SQR#6 Jaime Garza & J. J. Zapata

Jaime Garza & J.J. Zapata
ENG 1320/1301.161
Instructor: Trang Phan
10/7/2010

Closing My Eyes as I Speak

Citation:

Peter Elbow.”Closing My Eyes as I Speak: An Argument for Ignoring Audience”. College English, Vol.49, No.1 (Jan., 1987), pp. 50-69

Summary:

In this article written by Peter Elbow he talks about the basic principles of how the mindset should be of a writer when approaching his/her works before writing. An audience can be compared to a field of force when writers begin to think about the readers in order to convey their message clearly. Writers that write to readers who have uncomfortable relationships tend to write about uninteresting things and confuse the readers and that is not something anyone wants to do.  Writers need to think about the audience before writing no matter who he/she is writing to, this is a form of writing rhetorically. To think about the audience is a much better thing to do in whatever type of writing in order to not be so self centered. One this is applied writers have to go on and on in keeping their readers in mind as long as the writing continues to go right. Doing this will definitely satisfy readers as long as his/her message is not vague and is clear. The goal to a well written paper is to engage readers to want to read more and more making them interested every single time they read a good writers work.

Question:

Elbow argues that an audience is a field of force. What do you understand about this? Have you ever experienced inviting/enabling audiences or inhibiting ones for your writing? Can you explain how it felt?

Response:

An audience is a field of force because you feel different things when you are doing something with an audience, by the word force I understand that it forced you to make some mistakes or different things that what you have planned, I divide the field of force in two, the positive and the negative, the positive is when you get inspired with the audience and the negative is when you get shy or scared with the audience, I have experience both of them, sometimes I get inspired because the audience likes what I’m doing and It felt very good to see that they are interested in your work, and in the negative, sometimes I get scared because I can see that the audience is not interested in my work and it felt very weird and sad that they didn’t like my work, It’s insulting. In conclusion I agree with Elbow’s write, the audience is a field of force.