Authorial+Audience

 **Definition** The authorial audience is the audience of actual readers that a piece of writing is intended for. In some cases the author will directly state the audience in the piece or they may use clues for who it is meant for. When authors write a novel or story they have an idea of who specifically it will be intended for. Therefore the story is meant to make perfect sense to certain types of people and have references that the authorial audience would no doubt pick up on, but at the same time have little generalizations so that other readers don't easily get lost or turned away. Another term for this is //implied reader//.


 * How do you know? **

It may seem difficult to get inside an author’s head and figure out who he’s targeting, but really there are some pretty simple things to look for

1- __Diction__ That audience is always in an author’s mind as he or she writes, and this is reflected in the words that are chosen. An author who wants children to read his or her work won’t use words like existentialism, and phrases like [|primary amoebic meningoencephalitis] indicate a medically competent target.

2- __Purpose__ The point an author is trying to make is a big clue as to who the intended reader is. //Nickled and Dimed,// about how difficult it is to earn a living for Americans without college level education, was written for the oblivious middle-class with cushy day-jobs and high school students considering dropping out, not working class individuals who already //know// it’s hard.  3- __Plot__ What a story or other work is about is another indicator of authorial audience. //The Plot Against America,// for instance, has plotline that is very political, among other things. This suggests that it is intended for readers who are politically active and aware

All of these clues, along with dozens of other, build a complete set of characteristics that describes the people the author is trying to reach.

  **//Plot Against America// Examples** 1- Philip Roth uses a lot of historical figures in his novel, //The Plot Against America//, which suggests that the authorial audience leans towards those who've studied American history and the history of World War II. Such figures would include Charles A. Lindberg, Adolf Hitler, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Walter Winchell, Henry Ford and many others. Many of these figures are mentioned but not much information is provided in the text. That not only makes the novel more realistic but requires people to know their American History a bit in order to fully comprehend the novel.

2- Another authorial audience, or rather, implied audience would be that of stamp collectors. The main character, Philip, collects stamps and it continuously pops up throughout the book. Roth talks about some stamps such as, "...the celebrated 1918 twenty-four-cent airmail, a stamp said to be worth $3,400...the three famous stamps in the Pan-American Exposition issue of 1901...worth over a thousand dollars a piece." Roth intends the readers to have a bit of knowledge about stamp collecting, but still didn't go in depth into details because real stamps collectors would know why it's valued so high and also it would take away from the story. He is intending for people with stamp collecting experience or knowledge to further understand this young boys hobby.

3- On pages 147 and 148 there is an excellent example or the mature audience needed for this book. The paragraph, "It was on the very afternoon before Uncle Monty's visit that I was a little late returning from school-it had been my turn to stay to clean the blackboards-and got home to discover that Alvin was gone...I imagined it was something that festered in a man's body and then came spurting from his mouth when he was completely consumed by grief," Roth basically outright states that in order to understand Alvin's activity in the cellar the reader needs to be mature enough to have knowledge of that subject matter.

<span style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif">** Other Examples ** <span style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma, Geneva, sans-serif"><span style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma, Geneva, sans-serif">1- Mr. Rabinowitz provides us with one great example. The article with which we are all so familiar contains references to //The Great Gatsby// (top of pg 55), Mark Twain (pg 57) and //Robin Hood// (mid pg 67), along with several other well known literary pieces. These references, combined with the subject (the whole article is about an aspect of good writing; that is, emphasizing the most important bits), and the reference at the beginning to a student of literature, clearly imply that Rabinowitz’s intended audience (his authorial audience) includes those familiar with at least some classic literature and interested in the writing process. This example seems a little obvious, but it helps to understand the concept.

2- Harriet Beecher Stowe's //Uncle Tom's Cabin// was written to rally supporters to the abolitionist cause, and had a dark and dramatic plot designed to convey the terrible plight of southern slaves. Determined abolitionists needed no encouragement, and southern slave owners were unlikely to read the book at all. These facts demonstrate that she was targeting people who hadn't picked a side in the heating abolition debate. <span style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma, Geneva, sans-serif"> <span style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma, Geneva, sans-serif"><span style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma, Geneva, sans-serif">3- The song "Don't Trust Me" by 3!OH!3 has an example of authorial audience. The band makes a reference to Helen Keller, and if the listener didn't know that she was blind and mute they wouldn't get the lyrics in that part. The Helen Keller reference is at about 1:20 in the video. Enjoy! media type="youtube" key="C0cm2Qs-aBo&hl=en&fs=1" height="344" width="425"

4- Bennett intended for the audience to be someone who has knowledge of world affairs and can make a simple reference to the United States President. True, it may be somewhat funny for those people who don't know about George W. Bush or the oil problem, but it makes sense mostly to those who do. <span style="FONT-FAMILY: Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif"><span style="FONT-SIZE: 90%; FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma, Geneva, sans-serif"><span style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma, Geneva, sans-serif"><span style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma, Geneva, sans-serif"><span style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif">