1. Fulkerson focuses quite a bit on audience, as that is the
emerging consensus of his time. Part of me wants to ask whether or not writers
should be concerned for any audience, but more specifically I want to ask: how
does audience determine success? Is successful writing in the joining of the
audience addressed and audience invoked? That is, if those two things are
entirely separate audiences, would your work be considered a failure? Or is
success determined by an audience affected? Even if it is not the way you want
to affect them or the direction you want to influence them, would this be
considered successful rhetorical work in Fulkerson’s mind?
2. Could someone clarify what Bartholomae means by “regime of
truth”? It comes up a couple of times in What
is Composition (alongside the word “truth” in quotation marks) and I’m not
quite clear on what he’s doing with it or how exactly he intends it to be
interpreted.
Hello Robert,
ReplyDeleteFor the first question, I've always grappled with how to measure success in discourse. I think that when we compose a text or make a speech, we are creating that with one audience in mind, hoping to call the intended audience to action. However, that audience is not always reached, and perhaps an unintended audience may be the one called to action. In that case, I would call that a success. I think that we do our best to reach our intended audience, but if we completely miss the mark and it's someone else who rises to your call, then who is to say that is not a form of success?
In regards to Bartholomae "truth," I also was a bit confused. He seemed to see truth as something negative, something determined by the "system" so to speak. I believe that what he was getting at was that we have to evade the institutions and disciplines and bring new knowledge to the forefront to make a new and more honest "truth." But please, take my musings with a grain of salt, as I'm a bit confused as well.
Hey Robert,
ReplyDeleteI really like your first question, it's really multi-layered. But I think that the audience is essentially those who are every receptive to it. The goal as a writer is to hopefully reach some sort of audience, much like Liana said. I think this relates back to our conversation in class about the relationship between reading and writing and how they are intertwined. As a writer you may have an intended audience but ultimately, you don't have control over if that audience is the one to digest it. But I think another aspect of your question is if the intended audience deemed the writing as inadequate, does that mean the writer failed. And I think that comes down to whether or not the message/theme/idea of the piece of writing was extrapolated by someone, unintended or intended audience.
And it seems that I wasn't the only one confused by the "reign of truth" bit as well. But I like how Liana tackled it.