What is the value of audience to technical communicators? A survey of audience research

Abstract

The paper attempts to answer two questions that are often taken for granted in articles about technical communication: (1) what is audience, and (2) what is the value of audience to technical communicators? To answer the first question, the author traces the historical treatment of audience by rhetoric and technical communication. To answer the second question, he suggests that audience helps communicators learn to be more user-centered, it helps improve design, it helps plan future usability investigations and set usability standards, and it helps build a theory of audience. By surveying what has been said about audience, he hopes to identify some new directions for research about audience and technical communication.