Audience and Context: Study Guide (English Language 1.3)

Why writers think about readers first

A writer who ignores the audience is like a speaker who talks to the wall. Good writers decide who they are addressing before they decide what to say, because the same idea has to be put differently for different people. An explanation of a school-trip cancellation for ten-year-olds is not the explanation you would give their parents, and neither would suit a newspaper reporter.

In this course the audience is the group of readers or listeners a text is written for. The CED language is that audiences have shared as well as individual beliefs, values, needs and backgrounds. The word shared matters: writers cannot tailor a text to every person, so they aim at what a group has in common, such as a profession, a neighbourhood, a generation, an experience or a loyalty.

Types of audience

Type	What it means	Example
Primary (intended) audience	The person or group the writer directly addresses and most wants to affect.	Town councillors, addressed as “Councillors”.
Secondary audience	Others who will read or hear the text and whom the writer also keeps in mind.	Newspaper readers who might add pressure on the council.
Broad or general audience	A wide, mixed group with little in common but citizenship or interest.	Readers of a national magazine.
Specialised audience	A group with expert knowledge or a shared professional language.	Nurses reading a hospital safety notice.

Sometimes the audience is divided: the same text must work for people who disagree. Writers then choose language that does not alienate one group while reaching another. When you identify an audience on the exam, avoid “everyone”. Name the group and, where the text supports it, a second group.

What audience tells you about a writer’s choices

An audience has beliefs (what they hold true), values (what they care about and consider right), needs (what they lack or want) and background (age, occupation, history, education, relationship to the topic). A writer’s perception of these four things guides almost every choice:

• Diction. Technical vocabulary for specialists; everyday words for a general audience.
• Evidence. Statistics for sceptical professionals; stories for readers who respond to human cases; authorities the audience respects.
• Tone. Respectful and measured for officials; warm for a community meeting; urgent for an emergency notice.
• Structure. The most important instruction first for busy readers; a slow build for an audience that needs persuading.
• What is left unsaid. Writers omit what the audience already knows and spend time on what they do not.

You will see in Topics 2.1 and 2.2 how writers appeal to these audience features. Here the skill is simply identifying and describing the audience.

Evidence of audience in the text

Look for these clues:

1. Direct address: “Fellow volunteers”, “Councillors”, “Ladies and gentlemen”.
2. Assumed knowledge: a writer who does not explain a term expects the audience to know it.
3. Shared references: local places, shared history, common sayings.
4. Pronouns: “we” and “us” build common ground; “you” separates the writer from the audience; “they” can set up a third party.
5. Anticipated objections: “You may say the savings are needed” shows what the writer expects the audience to think.
6. Publication or setting: a trade journal, a town-hall speech, a school newsletter.

Context: time, place and occasion

The CED defines context as the time, place and occasion in which a text is written. It is wider than the exigence. The exigence is the specific trigger; the context is the general setting in which that trigger sits.

• Time: the year, the season, the stage of an ongoing event (the middle of a war, the week before a vote).
• Place: where the text is delivered or published (a battlefield, a town hall, a printed newspaper, a website).
• Occasion: the type of event (a funeral, a graduation, a protest, a public hearing).

Context changes what is possible and what is appropriate. The same sentence can be bold in one setting and routine in another. A joke that works at a farewell party would fail at a memorial. When the occasion is solemn, a writer may be brief and restrained; when it is a rally, a writer may be emphatic and rhythmic.

Context also affects how a text is received. A modern reader meets old texts in a different time from their first audience. For the exam, analyse the text in the context given in its introduction, not in the reader’s own.

A public-domain example: Washington in Atlanta (1895)

Booker T. Washington gave a speech at the Cotton States and International Exposition in Atlanta, Georgia, on 18 September 1895. He is remembered for the image “Cast down your bucket where you are.”

• Context: a major exposition, in the American South, three decades after the Civil War and in the era of increasing racial segregation. The occasion was public and commercial, a showcase of Southern progress.
• Audience: divided and layered. Many listeners were white Southern business and political leaders; others were Black Southerners; and the speech was reported to readers across the country.

Washington had to speak to groups who held very different beliefs and needs at the same time. His image of casting down a bucket where one already stands appealed to practical, economic cooperation and was framed in a way white business leaders could accept. Some contemporaries, including W. E. B. Du Bois, strongly criticised the speech and gave it the name “the Atlanta Compromise”. That disagreement is itself a sign of how a divided audience shapes a writer’s choices: whatever he says is heard differently by different parts of the audience.

Worked example 1: one message, two audiences (written by Marlbridge)

A school must tell people that the Year 7 trip to the science museum is cancelled because the coach company has withdrawn the booking. Here are two versions.

Version A, to students. “Bad news: the coach has fallen through, so the museum trip is off this Friday. We are sorry. Instead, you will get a science lab afternoon and a new date as soon as we can book one.”

Version B, to parents. “We regret to inform you that Friday’s Year 7 visit to the science museum has been cancelled following the coach operator’s withdrawal of the booking. No payments will be taken. We are arranging a laboratory session at school and will contact you with a replacement date.”

Task. Explain two ways in which the audience shapes each version.

1. Diction and tone. A uses plain, friendly language (“fallen through”, “off”) and a direct apology, speaking as one would to young people. B uses formal phrasing (“regret to inform”, “following the withdrawal of”) appropriate to a letter to adults who expect a professional tone.
2. What each audience needs. Students want to know what happens instead and whether they lose out, so A leads with the compensation (a lab afternoon). Parents need to know the financial and organisational consequences (no payments will be taken, they will be contacted), so B covers these.

Check. Each point names a feature of the text and ties it to a belief or need of the audience. Writing “A is simpler and B is more complicated” would not tie choices to the readers, so it would earn little.

Worked example 2: context changes the sentence (written by Marlbridge)

Read the following sentence: “We will not be moved from this square until the vote is taken.”

Task. Describe how its meaning and force change in two contexts.

• Context 1: a crowd of protesters outside a town hall on the evening before a vote. The sentence is a pledge of persistence. It is a collective promise (“we”) and a challenge to the officials inside, who are the secondary audience. The time (before the vote), place (the square) and occasion (a protest) make it a physical act of resistance as well as a statement.
• Context 2: a group of tourists on a guided walk who have been told the market is closed until the evening. The same words would be humorous and exaggerated, because nothing is at stake.

Check. The sentence is identical, but time, place and occasion change both how readers interpret it and what the speaker can accomplish. This is why a rhetorical analysis must always draw on context, not only on the words.

Common misconceptions

• “The audience is whoever happens to read the text.” The audience is the group the writer has in mind. A text can reach people it was not written for.
• “Audience just means age.” Age is one factor. Occupation, region, experience and values may matter more.
• “There is only one audience.” Many texts address a primary audience while knowing a secondary one is listening.
• “The audience believes whatever the writer says.” Writers often write for audiences that disagree, and shape their choices to meet resistance.
• “Context means the date.” It also includes place and occasion, and the stage of events.
• “A modern reader is the audience of an old speech.” Analyse the original audience and context, then you may comment on later reception.

Where this leads

Topic 1.4 turns from the situation to the argument: claims that need a defence. Before that, try the practice questions and the checklist. The idea of audience returns in Topic 2.1, where it is linked to an audience’s beliefs, values and needs.