Audience
‘Audience’ refers broadly to the kind of reader or listener the text was intended for. As this is unlikely to be you, sadly you do need to attempt the near impossible and ‘become’ the intended reader. Always consider a text in this way or you will run the risk of ‘misreading’ it. Also, avoid being overly specific or informal when describing an audience’s likely characteristics: ‘this writing is suitable for clever so and so’s of about 23 and over’ sounds rather less impressive than, ‘the style of this text seems geared towards an educated and sophisticated adult audience’. For AQA ENGB1 and several other exam boards English-language A-level courses, audience is one way to categorise similar texts.
A key theorist regarding audience is the French philosopher Louis Althusser. His theory of interpellation is well worth studying as it provide you with a fairly straightforward way of analysing aspects of audience, especially the creation of the so-called ‘ideal reader’.
