Trying to answer these questions I found it was hard not to include some type of context to explain what I mean. Since we were asked to step away from the "Bitch" magazine add (I'm looking over my shoulder as I type that word on the computer) I tried to develop another example.
· What different kinds of information emerge from the two types of analysis? What does each reveal or conceal?
audience addressed- here you are focusing on the real people reading your text. If you write a paper advocating gun control you will likely attract some politically active people with two very different opinions on the subject. a group supporting gun control won't have very many needs to be convinced that you are right. To win over members of the local hunting club, however, you'll need to present your case in a creative way. You might even need to learn more about those readers to try and shape your argument, you might seek a shared religious belief or high light a past experience in their life on to help you convince them you're right.
If you just study a text based on the audience addressed you'll learn most about the beliefs of the people reading the paper. The way the author relates to the audience will give you some insight on the writer. The way the topic is presented balanced against what you've learned about the audience and writer can teach you a little about the way the topic is perceived in a society.
audience invoked- in this model we can learn more about the topic and writer than about the audience. We can all list a lot of different key persuasive words a writer might use to get across the urgency of gun control. Writing strategies presented by the author can help us learn about the audience. When writing about a controversial issue the writer might use an "imagine if" scenario to both increase support of those already in his corner but more importantly invite opponents to play a believing game about his topic. Whether a reader was resistant to playing the game or willing to think outside the box would teach a us about the audience.
· When or why might one type of analysis be more useful than another?
I think it probably would be a good idea to consider who you are addressing when you begin to write a paper. As I mentioned in answering the previous question if you can develop a good understanding of the characteristics of people who will be reading your work you can adjust your writing as a result. This is where audience invoked will come into play. A skillful writer will invoke at least a portion of people who at first have a different opinion to look at the topic from a perspective more favorable to the author.
I suppose that if you were writing about a non-controversial subject and were just interested in selling books or magazines you might be able to simply focus on the audience you wished to address. Creativity might lead writers to consider invoking different roles for their readers in this situation as well though.
If you were criticizing literature, as Ong was, it is probably more fun/useful to study the audience invoked rather than the audience addressed. I don't want to say this statement applies 100% of the time but in my experience I think a majority of the time this is a fairly accurate statement.
· In what ways do these types of analysis inform each other or reveal weaknesses in each other?
I'm having a hard time finding a new way to answer this question. I've tried a few formats and feel like I'm just repeating myself. If you're bored with my brief explanation please feel free to stop reading if (for some ____ reason) I haven't been clear throughout this let me know and I'll try and explain more.
audience addressed informs audience invoked- who will really read this? what roles might you need to put them in? how likely are they to want to be put in those roles?
audience invoked informs audience addressed- what should you think as you read this? what ideas/opinions might you be overlooking?
weakness of audience invoked exposed- sometimes you can be as clever as you want, you can use the greatest writing tricks ever created and your audience just won't be receptive to it.
weakness of audience addressed- you might like/dislike this piece without really knowing why. If you enter willing to play the believing game a creative author can draw you into a role you never knew was possible and you might understand a topic in a whole new/unexpected way.
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Hey Luke,
I just had a couple of thoughts raised by some of your questions; my audience for this was not addressed. It is talk that belongs purely in the world of reflective thought:
With audience addressed, the reader is already in a role: a single mother who daydreams about beach escapades with unrealistically hunky male companions; a doctor who sneaks in hours of escape in the on-call room in between patients; a teenage boy with a social void who only finds acceptance in his comic books. Audience addressed writers are submitting, bowing, and catering to roles readers are ALREADY in. As writers for addressed audiences, we are essentially serving a preexisting demographic. They already exist in the physical realm, and we create for them material in the abstract realm, to suit their (sick or normal) desires.
With audience invoked, there pre-exists no reader role; that is precisely why we have to create the role. And the process of creation does not mirror reality as specifically as the (already existing) roles out there do. No. The roles our minds invoke are usually an amalgamation of characters from childhood stories, long-stamped on our consciousness; the best line of a speech we ever heard, ingrained into our arsenal of "best rhetorical weapons;" and even a painful, piercing memory that serves as our mental archetype of "what never to do." Audience invoked involves our innermost subconcious energies, often without our knowledge, to shapre readers, regardless of their preexisting roles, into the role we deem appropriate.
The quesiton of how and why "addressed" and "invoked" are used, one in one situation and one in another, more appropriately, may be a complex matrix of cognitive, social, and even historical factors, or it may be as simple as why our government uses national guard troops in an appropriate/inappropriate way depending on who you ask.
One thing stands for the "why" factor of "invoking" rather than addressing: we have no preexisting impression of our readers, and do not know their preexisting roles. If we knew enough about their lives, habits, prejudices and fantasies, we may be able to "address" them; but we simply have to invoke them...
A few thoughts on that.
Thanks for your quesitons.
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