Evolution is an essential element of academic writing. A writer’s style cannot remain the same – it must develop over time; otherwise, it will soon become too stale for the audience to get involved into the narration and pay attention to the argument.
Despite the fact that the three papers analyzed below were written on a similar issue and on a relatively short time slot, due to a gradual realization of who the target audience for the given papers is, and what the demands of this TA are, the papers in question, though admittedly sharing certain similarities, were written according to different approaches, with the help of different word stocks and in different stages.
When taking a look at the first essay and at what it tried to accomplish, one can notice from the very first couple of words that it was trying to find its feet and locate the target audience. Indeed, the jumbled elements of different styles, as well as a traditional choice of solely academic words, show quite clearly that the audience for the given paper had not been defined by the time that the paper was written.
Instead of focusing on what the target audience would probably find really exciting and worth discussing, the author merely provides an overview of the topic – which is quite an adequate step for an academic essay, one must stress, but not an approach to grab the audience.
The second essay, on the contrary, includes a couple of peculiar details that set it apart from a range of other papers on the topic. Seeing how it includes a persuasive speech, it can be assumed that the author has already shaped some idea of the audience that has to be addressed.
Realizing that the people who have certain political influence have to be addressed, the author introduces a very clear structure of the speech and includes historical examples to prove the point. In addition, together with the structure, the choice of words has been shaped in accordance with the specifics of the audience, with such terms as “gun shooting” and “plea” having been included.
The second essay sows clearly that the target audience, as well as its tastes, demands and key interests, has been defined; the fact that the author has come to the realization of what the audience needs can be tracked in the subtle changes that have been done to the writing style. Perhaps, switching from the third-person narration to the first-person narration was one of the riskiest yet the most efficient changes.
Despite the clear-cut benefits of the given approach, i.e., attracting the audience’s attention by addressing every single person directly, the paper has clearly lost its weight as an academic work. However, the use of first-person pronouns makes people relate to the author of the story much more than the use of the third person does. In addition to the change of characters, the third paper has also developed a kind of a story, which can also be interpreted as an attempt to appeal to the target audience.
Finally, the choice of vocabulary points explicitly at the need to speak to a particular type of audience, i.e., an average U.S. citizen, as well as the people who are aware of the political and military strategies of the United States and can influence them so that the past mistakes like the one described in the given story should not be made once again.
The general audience will get engulfed into the story as they hear the phrases like “scorching sun,” which sound as if they were taken from a novel; the people handling political and economical issues, in their turn, will be intrigued and dragged in after hearing the phrases like “platoon sergeant” and “get those SOBs.”
The given writing sample adds another layer of complexity to the writing process with another revelation of the specifics of the target audience. Despite the fact that in its style, it takes the audience back to the academic writing genre, it addresses the issue of criminal justice as a study field, therefore,
As it has been stressed above, the changes between the papers are obvious. Not only did the vocabulary and the sentence structure changed, but also the way in which the paper is organized, not to mention the fact that the thinking process changed greatly. Now that the target audience for the papers to address to has been defined, it has become clear what means of expression must be chosen, and in what way the argument must be structured.
Moreover, once the target audience was defined, it became obvious what arguments should be chosen in order to convince people, as well as what issues the author must appeal to in order to make the audience see the reasonability behind the author’s arguments. That being said, it cannot be denied that the definition of the TA, as well as the recognition of its key features, shapes the writing process considerably.