Social Theories

Audience:

I found Ong's article a good introduction to the idea of real vs. imagined audience. As Ede and Lunsford said in their article, Ong was the first to take up this matter in depth. He begins with a short look at the history of the relationship between speaker/hearer (rhetoric) through literature/culture and the lack of serious inquiry into what roles are imposed on the reader by the writer. Since it is impossible for a writer to write directly to one reader and every reader (except in very exceptional circumstances) in the way a speaker addresses his physically present audience, the writer is forced to create a role for his reader. All knowledge hitherto has concerned itself with the "the oral performer, the writer, and techniques, rather than with the recipient of the message." Ong suggests the time is now ripe for a "history of readers and their enforced roles." He goes on to show us how every writer is forced to write for whatever audience he may hold in his imagination. The audience must also fictionalize itself by playing whatever role the writer has cast him in. The audience is a fiction.  I especially enjoyed his analysis of Hemingway (what a breath of fresh air his allusions to literature are!). Hemingway's style involved a sense of camaraderie with the reader which he made effective through grammar. Here, Hemingway's many streams of genius intersect to make the reader feel like a close companion of Hemingway's narrators.

Ede and Lunsford expand on Ong's claims. They define two polar opposites ("Audience Addressed" and "Audience Invoked") and claim to find a middle ground which is, always naturally, the only productive area worth working in. After using a Mitchell and Taylor article as a backdrop to their explanation of Audience Addressed, they move on the Audience Invoked, which is obviously favored by them. "The central task of the writer, then, is not to analyze an audience and adapt discourse to meet its needs. Rather, the writer uses the semantic and syntactic resources of language to provide cues for the reader--cues which help to define the role or roles the writer wishes the reader to adopt in responding to the text." Although they ultimately agree with Ong, they of course manage to find some minor faults with his original (and general) claims. Ong's claims are, in fact, too general. His distinctions between a speaker's and a writer's audience don't work in many situations. "When one turns to precise, concrete situations, the relationship between speech and writing can become far more complex than even Ong represents." Further, Ong's fictionalizing of audience works better in fiction than rhetorical work. It may be because there is a more direct correlation between a fictional speaker and a fictional audience than a real speaker using his real name to address real problems.

Ultimately, as seems to always be the case when one writer critiques another, the answer lies somewhere in the middle. It must be in the middle because the middle is harder to name; if it can be named, it can be torn apart and critiqued. All these 2nd place writers seem to hide in this gray area and claim truth behind ambiguity. "The most complete understanding of audience thus involves a synthesis of the perspectives we have termed audience addressed, with its focus on the reader, and audience invoked, with its focus on the writer. We must, therefore, have no focus, or focus on something like the reater/wrider.

I enjoyed Ong's article because it made me more aware of, not who my audience may be, but what role I want to create for them. I wonder, however, if it is truly essential to think in these terms. Might it not become a hindrance if, instead of letting the words pour from my soul upon the page, I am too worried about creating an audience? In my own creative and personal writing, I am always envisioning future readers (since there can only ever be future readers) such as myself or potential biographers. I always leave little notes for myself (Hello, future me! It's you from the past!) or Easter eggs for interested fans and devoted researchers of my work. Actually, I don't really, but wouldn't it be fun!


Collaboration

I especially liked the readings on Collaborative Learning and would be interested to learn more once I start teaching. Would this be even more effective in socialist/communist countries where the collective is already valued? I liked the way Bruffee's structured his article. It starts with a basic history and definition of Collaborative Learning. CL does not actually change what is learned, but how it is learned: more efficiently. He starts with a sort of psychological and philosophical justification of CL stating that "The view that conversation and thought are causally related assumes not that thought is an essential attribute of the human mind but that it is instead an artifact created by social interaction." Further, "O think we as individuals, we must learn to think well collectively." He segues into applying this idea in the classroom. By guiding students' conversation towards what they read and write, they will eventually be able to read and write in the same manner. Their complexity in written thought is therefore strengthened by their complexity in speech and interaction. Further, as has been discussed in previous articles, this will make students part of a discursive community, one in which they are writing and interacting with peers. This creates what Bruffee calls, "normal discourse." This skills learned here can be carried forward to all aspects their academic, business, government and professional lives. Bruffee then states, in his next section, what is probably my favorite quote of the week. "To say that knowledge is indeterminate is to say that there is no fixed and certain point of reference...against which we can measure truth. If there is no such absolute referent, then knowledge must be a thing people make and remake. Knowledge must be a social artifact." I'm sold. While normal discourse is necessary to keep the conversation going and indoctrinating neophytes into the the ongoing conversation, abnormal discourse is essential to progress and the production of knowledge.


Trimbur, writing after Bruffee, of course finds fault with the original. Namely, the issue of consensus, which is problematic on two fronts: it may cause totalitarianism of ideas, and it ignores "wider social forces that structure the production of knowledge." Trimbur employs two tactics which seem cliche to me by now: paradox and middle-ground-building (is there a term for this?). First, he argues, "Consensus...can be a powerful instrument for students to generate differences, to identify the systems of authority that organize these differences, and to transform the relations of power that determine who may speak and what counts as a meaningful statement." (Does he define 'consensus' besides the obvious meaning?) This, as I understand it, seems to be saying something like "consensus is good because to creates differences, but the forces that foster these differences must be changed so that no more differences will exist." Please correct me. His next tactic is to define polar opposites and find the ideal away from both of them. "Their effort to save the individual from the group is based on an unhelpful and unnecessary polarization of the individual and society...it is through the social interaction of shared activity that individuals realize their own power to take control of their situation by collaborating with others." He goes on to state that Bruffee's version of consensus invests a real world authority that binds the discourse communities. This seems practical to me, but Trimbur prefers a "critical version" of consensus which doesn't simplify anything, but complicate things with further distinctions. We now have "consensus as an acculturative practice" and consensus as an "oppositional one." Triumber even admits he is doing this: "it will help to cast consensus not as a 'real world' practice but as a utopian one." He wants to "transform the productive apparatus, to change social character of production." This is not the place to do it. It's time he pick up his gun and join the next bandwagon revolution whose sole purpose is change, for better or worse.


Intertextuality

Finally, we have intertextuality. I found this section a little useful in thinking about my research project. The imageboard culture is a sort of intertextual hotbed. Original Content is rarely produced (Porter uses the Declaration of Independence as an example). Rather, members of the community use recognized signs, images, acronyms, etc to convey ideas. Sometimes, people will express their opinions, but even these are unoriginal. There can only be so many opinions on any given topic that it's rare to see anything new, even if it is Original (ie, not part of the vocabulary). Although Porter is referring to his three examples, the same can be said of imageboard culture: "[it] contains phrases or iamges familiar to its audience and presupposes certain audience attitudes. Thus the intertext exerts its influence partly in the form of audience expectation. We might then say that the audience of each of these texts is as responsible for its production as the writer." Therefore, the image of a t-rex with one of his claws in his chin has no real meaning other than what the community collectively agrees that image is to be used for. Porter quotes Bartholomae in reference to intertextuality and pedagogy: "The struggle of the student writer is not the struggle to bring out that which is within; it is the struggle to carry out those ritual activities that grant our entrance into a closed society." Therefore, success in 4chan (if there is such a thing, I'm not sure why anyone would care to achieve it) does not necessarily rest on what has to say or his ability to post Original Content, but rather his command of the existing sets of images, phrases, etc I've alluded to earlier.

I have more to say about intertext and 4chan, but I'm running out of time before class and I'd like to look at another idea expressed by Porter. I like his idea that "Research assignments might be more community oriented rather than topic oriented; students might be asked to become involved in communities of researchers." Since no freshman student ever wants to write about anything in class. I wonder what would happen if, on the first day of class, the teacher asked each student to choose a community to become a part of (or is already a part of). After this, I would tell them, "Fine, for the rest of the semester, your assignments will be to write for these communities in whatever form you find necessary." The key criteria for evaluating their writing after that, as Porter suggests, "should be 'acceptability' within [their] discourse community."