The evolution of audience in composition theories and practices

Project (M.A.)--Humboldt State University, English: Composition Studies and Pedagogy, 2015Notions of ???audience??? have evolved and expanded over the past four decades. This piece will cover how the reader-writer relationship has developed within a framework shifting from cognitive to more socially constructed in nature. It will then detail the 21st century shift toward composing with digital media, and how the relationship between a writer and his or her reader has been significantly altered by bringing both roles into the same discursive space. Ultimately, this piece informs instructors to be aware of the developments in audience theory, and concludes by discussing how the work of Powell and Dangler et al. promotes far more authentic and socially constructed notions of audience within a writing classroom than more standard pedagogical applications