This article explores the functional elegance of direct mail as it constructs its target audience. More specifically, it examines direct mailings included in a nationally publicized court case involving Publishers' Clearing House and articulates how the use of particular genre-based, rhetorical and linguistic strategies in these mailings construct reader identity. It argues that the documents use you-attitude to construct the identity of the reader as winner, implied reader devices to reinforce the reader's identity as winner and to establish the reader's identity as the writer's friend, and linguistic politeness strategies to build feelings of solidarity of the reader toward the writer. It concludes with the observation that the direct mail in our study, rather than being "junk," is really a skillfully written set of documents, successfully interweaving various discourse strategies and raising both ethical and professional issues in the process.Within the discourse of enterprise/excellence, an active, 'enterprising' consumer is placed at the center of the market-based universe. What counts as 'good', or 'virtuous', in this universe is judged by reference to the apparent needs, desires and projected preferences of the 'sovereign consumer.'Paul du Gay [Features of the consumer culture] spill over all other aspects of contemporary life .... All perceptions and expectations, as well as life-rhythm, qualities of memory, attention, motivational and topical relevances are moulded inside the new 'foundational' institution-that of the market. Zygmunt Bauman &dquo;News from the gods,&dquo; LuLing murmured. &dquo;I won ten million dollars.&dquo; Amy Tan
Research on distinguishing real and implied readers raises the question o f whether writers are aware of this distinction. The terms real and implied are defined, and their emergence as issues for debate is detailed. The study is then described and hypotheses for investigation are posed: Are professional writers aware of real and implied readers; does a writer's way of perceiving a reader affect contextual development; do shifts occur in writers' conceptions of reader; are writers' perceptions of readers linked to a sense of genre and explained by principles of cognitive processing? Suggestions for further research are provided.RECENT WORK IN COMPOSITION, narrative, and reading theory has greatly expanded our understanding of audience. Specifically, such research has pointed to an important dichotomy in the conceptualization of audience: the distinction between real and implied readers. This research has also raised an interesting question: Are writers actually aware of this distinction?First, let us examine the meaning of &dquo;real&dquo; and &dquo;implied&dquo; reader, and the way in which they have emerged as terms for analysis and debate. The real reader is a concrete reality. He or she exists a priori to the writer's task and consequently determines the writer's purpose, persona, and so forth. A writer who perceives an audience as real tends to conceive of readers, either singly or collectively, as living persons with specific attitudes and demographic characteristics. Thus, the writer's task is to accommodate the real reader by analyzing this reader's needs and deferring to them.The implied reader, on the other hand, is not a living person external to the text but exists as an abstraction to be shaped within the text. This implied reader is a mental construct or role which the actual reader is invited to enter, even though the characteristics embodied in that role may not fit perfectly his or her attitudes and reactions. In sum, when the reader is implied, the writer invents and determines the audience within the text.
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