Teaching: All People in General

Teaching

Composition, Literature, and Film

Who - has the problem?

English II, composition students

When - do they have this problem?

Every freaking semester, at least five times a semester

What - is the concept?

While teaching rhetoric, we have a whole week focused on audience awareness. My goal is to teach them that every argument has a specific intended audience which may or may not be the actual audience. Not only do I want my students to identify audience in others writings (and advertisements, commercials, movie posters and trailers, etc.), I also want them to select a specific audience and style their own writings (and other texts) with that particular audience in mind.

How - do I teach the concept?

In order to help students grasp this concept, I provide example scenarios we analyze as a class. For example, we go over the following images to determine intended audience:

We break apart each image individually and discuss who - SPECIFICALLY - would be most affected by each element. At this point, we've already discussed ethos, pathos, logos, and kairos, so we use those rhetorical appeals along with the identified rhetorical tools to determine the intended audience of each piece. We discuss what groups of people would not be affected by those appeals and tools. We even analyze whether or not the creators of these images have used the right appeals and tools for their intended audience.

We move beyond images to also analyze commercials and texts (specifically speeches). We even go more basic and write up different arguments for the following situations:

• convincing your boss you need a raise / convincing your spouse you need a raise
• selling Justin Bieber tickets to a 12 year old goth kid / to a 30 year old mother of three
• arguing abortion rights to a Christian Coalition based in Texas / to an inner city high school in Detroit

And they get it. That day, in class, they get it. But once they leave the room...

What - is the problem?
Students, at least 50% of them, do not seem to understand the term "specific". They insist, vehemently, adamantly, and consistently insist that the intended audience for X is "all people in general". Who the f* is "all people in general"? No writer, marketing agent, director, etc. ever creates a piece of rhetoric designed for "all people in general". It's not possible to do. 

Why - is this a problem?

Because it ticks me off. Okay, that's not a great reason. The real reason a lack of audience awareness is a problem is simple: You can't form an effective argument without knowing something about the audience other than they are, you know, people. Arguing the death penalty should be illegal is a quite different activity if your audience is an octogenarian, conservative, Republican, life-in-the military group of people or like, death row inmates.