Walter Ong explains how writing is different than speaking in considering one's audience. In writing, there is no definite "audience" and therefore the writer's "audience" is in time or space, but for the speaker the audience is literally in front of him/her. Ong goes on to talk about successful writers, and if the writer is successful "it is generally because he can fictionalize in his imagination an audience he has learned to know not from daily life but from earlier writers" (59). What he means is, as a writer you cannot imagine your readers as individuals because each individual is so diverse. You may, however, call upon the audience of the text you are respondind to and use that author's audience.
A writer may fictionalize their readers in two ways, says Ong. First, the writer has to imagine an audience put into some sort of role and then the audience must "correspondingly fictionalize itself" (60). I am sort of unclear as to what Ong means when he says that the audience must "fictionalize itself." Ong kind of lost me in his extended examples of Hemingway's audience and using his audience, etc.
Ong concludes by reflecting on writing, speech and communication. Direct communication, as in talking, is impossible in writing. He thinks this makes writing actually more interesting, but less noble than speech. I would tend to disagree that writing is less noble and that "it is hard to bare your soul in any literary genre" (75). I find that many authors use writing as their best, most descriptive means of bearing one's soul. In speech, you don't have time to revise what you say. Personally, I think both speech and writing can be equally meaningful, and a lot of times I use letters or poems to attempt to articulate my thoughts and passions when I cannot find the exact spoken words-- or sometimes situations are better left unspoken and perhaps sung about. I think Ong's article was interesting and I look forward to class to better explain it for me. However, I still stand my ground the speech and script can be equally as "noble."
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I agree with your contention about gettin lost in the middle of Ong's article. The beginning is interesting, and the end is thought provoking, but in the middle he goes on and on (respectfully) about the history of how writers have fictionalized audiences, using Hemmingway as a continual reference point. It was diachronic, not in chronilogical order, which made it harder to follow. I do not think he was shooting for a step by step history; that would be millions pf pages. He rather wanted to give a taste through selected examples--very easy to get lost in it, though.
I like how you say, "I find that many authors use writing as their best, most descriptive means of bearing one's soul. In speech, you don't have time to revise what you say." That's true--for we do not know the language of the soul in its naked form, nor do we know it's likeness; therefore signs are the closest possible method of bearing it--never exact though. Language signs, speech signs, written signs. I like what you said. I also like how Ong implies that the only circumstance in which all our masks will be removed is when we are face to face with God (he was a Catholic priest, I understand). That was pretty thought-provoking.
I hope that this article strengthens us as tutors in our understanding of how a sense of audience, or lack thereof, plays a huge role in the composition process. Doesn't it make sense, though, when we recall what Bruffee said about writing? That writing is only re-externalized conversation (consisting of audience and speaker)? Eh... there are issues and questions about everything...
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