Audience Addressed/ Audience Invoked

Audience Addressed/Audience Invoked


Lisa Ede and Andrea Lunsford are trying to expand the understanding of the audience's role. They thought that is was difficult to define an audience to a reader or writer. Ede and Lunsford believed that there were two main viewpoints on audience in composition, audience addressed and audience invoked. An addressed audience is one that no matter how much feedback writers may get after writing something, the writers rely upon their own vision of the reader, which is something they create. Readers also create their image of writers based on their expectations and experiences. Mitchell and Taylor put a big emphasis on the audience and not as much on the writer, the audience had more control over evaluation and motivation than the writer. An invoked audience is something very different from an addressed audience. An invoked audience is a person or group of people usually that the writer creates. The writer imagines an audience and then puts them in roles that they are expected to respond to. This is difficult because the reader may not always respond to how the writer wants them to. In order for a writer to make his reader play his/her part, the writer needs to understand the needs and interests that their reader has. Defining audience in general is difficult because it isn't just about the intended, but for everyone who influences the writer.