least
Reading level by grade,
Functional vocabulary level, and
Motivation tendencies.
Through normal sampling techniques, the est.ablishment of a
mean reading level for each job category should be simple.
Functional vocabulary levels can be ascertained through
administering a vocabulary examination based on a word list
provided by writers. Means of estimated motivational tendencies
might be determined by comparing actual comprehension test scores
with results prPdicted by individual's reading and functional
vocabulary levels.
Obviously the data thus obtained would be of questionable
value outside its immediate communication environment, but it
could establish the basis for an initial analysis of the reader
which could be continually refined by subsequent tests of document
effectiveness.
Compiling Audience Profiles
Once mean data is available for each job category, it would
be a relatively simple task to create communication competency
profiles which could be stored in a computer and eventually even
incorporated into automatic editing programs.
29
From the standpoint of assisting the writer to identify his
audiences, the data should, however, be incorporated into a
~rit~r·s casebook.
In addition to a descriptive prose profile for
each reader category, the casebook might also include
A complete job description,
A functional list of technical words, and
Several model prose samples written specifically for
readers in this particular job category. l8
WRITERS AS COMMUNICATION DIRECTORS
Establishing a system such as this will certainly be more
complicated than this brief description implies, but it may well
be worth whatever effort it takes. If we wish our writers to
function as they should, we must provide them with adequate means
to control and direct the flow of information throughout their
assigned commur.ication tasks. Not only must they receive more
information on audience than is now generally available, but they
must be permitted to assume an active role in the acquiring and
processing of that information.
Despite the fact that the universal audience of one to whom
each writer ultimately writes must always be a fictive construct
of the writer's imagination, technical writers must be given a
place in the sun central to publication management. Here, where
they may assume greater control over information flow pertinent to
their written communications, writers should be able to improve
the communicative effectiveness of their documents through greater
infusion of information from the real world. These well-informed
writers will, after all, have a much better chance 11 of using the
right 11 plain words .. to tell it in the right order Without going
about the bush 11 so that their readers 11 Shall be forced to yield
unto ••• [theirl saying ...
30
FOOTNOTfS
1.
John A. Walter, "Technical Writing: Species or Genus? "
Journal of Technical Writing and Communication, 7 (1977),
243-250 .
2.
Walter, p. 247.
3.
Thomas Wilson, "The Art of Rhetorique," in The Renaissance
in England, ed. H. E. Rollins and H. Baker, (Boston: D. C.
Heath, 1954), pp. 591-592.
4.
I will refer later to this imaginary person who combines all
of the known characteristics of a potential audience,
however oxymoronic this combining may be, as the "universal
audience of one." I have used this te rm since I conceived
it in 1953 as a radio announcer.
5.
P. G. Ronco, et al., Characteristics of Technical Reports
That Affect Reader Behavior, {Medford, Mass.: Tufts Univ.
Institute for Psychological Research, 1966).
6.
M. MacDonald-Ross, "Research and the Transformer: A Program
for Improving Texts," in Readjng and Readability Research in
the Armed Services, ed. T. G. Sticht and D. W. Zapf,
(Alexandria, Va.: Human Resources Research Organization,
Sept. 1976), pp. 42-59.
7.
Chairn Perelman (Rhetorique et philosphie, [Paris, 1952], pp.
20-22) was one of the first to write about the writer's
conception of his audience as being no more than a product
of his imagination. Wayne Booth (The Rhetoric of Fiction,
Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1961) introduced the idea
of the "implied audience" in fiction, and Walter Ong ("The
Audience ic: Always a Fiction," PMLA, 90 [1975], 9-21)
continue~ the development of the fictional nature of a
writer's imagined audience further.
8.
Wayne Booth also suggests that an author embodies a
self-created imaginary image of him or herself in all
serious writing.
9.
Walter James Miller, "What Can the Technical Writer of the
Past Teach The Technical Writer of Today , " IRE Transactions,
EWS 4, No. 3, [Dec.1961], 69-76.
31
10.
The best review of this research may be found in George R.
Klare, The Measurement of Readability (Ames, Iowa: Iowa
State Univ . Press, 1963).
11.
J. R. Bormuth, "New Deve 1opments in Readabi 1i ty Research,"
Elementary English, 44 (1967}, 844 .
12.
George R. Klare, A Manual For Readable Writing, (Glen
Burnie, Md . : REM Company, 1975), p. 5.
13.
Nearly every major manufacturer of word- processing systems
has developed a program which will measure readability
almost automatically . Several have, in addition, developed
programs which provide editorial guidance based on
preselected readability levels.
14.
Klare, p. 9 ff .
15.
Thomas E. Pearsall , Audience Analysis for Technical Writing,
(Beverly Hills: Glencoe Press, 1969}, pp. ix-xxii .
16.
Klare, p. 38.
17.
Klare, p. 41.
18.
I have had good success in requ1r1ng students to write a
casebook section similar to that described here. If
sufficient time permits , students may gather their own
demographic data. If not, the instructor may provide
hypothetical data. Then, using actual documentation
provided by industry, the student compiles a casebook
section, including a page mock- up which shows illustration
placement and so forth. The student's final product is
submitted in computer printout fo rm (TEXT FORM or FORMAT) as
photo-ready copy.
AUDIENCE ANALYSIS FOR TECHNICAL WRITING :
A SELECTIVE, ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Michael L. Keene
Texas A&M University
Merrill D. Whitburn
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
"To be a good writer you must know your audience-its purpose and its knowledge."*
Since professionals in any field tend to write primarily for
themselves--or for audiences which seemingly are mirror- images of
themselves--teaching technical writing students to analyze their
real audiences and to adapt their messages to those audiences is
an important part of any technical writing course. The following
pages offer a selective, annotated bibliography of materials for
teaching audience analysis and adaptation. This selective listing
represents our own choices of sources that are significant . Our
choice for significance was determined in part by whether the
source represents the best treatment of one approach, or whether
it suggests a range of ideas accessible through that source. We
hope our readers will bring to our attention any articles or books
they feel should have appeared in the following listing .
In our age of increasing specialization, scholars• attention
tends to become more and more concentrated within individual
disciplines, perhaps inevitably neglecting relevant scholarship in
associated areas. We hope to work against this trend by drawing
attention to important work on audience analysis and adaptation
not only in the field of technical communication, but also in
several closely related fields. Material on audience analysis
ranges from th2 most theoretical to the most practical, from
encouraging the writer to imagine the audience created by the
report to requiring detailed information on the real audience•s
age, sex, education, and political preference. This bibliography
follows the progression from the most theoretical to the most
practical. Every piece of writing has at least those two
audiences, the character of the reader the rep9rt itself s~~~ests
aMJbe report •s actual reader(sj. The ~uccess of a piec~ of _
writing often degends on the ext_eJJt_ t_o_whi_ch those two aud..i~rt.c.e.s
resemble each other.
*Thomas E. Pearsall, Audience Analysis for Technical
Writing, (Beverly Hills: Glencoe Press, 1969).
32
33
THE MOST THEORETICAL
At jts most theoreticgl, audience analisis for technical
writing merges with rhetorical literary criticism. Just as
scholars can study either fne h1stor1cal character of an author or
the appearance of the author's character as revealed in the
narrator of a text (the persona), just as we could talk about what
kind of people the authors of this bibliography really are or
about what kind of people these pages make us appear to be, so we
can study the audience for a piece of writing as it can be
extrapolated from that piece. That audience, a creation of the
text itself, is the subject of LLther W~lter On~s comprehensive__
theoretical articl~ "The Writer's Audience Is Always a Fiction"
(PMLA, 90 [1975], 9-21).
According to Ong, "The writer's audience is always a fiction.
The historian, the scholar or scientist, and the simple letter
writer all fictionalize their audiences, casting them in a made-up
role and calling on them to play the role assigned" (p. 17). Ong
points out that since this "audience" is a fiction, a creation of
the writer's, the unaware or inexperienced writer often creates
this audience in the writer's own image. The real reader is then
required to adapt, to "play the role in which the author has cast
him, which seldom coincides with his role in the rest of actual
life." The source of the audience the writer "fictionalizes" is
not daily life, but, as Ong suggests, other authors, "who were
fictionalizing in their imaginations audiences they had learned to
know in still earlier writers, and so on back to the dawn of
written narrative." Only a "truly adept" original author can do
more than project some earlier writer 's audience.
For those who find this rhetorical approach to audience
useful, a longer development may be found in E. D. Hirsch, Jr.'s
The Philosophy of Composition (Chicago: The University of Chicago
Press, 1977). Hirsch's primary concern is to discover a more
valid formula for determining the relative readability of a text,
one which takes into account the way the relative complexity of
the text's meaning is handled within the text. Hirsch seeks to
apply new knowledge about the psychology of reading to defining
good writing. While the kind of writing he examines characterizes
college more than business and industry, his contribution of ideas
and approaches is invaluable.
The tendency for a writer to assume an audience which mirrors
the writer's knowledge of and interest in a subject is but one of
many ways a report can be centered on the writer rather than on
the reader. Including as part of the composing proces s a
deliberate translation from a writer-centered draft to a
reader-centered draft can make audience analysis and adaptation a
functional part of student writing. In "Problem-Solving
34
Strategies and the Writing Process" (College English, 39 [1977],
449-461}, Linda S. Flower and John R. Hayes propose 11 Construction
for an Audience .. as the third of three ways to teach 11 the
techniques and thinking process of writing as a student (or anyone
else) experiences it 11 (p . 450). Their 11 Constructing
for an
Audience .. requires translating the early draft's 11 Writer-Based
Prose 11 into 11 Reader-Based Prose. 11 Flower and Hayes propose four
ways to accomplish that translation, as well as offering teaching
strategies to accompany their ideas .
Another short essay which offers a model of the communication
process based on the receiver is Keith A. Wilkins ' 11 A
Receiver-Bound Concept of Comrnunications, 11 in the Journal of
Technical Writing and Communication (JTWC), 4 (1974), 305- 313.
Wilkins outlines the writer-centered nature of most communication
and explains the role of 11 Receiver Motivation 11 and "Receiver
Response" in making communication more successful.
Each of tne two articles described above emphasizes the
communication process between writer and reader. A further step
along this path applies psychology to writing, further emphasizing
the roles and problems of the audience as matters of utmost
concern to the writer. Two articles which apply transactional
analysis to writing are Otis Baskin and Sam J. Bruno's 11 A
Transactional Systems Model of Communication: Implications for
Transactional Analysis, .. in the Journal of Business Communication,
15 (1977), 65- 73, which uses the concepts of Parent, Adult, and
Child to characterize both the sender and the receiver of
messages, and Norma Carr-Smith's 11 0vercoming Defensive Barriers to
Communication: A Transactional Analysis Approach, 11 in The ABCA
Bulletin, 41 (March 1978), pp. 12- 15, which discusses "defensive ..
and 11 Supportive" messages .
Several other fields concern themselves with audience
analysis in way: fruitful for technical writing teachers to
explore . One field which is often concerned with the
psychological effects of various kinds of messages on readers or
hearers is Speech-Communication. Desirable effects on the
audience can result from conscious use of persuasive strategies,
as described in Persuasion: Understanding, Practice , and Analysis,
by Herbert W. Simons (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley Publishing
Company , 1976). Of particular interest are Simons' description of
key attributes of the receiver (Chapter 4), his summary of four
different theories of persuasion (Chapter 5), and his thorough
application of the most useful of those theories (Chapters 6-1 3).
Other, less sophisticated treatments of audience in
Speech -Communication may be found in John Hasling 's The Audience,
The Message, The Speaker (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1976), and
35
Theodore Clevenger's Audience Analysis (Indianapolis:
Bobbs -Merrill, 1966), among others.
Books under the broad heading of Training and Development
often include significant material on audience analysis and
adaptation, at times with more insight and clearer application
than do technical writing publications. At least two such books
deserve mention here, again from the very theoretical to the very
practical: Henry M. Boettinger's Moving Mountains , and George L.
Morrisey's Effective Business and Technical Presentations .
Henry M. Boettinger's Moving Mountains (New York: The
Macmillan Company, 1969) offers a sensitive and comprehensive
examination of the ways concern for the audience's psychology must
shape the work of anyone who wants to present an idea
successfully. Two chapters of the book are directly concerned
with audience analysis and adaptation , and the entire book
maintains the presenter's audience as the most important
consideration. Boettinger's insight ranges from the
commonsensical ("Ideas are not truly alive if they remain locked
in a single mind," p. 5) to the imaginative ("One approach to the
presentation of an ideas is to see it as psychological sculpture,"
p. 129).
George L. Morrisey's Effective Business and Technical
Presentations, 2nd ed. (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley Publishing
Company, 1975) presents audience analysis in four steps: (1)
clear identification of your own objectives for each particular
audience, to determine what you want in terms of response from
that audience and to learn which specific audience characteristics
you need to watch out for, (2) specific analysis of this audience,
to determine how much material to present and how deep to go, {3)
a general analysis of the audience, to learn what kind of overall
approach to use, and (4) specific consideration of which
information and techniques would most likely have a positive
effect on this specific audience. Morrisey gives a two-page
"Audience Analysis Audit" form which is one of the best of these
useful (though mechanical) approaches.
Audience adaptation can provide a solid foundation for an
entire course in technical writing, one which can serve students
from a wide variety of disciplines because each student learns to
analyze and write for his or her own specific audience. Merrill
D. Whitburn's "The First Day in Technical CoJMlunication: An
Approach to Audience Adaptation" (The Technical Writing Teacher, 3
[Spring 1976], 115- 118) suggests introducing audience adaptation
in the first class meeting and discusses ways to convince students
of the importance of audience adaptation, such as using the
"letter of introduction" as the first writing assignment and
requiring impromptu introductory speeches .
36
The value of such an approach is demonstrated in Timothy D.
Nolan's "A Comparative Study of the Planning, Implementation, and
Evaluation Process of Audience- Committed and Non-Directed
Technical Writing Students , " in The Technical Writing Teacher, 4
(Winter 1977), 50- 54 . Two classes prepare sets of instructions ,
one class ' s aimed at a specific audience and the other's set
"non-directed." Subsequent evaluation ranks the
"audience-committed " set higher.
Specific assignments keyed to specific audiences support the
argument for explicit consideration of the reader and the reader's
purpose presented in James W. Souther 's "Developing Assignments
for Scientific and Technical Writing," in JTWC , 7 (1977), 261- 269.
Souther suggests these assignments to convince students that
"their readers ' questions are more important to the organization
of the material than is the order by which they arrived at the
recommendation" (p. 268). Souther's advice to teachers is to
"create a situation for each assignment, [and] establish realisti c
purposes and audiences for each " (p . 269) .
THE CENTER
The center of any examination of audience analysis materials
for technical writing surely must be Thomas E. Pearsall's Audience
Analysis for Technical Writing (Beverly Hills: Glencoe Press,
1969). The Preface and Introduction to Pearsall' s book offer
perhaps as good an explanation of the need for audience anal ysis
and the basics of audience analysis as can be found anywh ere.
Pearsall begins with the observation--as true in 1979 as ten
years ago- -that the majority of writing done in college writing
classes is done with no idea of the reader's purpose. The element
technical writing courses add to students' skills is the awareness
of the "purpose of" your audience in reading your paper" (p. x).
In one paragraph, Pearsall summarizes the essentials of audience
analysis (p. xi):
As well as understanding his reader's
purpose, the writer must understand his
reader's knowledge. The writer must
know who his reader is, what he already
knows, and what he doesn ' t know. He must
know what the reader will understand without
background and without definitions . He
must know what information he must elaborate,
perhaps with simple analogies. He must
know when he can use a specialized word or
term and when he cannot. He must know
when and h0\'1 to define specialized words
37
that he can't avoid using. All that is
asking a great deal of the writer. But
the good writer knows that each particular
reader brings his experience and his
experience only to his reading. Not to
understand this is to miss the whole
point of writing.
Pearsall's division of audience into five general groups- Layman, Executive, Expert, Technician, and Operator--along with
his extensive examples of reports designed for each audience
brings into clear focus the ways a report's structure, contents,
vocabulary, and use of illustrations need to vary with different
audiences. For anyone interested in audience analysis and
adaptation who wants to consult only one source, Pearsall ' s
Audience Analysis for Technical Writing is the book to see.
Pearsall's book also includes a short bibliography which
lists some of the best of the older literature on audience
analysis and adaptation. Notable among those older pieces is
Richard W. Dodge's "What to Report" (Westinghouse Engineer, 22
[1962], 108-111). Pearsall summarizes part of Dodge ' s article--a
chart showing which parts of reports managers most often read--but
the part Pearsall omits, the four-conference method of report
writing, is equally useful.
Besides Dodge's 1962 article, any who are tempted to make of
this current concern for audience a "new approach" should read The
Presentation of Technical Information by Reginald 0. Kapp (NewYork: The MacMillan Company, 1957). The extent to which Kapp
consistently includes the concern for audience in his discussion
is impressive; as Kapp phrases it, "The aim of a good functional
style is to maintain receptivity in the person addressed" (p. 15).
One chapter, "The Work Done by the Person Addressed," concentrates
on the psychology of the reader in terms which, while they may
need updating, st: 1 1 make their point about the importance of
co~sidering the reader.
Reporting Technical Information, 3rd ed., by Pearsall and
Kenneth w. Roup (Los Angeles: Glencoe Press, 1977) offers
essentially the same information on audience analysis as
Pearsall's previous book, here in more clearly a textbook format .
The new element is "The Combined Audience," a mixture of several
kinds of audiences. The advice offered- -to "compartmentalize your
report"--is an essential audience adaptation technique, the
importance of which is obscured by its introduction at the end of
a chapter.
Specific passages aimed at lay readers, technicians , and
experts are examined at length for the ways the writers use
38
specific characteristics of each audience in Robert de
Beaugrande's "Information and Grammar in Technical Writing,"
College Composition and Communication, 28 (Dec. 1977), 325-332.
De Beaugrande discusses grammar, technical terminology, extended
modifiers, use of passives, and positioning of important items for
focus, all in terms of changes from oral to written discourse; in
each case~ judgment is based on how the reader will respond to
that particular feature.
In "Communication in Technical Writing" (JTWC, 8 [1978],
5-15) the same author proposes that the communicativeness of a
piece of writing depends largely on the extent to which the piece
pays attention to the reader's background, organizing information
in such a way as to allow the reader to integrate old and new
material successfully. Another article in the same vein is
Frances J. Laner' s "Readability Techniques for Authors and
Editors" in JTWC, 6 (1976), 203-214, which summarizes research
into the effects of various type faces, locations on the page of
important material, and location of captions.
"Writing Technical Reports for an Uninformed Audience" by
Roger L. Brown and William E. t~cCarron (The Technical Writing
Teacher, 3 [Fall 1975], 1-7) reviews the characteristics of what
Brown and McCarron see as the most common audience for technical
reports. They suggest ways to teach students how to write for an
uninformed audience such as giving the students short quizzes over
heavily "jargonized" p1aterial (to demonstrate the difficulty of
learning from such material) .•
THE MOST PRACTICAL
Designing Technical Reports: Writing for Audiences in
Organizations by J. C. Mathes and Dwight W. Stevenson
(Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc., 1976) offers
perhaps the most ~ etailed treatment of audience analysis and--in
the sense of being most rigorously applied--the most practical.
Awareness of t he special, individual characteristics of each
audience for each report permeates the book. Mathes and Stevenson
assume the purpose of a technical report is to modify someone's
behavior or to persuade someone to act on the information
presented. Their approach to report design is grounded on the
axiom that "The needs of the audiences in the organizational
system determine the design of the report" (p. 8).
From this beginning, Mathes and Stevenson go deeply into ways
to determine the nature of the audience (or several audiences) of
a report. They do this by explaining that the characteristics of
an audience are determined not just by whether the communication
is between equal or unequal levels in an organization, or just by
39
the educational and business backgrounds of the audience,
but--most important--by the purpose and content of the report in
relationship to the "specific operational function of the persons
who will read the report" (p. 11}.
The two distinguishing qualities of Mathes and Stevenson's
treatment of audience analysis follow from their decision to
design reports according to the audience's need and "specific
operational
function." In lieu of the conventional "or ganization
chart 11 as a source of determining the nature of a report •s
audience , Mathes and Stevenson propose preparing an "egocentric
organization chart" (p. 15}, which identifies individuals in terms
of their nearness to the report writer . The writer can then
characterize those readers three ways (operational , objective, and
personal) and classify them to establish priorities for the
report .
The second and in some ways more valuable result of Mathes
and Stevenson• ... approach deals with the "complex" audience--the
report that must, for instance, go to both experts and managers .
Mathes and Stevenson suggest that, since the audience for almost
every report is complex, the writer must design a report structure
with two components, one part (or set of parts) for an audience
interested in general information, and a second for an audience
interested in particulars . The two alternatives to this--to write
for the "common denominator" of the two (or more) audiences, or to
write two different versions of the same report --are rejected by
Mathes and Stevenson.
The complex nature of all communication situations is
faithfully depicted in "The Communication Situation--A Model and
Discussion," by Richard~. Davis (JTWC, 4 [1974], 185- 205) . Davis
emphasizes the importance of the particular situation in which
each communication is generated and used, and a central aspect in
the situation is the reader: "The author, of course, must
estimate the rec1pient's knowledge of and general disposition
towards the situation and its elements •
And his success in
attaining his purpose may be governed by the accuracy of these
judgments" (p . 196).
Mary B. Coney's "The Use of the Reader in Technical Writing"
(JTWC, 8 [1978], 97-106} offers excellent practical advice on how
to instill in our students a sense that the reader should be an
important part of the writing process. Using "the mock reader,"
she characterizes the operator, the expert, and the manager as
audiences who r1ust become willing participants in the
communication for it to succeed, participation she calls "the test
of function . " In her view, 11 the test of function is central to
technical exposition . • • And there is no better way to assure
this participation than to include the reader--or a fictional
40
extension of himself--in the writing process as an advisor in the
decisions a writer must make" (p. 98) .
CONCLUSIONS
Given the importance of the subject, materials for teaching
audience analysis and adaptation for technical writing are
surprisingly scarce. In particular, material that pays specific
attention to adaptation is very rare. While every audience is
unique, and specific adaptations are thus hard to make useful
generalizations about, much more attention could profitably be
paid to the ways a writer who has already determined the relevant
characteristics of the audience can adjust the reoort to that
specific audience. The usefulness of approaches which examine the
psychology of readers may be just this, to qive writers techniques
based on solid p~ycholoqical findings with which to adapt their
messages. For beyond the specifics of grammar, use of
illustrations. vocabula~y. and structure. audience analysis and
adaptation is a matter of tone. of the attitude the writer takes
toward the reader, and it is the psychological approach--as found
in Boettinqer's book or the article by Baskin and Bruno {cited
above) - -which most directly operates on the way a writer feels
toward and thinks about a specific audience.