Ong's Fictional Audience

     In "The Writer's Audience is Always a Fiction" by Walter Ong,  He deals with concepts concerning: audience, authorial intent, reader reception, and the transmission of meaning. When talking about the audience he discusses the creation of audience and what an author must consider when creating his work. The audience is an imaginary concept that the writers must come up with while creating a text. This concept of "not simply what to say but also whom it say it to: (Ong 11), bring up the question of who is the structure of writing created in the first place. 

     What I found the most interesting is his comparison of written and oral communication. He begins by saying that "rhetoric originally concerned oral communication…gradually extended to include writing more and more" (Ong 9). Ong discusses the  constraints that are placed on written and oral communication. Oral communication is constructed around the receptiveness of the audience; written communication can only anticipate potential receptiveness and act accordingly. 



Oral communication is a two-way street; written communication is one-way (Ong 16). The speaker/listener relationship that takes place in oral communication  is direct while the relationship between the  writer and the reader is indirect. An author must fictionalize their "audience" and the reader must assume the role intended by the author. He gives the example of a speaker who ask members of an audience to read a text. Ong suggest that once this happens the "audience immediately fragments" (Ong 11). The speaker hopes that the audience will interpret the text in the way he wants but that will not be the case. Each member of the audience now a different meaning of the text they read.

     Foucault says that the author does not precede the work, that he or she is is the one the limits, excludes and chooses. According to Foucault " the author is therefore the ideological figure by which one marks the manner in which we fear the proliferation of meaning (Foucault 913). Written communication allows the work of an other to have many meanings and it is up to the audience or reader to interpret that meaning. The author is the one that makes the choices and the he or she must first create an audience and hope that they can fill the role that the author intended and ,hopefully, get the intended meaning.

     Reading Walter Ong's article created many questions. After reading Ong's article I am left with a few question about the author and audience. Is the author ever not important or can he/she become not important? What are the limitations of an audience? Is either the role of the reader or the author more important then the other? Is the audience or readership ever rhetorical? If so, what makes an audience rhetorical? 

Works Cited: 

• Foucault, Michel. "What Is an Author?" The Critical Tradition: Classic Texts and Contemporary Trends, Third Edition. Ed. David H. Richter. Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martins, 2007. 904-914.
• Ong, Walter J. “The Writer’s Audience Is Always a Fiction.” PMLA 90 (1975): 9-21. JSTOR. http://www.jstor.org/stable/461344.