Audience Description Post

ENGL 306 | Persuasive Paper Audience Description

November 28, 2016

Erika Zigman

(1) Demographically, describe your typical audience member

In demographic terms my audience is not particularly diverse in gender, race or age. They are predominantly white males over the age of 30 as the population was predominantly white (no immigration yet or slavery) and very few women or individuals under the age of 30 were involved in politics at the time. The only places of residence affected by the Tea Act in America were the thirteen colonies. I am addressing educated people who identify as opposed to British imperial rule (i.e. Patriots, Night rides, Sons of Liberty). undecided/neutral but believe the Tea Act is an infringement on their rights, or are Loyalists but believe that the Tea Act is an infringement on their rights.

(2) Come up with one specific, representative detail about your imagined reader that helps you to understand who they are

Working, educated, middle-class family men.

(3) List the principles relevant to your issue that you and this person probably share

Strong supporter of individual liberties, the right to representation, and the necessity of action in response to unjust infringement on those liberties. 

(4) List the principles relevant to your issue that you and this person probably do not share

Violence, theft of property, attacking the character of parties not directly involved (i.e. Native Americans) as appropriate responses to perceived injustices. Particularly use of such strategies prior to exhaustion of alterior methods.

(5) Do any of the principles in 4 represent insurmountable obstaces to them accepting your argument? If so, you may need to reconsider your argument goals. Are there kinds of arguments that you are likely to make that will not be persuasive to them?

The principles in 4 do not represent insurmountable obstacles to the reader(s) accepting my argument. I belive my reader(s), as educated and respectable members of society, will be particularly perceptive of my argument because it is logical and practical 

(6) Where will you and this reader/listener find common ground?

The common ground between the reader/listener and myself will be our agreement that the Tea Act did infringe on our rights, and that it required a response from the colonists.

(7) Are there any issues on which you are not willing to concede ground to your listener, or where you will feel the need to explicitly reject their principles?

I will feel the need to explicitly reject my audience's principles if they propose that these strategic choices are appropriate as an initial response to injustices that do not involve abhorrant crimes (i.e. rape, murder)

(8) Where in your paper will you explicitly acknowledge and respond to possible objections that the audience might raise?

In the middle or near the end. Because my argument isn't likely to face too many obstacles and is fairly reasonable I do not need to A&R at the beginning of my argument. I think my argument would be just as effective if I closed with A&R.