Aim for FiveEnglish Language

Unit 8 · Topic 8.3

8.3 Fitting evidence, organization and language to an audience

Every audience is different, and what an audience knows, believes and needs can change over time. Writers choose evidence, organization and language for the specific readers in front of them. The same argument can look very different for experts, for the general public or for people who strongly disagree.

Key terms

  • audience
  • rhetorical choice
  • context
  • evidence
  • organization
  • rhetorical situation

Audiences are specific and changing

No two audiences are exactly alike. A school board, a group of ninth graders and a newspaper's readers all have different knowledge, values and concerns. Even one audience changes: what readers knew and believed about a topic ten years ago may differ from what they believe now, and a speech can shift an audience's attitude as it goes.

Many audiences are mixed. A president's speech reaches supporters, opponents and people in other countries at once. Strong writers notice the most important part of the audience for their purpose, often the undecided readers, and make choices that reach them without losing the rest.

Three choices that change with the audience

ChoiceFor a friendly audienceFor a skeptical or hostile audience
EvidenceVivid examples and stories that energizeData and sources the audience already trusts
OrganizationState the claim up front, then buildStart with shared values or concessions, then build to the claim
LanguageWarm, direct, may use the group's insider termsMeasured, precise, avoids loaded words

Expertise changes the choices too

Experts can handle technical terms and want precise data. General readers need terms defined and abstract ideas tied to concrete examples. Writing for experts the way you'd write for beginners sounds condescending; writing for beginners the way you'd write for experts loses them.

Think also about what the audience needs, not just what it knows. A worried parent needs reassurance about safety; a budget committee needs costs; students need to know how a change affects their day. Evidence that answers the audience's real question persuades more than evidence that's merely impressive.

Reading a writer's audience choices

In a reading passage, the writer's choices are clues to the audience. Direct address ("Fellow citizens," "you who have children"), shared references, defined terms and the kind of evidence offered all tell you who the writer expects to be reading. Once you know the audience, you can explain why a choice was smart: a scientist writing for the public who defines every term is respecting readers' needs, not talking down to them.

Changes in the audience's situation matter too. A speech given during a war, an economic crisis or a moment of national grief has to meet an audience whose fears and hopes are shaped by that moment.

On the exam

Writing questions often name an audience and purpose, then ask which choice best fits: "The writer wants to persuade the city council. Which evidence would be most effective?" Choose the option that this specific audience would find relevant and credible. In the rhetorical analysis essay, explaining why a choice fits the writer's particular audience, and how that audience's situation shaped it, shows the complex understanding of the rhetorical situation that can earn the sophistication point.

Worked examples

Try each one yourself first, then open the solution.

  1. Example 1

    One argument, two audiences

    Practice task (written for this practice set): A student wants the school to add a ten-minute morning break. Plan the evidence, organization and language for (1) the school board and (2) a ninth-grade assembly. Then write an opening sentence for each.

    Show the solution
    1. Step 1: Analyze audience 1. Board members care about learning, cost and liability, and they may doubt the idea. Evidence should be data on focus and attendance, plus a plan that costs nothing.
    2. Step 2: Organization for the board: open with a shared goal (student achievement), address the main worry (lost instructional time), then make the request.
    3. Step 3: Language for the board: formal and precise; avoid slang or complaints.
    4. Step 4: Analyze audience 2. Ninth graders already like the idea, but they need a reason to sign a petition and come to a board meeting. Evidence can be relatable: how the day feels between second and third period.
    5. Step 5: Organization and language for students: state the goal directly, use "we," and end with a clear action.

    Answer: Board opening: "Our shared goal is to help students learn as much as possible in every period, and a brief morning break, built into the schedule without lengthening the day, could help us meet it." Assembly opening: "If you've ever stared at the clock in third period and absorbed nothing, you already know why we need a ten-minute break, and this Thursday you can help us get one." Same claim, different evidence, order and voice.

Common mistakes

  • Describing the audience vaguely ("the people") instead of identifying who they were and what they knew, valued or needed.
  • Choosing the most impressive evidence instead of the evidence this audience would find most relevant.
  • Forgetting that the audience can include people who disagree. Loaded language that pleases supporters may lose undecided readers.

On the exam

  • When a writing question names an audience, reread the answer choices with that audience's knowledge and concerns in mind before deciding.
  • In the rhetorical analysis essay, open by identifying the specific audience and its situation; then keep explaining how each choice fits that audience.

Connected topics

Videos

  • AP English Language: The Audience

    Marco LearningWatch on YouTube (opens in a new tab)

  • What is the difference between a rhetorical device and a rhetorical choice? | Coach Hall Writes

    Coach Hall WritesWatch on YouTube (opens in a new tab)

  • Rhetorical devices and appeals | Reading | Khan Academy

    Khan AcademyWatch on YouTube (opens in a new tab)

  • How to IDENTIFY Rhetorical Choices (and AVOID THESE)

    Garden of EnglishWatch on YouTube (opens in a new tab)

Check yourself

5 questions on 8.3 Fitting evidence, organization and language to an audience. Pick an answer to see if you got it, and why.

Paragraph 1
It is a melancholy object to those, who walk through this great town, or travel in the country, when they see the streets, the roads, and cabbin-doors crowded with beggars of the female sex, followed by three, four, or six children, all in rags, and importuning every passenger for an alms. These mothers, instead of being able to work for their honest livelihood, are forced to employ all their time in stroling to beg sustenance for their helpless infants who, as they grow up, either turn thieves for want of work, or leave their dear native country, to fight for the Pretender in Spain, or sell themselves to the Barbadoes.
Paragraph 2
I think it is agreed by all parties, that this prodigious number of children in the arms, or on the backs, or at the heels of their mothers, and frequently of their fathers, is in the present deplorable state of the kingdom, a very great additional grievance; and therefore whoever could find out a fair, cheap and easy method of making these children sound and useful members of the commonwealth, would deserve so well of the publick, as to have his statue set up for a preserver of the nation.
Paragraph 3
[. . .] I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child well nursed, is, at a year old, a most delicious nourishing and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricasee, or a ragoust.
Paragraph 4
[. . .] Therefore let no man talk to me of other expedients: Of taxing our absentees at five shillings a pound: Of using neither clothes, nor houshold furniture, except what is of our own growth and manufacture: Of utterly rejecting the materials and instruments that promote foreign luxury: . . . Of teaching landlords to have at least one degree of mercy towards their tenants.
Paragraph 5
Therefore I repeat, let no man talk to me of these and the like expedients, till he hath at least some glympse of hope, that there will ever be some hearty and sincere attempt to put them into practice.
Paragraph 6
But, as to myself, having been wearied out for many years with offering vain, idle, visionary thoughts, and at length utterly despairing of success, I fortunately fell upon this proposal, which, as it is wholly new, so it hath something solid and real, of no expence and little trouble, full in our own power, and whereby we can incur no danger in disobliging England. For this kind of commodity will not bear exportation, and flesh being of too tender a consistence, to admit a long continuance in salt, although perhaps I could name a country, which would be glad to eat up our whole nation without it.

Jonathan Swift, A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People from Being a Burthen to Their Parents or Country (1729). Swift, an Anglo-Irish clergyman, wrote during a time of severe poverty in Ireland, much of whose land was owned by English and absentee landlords. Original spelling kept; ellipses mark omitted text.

Question 1 of 5

Swift's satire depends most on readers who

Paragraph 1
In the following pages I offer nothing more than simple facts, plain arguments, and common sense; and have no other preliminaries to settle with the reader, than that he will divest himself of prejudice and prepossession, and suffer his reason and his feelings to determine for themselves; that he will put on, or rather that he will not put off, the true character of a man, and generously enlarge his views beyond the present day.
Paragraph 2
[. . .] The sun never shined on a cause of greater worth. 'Tis not the affair of a city, a country, a province, or a kingdom, but of a continent—of at least one eighth part of the habitable globe. 'Tis not the concern of a day, a year, or an age; posterity are virtually involved in the contest, and will be more or less affected, even to the end of time, by the proceedings now. Now is the seed time of continental union, faith and honor. The least fracture now will be like a name engraved with the point of a pin on the tender rind of a young oak; the wound will enlarge with the tree, and posterity read it in full grown characters.
Paragraph 3
[. . .] I have heard it asserted by some, that as America hath flourished under her former connexion with Great-Britain, that the same connexion is necessary towards her future happiness, and will always have the same effect. Nothing can be more fallacious than this kind of argument. We may as well assert that because a child has thrived upon milk, that it is never to have meat, or that the first twenty years of our lives is to become a precedent for the next twenty. But even this is admitting more than is true, for I answer roundly, that America would have flourished as much, and probably much more, had no European power had any thing to do with her. The commerce, by which she hath enriched herself are the necessaries of life, and will always have a market while eating is the custom of Europe.
Paragraph 4
[. . .] Small islands not capable of protecting themselves, are the proper objects for kingdoms to take under their care; but there is something very absurd, in supposing a continent to be perpetually governed by an island. In no instance hath nature made the satellite larger than its primary planet, and as England and America, with respect to each other, reverses the common order of nature, it is evident they belong to different systems: England to Europe, America to itself.

Thomas Paine, Common Sense (1776), from the section "Thoughts on the Present State of American Affairs." The pamphlet, written for a broad colonial readership, argued for independence from Great Britain. Original spelling kept; ellipses mark omitted text.

Question 2 of 5

Paine draws his comparisons from trees, children and planets. For his broad colonial audience, the main advantage of these comparisons is that they

Question 3 of 5

Which choice best describes how Paine adapts his writing to his audience across the passage?

Paragraph 1
(1) The city council is deciding whether to add a climbing wall to the Eastgate Community Center. (2) Opponents claim climbers are reckless daredevils who will get hurt and sue the city. (3) But community centers with supervised walls and trained staff report that most injuries are minor, such as scraped hands. (4) A wall would give teens a safe, supervised place to practice a sport that is now part of the Olympic Games. (5) The council's ridiculous delay shows that its members don't care about young people. (6) Furthermore, a wall with auto-belays, a top-rope section and a bouldering cave would facilitate optimal progression across grade tiers. (7) I urge the council to approve the wall this year.

Written for this practice set: a student's draft of a letter to the city council. Eastgate is fictional.

Question 4 of 5

The writer wants to revise sentence 6 so that council members who don't climb can understand it. Which revision best accomplishes this goal?

Question 5 of 5

Which sentence, added after sentence 3, would best strengthen the writer's credibility with the council?

0 of 5 answered