The Writing Situation

Taken together, the writer’s purpose or aim, the subject, and the probable audience (whether yourself or others) define the writing situation. Sometimes an instructor or employer assigns you a specific writing situation. At other times, you construct a situation yourself from scratch.

The components of the writing situation—subject, purpose, the­sis, and audience—are so interrelated that a change in one may affect the other three. As you write, therefore, you do not always follow a step-by-step order. You may begin, for example, with a specific audience on which you wish to make an impression; as you analyze the audience, you decide what subject and purpose would be most appropriate. You may start with an interesting subject but no clear sense of purpose or audience. Or you may be asked to write for a certain audience, and the needs and expectations of that audience may lead you to discover or modify your purpose or subject.

Subject, purpose, thesis, and audience are all modified, reconsidered and revised as you write.

The following examples illustrate how subject, purpose, and audience combine to define a writing situation.

In response to a request by an editor of a college recruiting pamphlet, student decides to write an essay explaining the advantages of the social and academic life at his university. According to the editor, the account needs to be realistic, but it should also promote the university. I shouldn’t be too academic and stuffy, since the college catalogue itself contains all the basic information, but it should give high school seniors a flavor of college life. The student decides to write a narrative accounts of his most interesting experiences during his first week at college.

A student majoring in journalism reads about correspondents’, account; of restrictions during the Persian Gulf conflict. The military limited reporters to carefully controlled “pools,” and during the ground offensive, television journalists’ tapes were mysteriously delayed or lost until after the ground war was over. Following a class debate on the public’s right to know versus the military’s need to maintain secrecy in times of war, the student investigates specific incidents to see if the military exercised unnecessary or excessive censorship. The student researches these incidents and reports her findings in a letter to her congressional representative, asking for a further investigation of certain cases of alleged censorship.