"Bitch" doesn't always hold true to its definition

I'm pleased that we were able to discuss the magazine Bitch in class because it helped me to better understand the article I had previously read on audience addressed and audience invoked. The point was brought up about how this magazine is so much different from other magazines such as Cosmo, which I happen to be a subscriber to (thanks mom). Although I get issues of Cosmo mailed to me once a month, I read it for fun, for pure entertainment. Quite honestly, I sometimes get a kick out of the articles they publish and expect people to take seriously. Bitch, on the other hand, is a different type of magazine that I would never purchase based upon the fact that it is about feminist issues in pop culture, however; not only does the bigger title of the magazine make me somewhat curious as to what it is all about, the article we read in class made me certain that I would like this magazine. Audience invoked... that's me, and they got me. I'm sure I would be able to find many other people who are not feminists that would enjoy reading this magazine. It is something different from the everyday magazines people read, and it is nice for a change once in a while.

Audience Addressed/Audience Invoked

Just as the title of the article sums up, Lisa Ede and Andrea Lunsford's "Audience Addressed/Audience Invoked: The Role of Audience in Composition Theory and Pedagogy," the article is arguing for and against the importance of the audience when it comes to writing. The conclusion is that the writer must "balance the creativity of the writer with the different, but equally important, creativity of the reader. It must account for a wide and shifting range of roles for both addressed and invoked audiences."
The author's argue against many other views on this topic and agree with the article by Walter Ong, "The Writer's Audience Is Always a Fiction." In his article, Ong argued the fact that audience is the most important part of the whole composition process. An author must imagine his or her audience before writing, so that the readers will have an easier time putting themselves in the role playing position. In Ede and Lunsford's article, they agree with this by saying "For a writer, the audeince is not there in the sense that the speaker's audience, whether a single person or a large group, is present."
Overall, the article spoke about two very different important things: audience addressed and audience invoked. The later explains that "The central task of the writer, then is not to analyze and audience and adapt to discourse to meet its needs. Rather, the writer uses the semantic and syntactic resources of language to provide cues for the reader." And audience addressed can be seen as writers who imagine an audience emphasizing the knowledge of the audience's beliefs, attitudes, and expectations.

Response to Ong

In Ong's article, "The Writer's Audience Is Always a Fiction," he speaks about the differences between audiences when it comes to writing and publicly speaking. From what I understand, he believes that a writer needs to imagine the type of audience they are writing their book for; who's going to buy it, who's going to find it most useful to them. However, when it comes to speaking, the speaker already has a general idea of who their audience is going to be and therefore does not need to "fictionalize" their audience and put it in sync with their speech.
To help myself better understand this, I related it to going to see a movie. Movie trailers and advertisements tell the audience what the movie is going to be like, and from this a certain type of audience is drawn in. Just as talking or giving a speech would be, the director of a movie has a certain audience in mind and knows that people not interested in that certain genre will not attend. On the other hand, authors need to dig a little deeper and imagine the type of audience that will be reading their work and make sure it appeals to them.

Murray and Emig

I found the two articles to be very insightful and interesting, however; I felt as though Murray's was easiest to understand in that it was short and to the point. Although the articles are the same in that they both speak of writing and process, they also have their differences.
First, Murray believes that it is up to the students to compose a successful paper and that it is never finished; there is always room for improvement. He speaks of the steps to writing and how process is the most important part of creating a finished product.
On the other hand, Emig's article was longer and focused primarily on listening, writing, reading, and talking as a means to a successful outcome. She believes that ideas for writing come from the student's surrounding environment and that language is cruicial to writing.

Writing history timeline questions

The timeline we created revealed that education has been adapted over the years as changes in society took place. Due to the influx of immigrants and the two wars, a curriculum was needed in the educational system to keep up with these major changes and thus a change was made to keep up with current times. The most important aspect of the continuous change in education was the fact that it prepared people for the wide world outside of the classroom. It gave people the skills they needed to achieve success in the real world.
Although education was originally for the wealthy, the continuously changing societies affected this trend. Over time, education became availiable to people of all class levels.
Education had always been left up to english, literature, and rhetoric. Over the years, the major staple in education had been set, and although changes occured through time, teachers and students produced results that were positive.