The Audience within the Object

Abstract

Literary criticism of the last decade has developed a new emphasis: the study of a work's reader alongside the more traditional study of literary texts. Some critics have suggested that literary works imply and project an audience. Drawing upon this body of criticism, as well as upon social commentary and advertising theory, this article attempts to demonstrate how composition textbook advertisements suggest, project, and perhaps even create an audience. Examining a series of composition textbook advertisements from 1982 to 1987 in addition to a number of works of art, this article proposes four different audience-related elements of the ad-object: context (the extrinsic circumstances that the advertisement connotes); genre (the kind of text or object the advertisement masquerades as); borrowings (the sources that the ad-object draws upon); and reflexivity (the image of the viewer mirrored by the advertisement). Each of these, while not entirely discrete, serves to imply and project certain features of the viewing audience. The article's conclusion speculates on the nature of this audience projected by the contemporary composition textbook ad and how this image is important to us as consumers of the ads and purveyors of the products they promote.