Thinking about Audience

Gerald Graff talks a bit about the foreignness of classical argument in "Clueless in Academe." This causes me to re-think how I teach the idea of the various audiences for an argumentative essay to my students. They tend to think that there is only one kind of audience, and the same argument will convince everyone; so I started out by comparing argument to a chess game. The object of the game is to take the king; whatever other pieces you lose along the way may not matter too much, as long as you have the "right" pieces to corner the king and eventually take it.

I found out that not too many of my students play chess, so I tried to come up with something from within their own experience. Then I hit on something that they all might be able to relate to that varies audience and how they approach the topic. The one I used most recently is the argument that you would make to convince a parent to let you borrow the car: suppose that you know that your mother is a push-over for anything that you want--the flimsiest of reasons will convince her--and she reacts well to an emotional argument. Further suppose that your father is usually more difficult to convince, and that you will need good, strong, logical reasons to convince him. Construct two separate arguments, one for each person, taking into account the "biases" that they have.

I've done the same kind of exercise with dating (ever popular). Assume that you are pretty sure one guy (or girl) is already interested in you, one hardly knows you are alive, and one is straddling the fence--some days he or she seems interested, others not. Construct a different "date" that you think will be convincing to each possible partner.

It doesn't require that they know anything more than the usual about dating (or borrowing the car) but gets them thinking about who they are talking to...