Appealing to an Audience: How Publications Set a Tone with Content, Structure and Design
Purpose: Understanding how journals and newspapers set a particular tone for their audiences and how writing style changes across audiences, genres, and communities of practice.
Description: This exercise asks students to analyze various features of publications. Homework assignment that turns into a discussion the next class period. Often used when students are preparing for a feature article or remediation project.
Suggested Time: 20-50 minutes (depending on discussion time)
Procedure:
Give students the following homework assignment:
Publication Analysis (2-3 typed, double-spaced pages)
For this short assignment, you will identify what specific publication you are going to write your feature article for, and analyze the publication in four areas:
Content – skim through several issues of the publication, primarily paying attention to the feature articles (i.e. usually the major articles that are listed on the front cover). What subjects/topics do their authors write about? Make a list of the most common subjects you see.
Style – pay attention to the type of vocabulary used, the tone employed, the length of the articles, paragraphs, and sentences, the persona/ethos that the writer constructs, and the overarching themes that emerge.
Structure/Design – what kinds of organizational structures do the writers use? What about their “hook”? Do they typically start with an interesting quote, a shocking statement, the posing of a problem, factual information, an anecdote, etc.? What kinds of design elements are present? Are there off-set quotes, images/advertisements, unique fonts, subject headings, works cited, bio of the author, etc.?
Audience - On the basis of the feature articles’ common types of content, style, and structure/design, what can you infer about the audience? Start with demographics like age, race/ethnicity, gender, religious/political affiliations, etc. but don’t stop there. What does this audience value? How do they perceive themselves? What kinds of weaknesses or desires do the advertisements tend to exploit or encourage? What kinds of knowledge or background experiences do the articles assume that their readers have?
Have students discuss what they found either in small groups, whole groups, or both. Then ask students how this might apply to them in future writing situations -- when experiencing new genres in their majors, for example. To extend this conceptually, one might tie it to the idea of discourse communities and their practices as a way of understanding how writing works and changes within and across groups.