As both Christina and Rachel note, each of this week’s readings is focused on rhetoric.  Beyond this broad grounding in the rhetorical tradition, however, I believe these readings call our attention to one of the fundamental components of rhetorical theory: the role of audience. Taken as a whole, these articles ask us to keep audience at the forefront of everything we do, whether we are crafting reports for decision making, creating user-friendly texts through collaboration with an involved audience, or designing assignments that help students learn how to write (if that is even possible).

Smith’s “What Connection Does Rhetorical Theory Have to Technical and Professional Communication?” presents us with a clear, accessible overview of how rhetoric informs technical communication. Like Christina, I found Smith’s definitions of heuristics and hermeneutics useful and I am certain I will return to them. I also plan to introduce them to students.

Although audience awareness is (arguably) implicit in all five rhetorical canons, Smith specifically discusses its importance within the canon of delivery. As she explains, “An important part of delivery is situation psychology: getting an audience’s attention and delivering one’s message clearly within a certain setting” (118). At the moment when a text is actually delivered, we must consider how an audience will receive our text, and under what conditions. Of course, we must keep audience in mind throughout the entire process of crafting a text; it will do us no good to focus on the specifics of delivery if we have not considered audience in the arrangement of the text or in the style we choose to employ. Furthermore, her discussion of the rhetorical triangle highlights the centrality of audience response to a text. What are logos, ethos, and pathos if not intertwined strategies for effectively reaching out to and persuading audience(s)?

Audience is the key concern of Johnson’s “Audience Involved: Toward a Participatory Model of Writing.” I appreciate his attempts to go beyond audience addressed or invoked to suggest that an involved audience is imperative in crafting effective technical communications.  I agree with his assertion that “… writer-use interactions [will] lead to stronger advocacy for user-centered design of computer products” and that this is a goal we should try to reach (100). I also appreciate how he provides an example of how audience collaboration could work in the composition classroom. However, I wonder about the practical implications of his approach. While audience collaboration is ideal, it is not possible in all situations. While I do not believe Johnson is advocating that every document we create involve audience collaboration, he does strongly suggest that we move toward that model.  Johnson anticipates my concerns by noting that “it is often argued that testing is expensive” and that developers and writers work under time constraints (98). Given these constraints, I believe Johnson’s approach to collaborative writing is something to strive for; however, it is not feasible to collaborate with audiences while writing every text.

Because Rude’s “The Report for Decision Making” focuses on the distinctions among kinds of problems (theoretical, empirical, and practical) and using the appropriate genre to approach them (in this case, the persuasive essay, experimental report, report for decision making, and proposal), the role of audience is less defined. However, she does note that “the report persuades not by overt advocacy for a position but because the audience (decision maker) trusts the investigation and its results” (84).  The challenge, then, is to craft a report that gains the audience’s trust. Rude argues that an understanding of the specific rhetorical situation in which the report is written is key; in addition, she asserts that “the report structure, based on the criteria, should reveal the way the problem was defined and the standards by which a solution has been recommended” (88).  How writers arrange the report also influences its persuasiveness, given that readers read selectively (88).

On a side note, I find Rude’s discussion of the assumptions and methods behind each genre to be extremely useful. As I draft a persuasive essay, for example, I often do not consider the underlying values and methodologies behind it (in this case, debate, which can be traced back to Plato), and I suspect I am not alone in this. Furthermore, while she recognizes that the distinctions between the report for decision making and the proposal are often blurred in real life, Rude also argues that these distinctions are useful and necessary. In my case, I am assigning a feasibility report as a final project in the 305 class, and I will use her focus on the report as results and the proposal as plan (83) to guide students.

Finally, I struggled with the implications of Kent’s arguments in “Paralogic Hermeneutics.” In essence, Kent draws upon Davidson, Derrida, Heidegger, and the Sophists to argue that creating and analyzing discourse relies upon guesswork, and that rhetorically-informed reading and writing, at least in the Aristotelian tradition, cannot be taught. Here, audience is always slightly out of reach, as direct communication is not possible. Upon finishing this piece, I certainly felt the “… trepidation when we pull up anchor and set sail on an indeterminate sea” that Kent mentions in the last sentence of his article (40). While I am still working out whether I agree with Kent’s assertion of how communication actually works, I am most concerned with its implications for teaching.

Kent posits that teaching theory and elements of discourse (grammar and generic conventions, for example) does not ensure that students actually learn how to write (35-36). He also criticizes process-oriented approaches (36). Upon reading these critiques, I immediately thought, “What, then, do we teach?”

Similar to Johnson, Kent argues that students must interact and collaborate with real audiences. Writing must become dialogic. The teacher, too, must become collaborator; Kent defines the teacher’s role as “… simply another voice in the dialogic interactions inherent in discourse production and analysis, a voice that offers possible choices a student might make in her hermeneutic guessing about how to create effects in the world” (37). I believe that for most of us, this department’s process-oriented approach already fosters the teacher-as-collaborator model. For me, one approach to Kent’s challenge to Aristotelian rhetoric would be to continue to ask students to consider generic conventions and the importance of audience, context, etc. (that is, stress the rhetorical situation), but also to call attention to the fact that these methods and strategies are, ultimately, our best ways of taking the “guesswork” out of communication.

Despite my focus on audience in this post, I do not think rhetoric can be reduced to audience awareness and/or involvement. However, each of these readings argues, in its own way, for the primacy of the audience’s role in crafting effective communications.

Works Cited

Johnson, Robert. “Audience Involved: Toward a Participatory Model of Writing.” Central   Works in Technical Communication. Eds. Johndan Johnson-Eilola and Stuart A. Selber. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. 91-103. Print.

Kent, Thomas. “Paralogic Hermeneutics and the Possibilities of Rhetoric.” Rhetoric Review 8.1 (1989): 24-42. JSTOR. Web. 27 Aug. 2012.

Rude, Carolyn. “The Report for Decision Making: Genre and Inquiry.” Central Works in Technical Communication. Eds. Johndan Johnson-Eilola and Stuart A. Selber. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. 70-90. Print.

Smith, Tania. “What Connection Does Rhetorical Theory Have to Technical and Professional Communication?’ Readings for Technical Communication. Ed. Jennifer MacLennan.  New York: Oxford University Press, 2007. 114-121. Print.