Audience
Golden, Berquist, and Coleman begin their process of adopting rhetorical stance with an analysis of the audience. Successful authors and speakers utilize their knowledge of their audience so that the audience believes they are motivated to the author’s purpose by their own agency (see Campbell and Hugh Blair). The author creates this impression by demonstrating an understanding of her audience’s needs and by “substantiating”, according to Kenneth Burke, intellectual and empathetic relationships between herself and her audience. Plato’s “noble aims” of rhetoric require the author to strive for a moral elevation of both author and audience; Aristotle and Cicero emphasized the consideration of human nature and emotion in the successful understanding of one’s audience and the establishment of the relationships necessary for achieving persuasion.
Read more about this topic: Rhetorical Stance
Famous quotes containing the word audience:
“When you are writing before there is an audience anything written is as important as any other thing and you cherish anything and everything that you have written. After the audience begins, naturally they create something that is they create you, and so not everything is so important, something is more important than another thing ...”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)
“Your audience gives you everything you need. They tell you. There is no director who can direct you like an audience.”
—Fanny Brice (1891–1951)