Blog Entry #4: Audience

I define audience as the person or group the author is writing to and it’s important to writing because without an audience the author doesn’t know what to write about an based on my definition I understand who their intended audience is. Wilcha complicated the notion of audience during the documentary, by breaking the fourth wall and speaking directly to the audience. Before reading Anzaldua my perception of audience was that the writer accommodates to our needs and wants, but after reading her article I now realize that writing is an authors art and their ability to express themselves in their literature should not be limited to the audiences inability to understand the language they use. The documentary reflects many of the things Anzaldua went over in her writing such as language, culture and identity. In the documentary Wilcha asked coworkers on one floor of their perception of the coworkers on other floors. He explained that the employees all had a fixed idea of the identity of management on the other floor and vise versa. He even was told by another coworker that his personality had changed from being happy and youthful to anxious and stressed. In the documentary he talks about how the culture of the company changed due to all the firings and coworkers quitting. The culture of the company when he first arrived was welcoming and everyone being nice inviting him to lunch which soon turned into a resentful environment and coworkers not liking him because of his position and title. Lastly, in the documentary he talked about how the ad company tried to steal some of the language and slang he and his coworkers used in their version of the magazine and his boss even expressed how the company making a magazine that allowed the employees to express themselves and share their knowledge, language and identity with the reader yielded better sales. He even showed them letters of customers giving positive feedback and being themselves in the letters.Language, identity and culture are three important factors an author has consider when trying to reach his audience. After watching the documentary and reading the text my definition of audience hasn’t changed.