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Closing My Eyes as I Speak: An Argument for Ignoring Audience

Author(s): Peter Elbow Source: College English, Vol. 49, No. 1 (Jan., 1987), pp. 50 69.Published by: National Council of Teachers of English
In the article the Peter Elbow states that sometimes when we write we don’t really think about it. That we write mostly in a writer-base-prose. He says this because he feels that it’s easiest to write this way; because when you take the audience into consideration you get stuck trying to find the right words to conduct your point of view to the reader. The author also says that there are two types of audiences. One type is the one that helps you by giving you good constructive criticism and the audience that makes you feel like you are dumb by not paying you attention or just by the way they respond to you. He ultimately states that if the situation gets rough sometimes it may help to putting readers out of mind to have a better express your idea, and then when you revise your writing you just alter it a little so that it’s understandable to other people not only to you.



How are the Piagentian and Vygotskian developmental models compare to writer-base-prose and to reader-base-prose?
In Closing My Eyes as I Speak: An Argument for Ignoring Audience, Peter Elbow states that when people write they generally use one of two developmental models the Piagentian or the Vygotskian; one of which, Piafentian, starts on a personal level; that means that you write only whats on your mind and don’t really care for anyone else. This sounded really familiar to me because Linda Flower stated something similar in her article. She stated that for most people its easier to write form a personal level that includes personal experiences and language that is not common to everyone she called this process writer-base-prose. The other one, Vyfotskian, starts at a social level, which means that when you write you don’t only think about yourself you think about the audience of the your paper. Linda Flower also stated something similar except that she called it reader-base-prose. In this process she said that the writer put the reader before him/herself; that meant that the author would try to put him/herself in the readers place in order to assure that the reader will understand the purpose of the text. However here is where Elbow and Flower differ; Elbow feels that all writers should use Piagentian because like that they don’t run the risk of losing their “voice;” while Flower believes that writers should move away from writing utilizing writer-base-prose to writing styles that worry more about the reader, reader-base-prose. I believe that we as writer need a balance of the two in order to progress as writers.