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.
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Famous quotes containing the word audience:
“In darkness, and with dangers compast round,
And solitude; yet not alone, while thou
Visit’st my slumbers Nightly, or when Morn
Purples the East: still govern thou my Song,
Urania, and fit audience find, though few.”
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