Audience and Rhetoric: An Archaeological Composition of the Discourse Community

Abstract

Offering a new approach to the concept of audience, this volume critiques the prevalent audience theories and practices in the field of rhetoric and composition, using the archaeological methodology of Michel Foucault. The author traces major audience treatments from Aristotle and George Campbell to the present and shows how the dominant approaches are founded on a managerial composing model which assumes that invention is the exclusive activity of the writer. Porter argues for the ethical necessity of a social constructionist approach to audience, developing out of reader-response and poststructuralist theory. For anyone involved in the creation of public policy.

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