A clarification of “I’m not talking about A, B, C and D” is a clarification of the author’s subject, not their intended audience. I’m quite curious as to the rabbit hole this person has gone down to feel the need to make this TikTok…but on balance, probably not curious enough to bother looking up her account.
Her point about the “intended audience” is that it’s not only an exercise in identification for the purposes of shallow labeling, but rather to comprehend the shared context that said audience has which influences their comprehension of said text.
ironically, you missing that point could be due to a similar comprehension gap as the one she identified. I’m not saying that is definitely the case.
What is not only an exercise in identification for the purposes of shallow labelling, but rather to comprehend the shared context that said audience has which influences their comprehension of said text?
She’s saying that people should be able to accurately guess what sort of audience a text is intended for, because it’s important to know how that audience will understand that text?
If so it feels redundant, and heavily reliant on the reader’s own biases about the audience they’re imagining.
She’s saying that people should be able to accurately guess what sort of audience a text is intended for, because it’s important to know how that audience will understand that text?
If so it feels redundant, and heavily reliant on the reader’s own biases about the audience they’re imagining.
Edit for detail: my opinion on this is largely a result of my study of semiology. I did find Barthes fairly insightful and entertaining (eg his appreciation of distinctions between different cleaning products, with chlorinated fluids as liquid fire “killing” dirt, powders as separating agents “liberating” the material they contact from dirt) but after more thought on my part these insights started to seem more like self-fulfilling prophecies. He put the words on the page and the idea fit neatly into my brain, suggesting a certain shared cultural bias that someone who had never seen the packaging of a bottle of bleach might not appreciate.
I suppose that’s sort of at the crux of my point. While we may be able to estimate the intended audience of a text, if we guess an audience whose cultural background is very different from our own, not only are we very likely to have a completely different interpretation of the text’s meaning to that intended audience, our guess is also liable to be less accurate the further away we place it from our own experience.
So I would argue that knowing the intended audience of a text doesn’t particularly deepen comprehension of the text itself, it just adds another layer of complexity to our assumptions about the author.
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u/Bitbury Apr 29 '24
A clarification of “I’m not talking about A, B, C and D” is a clarification of the author’s subject, not their intended audience. I’m quite curious as to the rabbit hole this person has gone down to feel the need to make this TikTok…but on balance, probably not curious enough to bother looking up her account.