Audience Addressed/Audience Invoked

Objectives
Through this lesson, students will
 
Theoretical Basis
Ede and Lunsford write about the complexity of the idea of audience in their article "Audience Addressed/Audience Invoked:  The Role of Audience in Composition Theory and Pedagogy."  They point out at least two concepts of audience that writers may have: audience addressed, "the actual or intended readers of a discourse"; and audience invoked, "a construction of the writer, a 'created fiction'" (82).  Getting students to differentiate the two is the hard part, but I think it's worth trying, because in order to write more effectively for the audience, they need to realize that what they think of their audience is not necessarily accurate.  The discrepancy between the two audiences would affect the success of their writing.

The idea of an addressed audience is the one I think of as a "real-life" audience and the one I try to convey as I am teaching.  The problem is that students can't assume they understand this audience and may not even be able to gain knowledge of it.  The invoked audience, the one that writers create in their minds, also needs to be addressed.  I need to find a way to convey those concepts of audience to my students, for as Ede and Lunsford assert,
A fully elaborated view of audience, then, must balance the creativity of the writer with the different, but equally important creativity of the reader.  It must account for a wide and shifting range of roles for both addressed and invoked audiences.  And, finally, it must relate the matrix created by the intricate relationship of writer and audience to all elements in the rhetorical situation (93). 
 
Procedure
After a brief discussion of the idea of audience addressed/invoked, we will start with an in-class writing on stereotypes associated with a group.  This could be a group such as senior citizens, bikers, gays/lesbians, soccer moms.  For this unit, which deals with minority issues, I'll use gays/lesbians as the stereotyped group.
 
Students will write for up to 7 minutes on the stereotypes associated with this group and some of their perceptions they have about this group based on media interactions.  This stereotype will represent the audience invoked, the audience they have created in their minds.  After writing, I will ask the students to read a few of their neighbors' responses to see if they get any more ideas and take an extra minute or two finishing up their responses.  (12 minutes for this section)
 
Then I'll ask them to write 2 or 3 questions they would want to know about this group if they were going to write to them as an audience.  What more information would they need about them in order to effectively meet and address their needs as an audience? (5 minutes)
 
Their assignment will be to write a paragraph about their own audience for their essays-in-progress and come up with questions they would need to find the answers to in order to address it more effectively. (out of class)
 
The following class period, the Pride Panel from ISU is going to come in to talk to the students about their experiences with being a minority.  During the discussion, students will note which of their questions were answered and which were not, and they'll also have an opportunity to ask them the questions that apply to the earlier exercise.
 
As a follow up, students will write in class about their perceptions of this group and how they did or did not change as a result of talking with the pride panel, as well as the answers to their original questions.  I'll ask them to write a new description of this group, based on the results, and if they were writing a paper for them, how this changed perception would affect the success of their essays.  Thus, they will see how the audience they address in this stage differs from the audience they invoked earlier.  Their assignment then is to find the answers to their questions about their own audiences and revise their essays accordingly.
 
Self-Evaluation and Suggestions for Revision
After I did the lesson, I found a couple of things that need some work.  First, I need to be very careful in how I phrase the original question, “What are your feelings about group X.”  During one class, I told students to write about the stereotypes they associate with that group, and during the follow-up, one pointed out that they really couldn’t read that and tell how their perceptions had changed, because the stereotypes weren’t necessarily the same as the stereotypes.  I wanted them to talk about the mental image they had of the group in order to compare it with the real group.  So, next time if I say something like, “What comes to mind when I say ‘Group X,’” then they can not only write about their conception of the audience, but also the stereotypes, which may legitimately come to their minds, even if they don’t agree with them.  I think that will give them a lot more to write about, too, and make their description a lot richer.
 
The other part is the evaluation of the lesson.  How will I know if it worked?  I suppose that I will look at their descriptions of their own audiences and see if they found out the answers to their questions, but how will that translate into their final grade?  I’m not sure the time it took to do the lesson is worth the payoff, especially if I can’t measure it well.  I’m sure I could collect a hard copy of the lesson, but giving points for it is senseless, and I’m not sure how to revise this part.  I’d appreciate suggestions.