13.4: Considering Audience

As with any other kind of paper, a research paper should be written with an audience in mind. The evidence and facts you present will be more likely to inform or persuade if you have a clear idea of whom you are addressing. While your instructor will be the person evaluating your work, you should construct your paper with a broader audience in mind.

One technique is simply to imagine your classmates as your audience. They are intelligent and curious, and they are also working on a similar project and will understand its expectations and limitations. However, they come from a wide variety of backgrounds, previous education levels, socioeconomic levels, religious contexts, work experiences, and linguistic abilities. There is probably no “safe” assumption about their beliefs or opinions. If this is your audience, you would do well to maintain a calm and balanced tone, provide definitions for any terms they might not know, assume they are not so hostile that they cannot be convinced to agree with you (if your paper is persuasive), and to use the most direct and straightforward language possible.

When addressing your work to a general audience, consider the following questions:

• What does my audience already understand about my topic?
• Which terms and concepts might I need to define?
• If the audience does not agree with me, what evidence might help to persuade them?

If your instructor asks, you might also direct your work to a more specific audience, for instance, the people who would be most directly affected by your ideas, or those most capable of implementing the changes you propose.

To develop an idea of who your audience might be, consider these questions: Who is most likely to be affected by my ideas? Who are the people most capable of addressing the issue or problem I’m focused on? What resources are available to them? Can they make the changes I suggest? Will my audience understand any technical terms or jargon I use? What are some major concerns my audience might have?

Example: Brainstorming and Writing for an Audience

A student plans to write an essay arguing that K-12 teachers should be paid more. They need to decide on an audience who might be affected by this change and then collect a variety of credible sources to support their argument, choosing their tone, vocabulary, and considerations of pathos for that audience. The student knows that teacher pay and school financing comes from local property taxes, so they realize that their task in this paper is to convince an audience that this tax increase will benefit them.

Affected Audience	Adults who live in a public school district	State legislators
Main Concerns	Worry about property tax increases; want the best teachers for their children	Want to be re-elected; want to serve constituents
Resources Available	Votes for state and local politicians	Media campaigns; votes for legislation
Understanding of Terms	Less likely	Likely

For the audience of adults in the district, the student’s argument should probably concentrate on showing that they will receive better teachers in exchange for the pay—and tax—increase. The student will have to convince them to vote for a property tax raise out of their own pockets, and they should define any terms they use to ensure maximum understanding on the part of the audience. The student should appeal to the audience’s sense of civic responsibility and their desire to provide a good education for their children and ensure that the nation as a whole is well educated.

If the student’s audience is made up of legislators, they must show those senators and representatives that they will not lose votes if they vote for legislation that increases property taxes, and that they will see some benefit to their district and to their own careers. Perhaps the student could find sources showing that the net economic benefit would be positive, which could be used in future election campaigns. Further, while an audience of legislators is probably familiar with the terminology used by economists and education professionals, it still might be a good idea to define terms as they are used, if only to avoid confusion arising from competing definitions.

In either case, the student should adopt a calm, reasoned tone and avoid inflammatory language and buzzwords: doing so will increase their credibility and keep the audience on their side, making them more willing to follow the student’s reasoning, even if they might disagree with some aspects of the argument.

For more help, see this page from the Writing Center at UNC Chapel Hill on considering your audience as you write a research paper.