Reflection on Critical academic writing and multilingual studies by A.S. Canagarajah.
“From writing as individualistic to writing as social”.
At the beginning of the class, I stood for non-audience movement, joining Elbow’s camp. However, Canagarajah comments changed my point of view. I am now convinced that any author who ignores audience and thinks of social change as his/her last concern in his/her work has already lost. In fact, through reflexive writing (narrative, and extended autobiographies), authors share their encounters which can help other people learn from the same experience. Scientific publications contribute to build bodies of knowledge in a certain domain and benefit all the members of the social network or community of practice.
A piece of writing that is perceived as social and not individualistic activity raises awareness, informs, educates and boosts changes. More interestingly, some works go far beyond the author’s expectations and targets, for the best and oftentimes, unfortunately, for the worst. As a matter of fact, did Harriet Beecher Stower think that her Uncle Tom's Cabin, Life Among the Lowly would be a powerful catalysis to the Civil war and anti-slavery movement? Or was Hitler aware that his Mein Kampf (My Struggle) would lead to Jewish people’s genocide and take away more than 6,000,000 of human lives?
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I like the way you said that if authors share their encounters, they can help others who are in the similar situations. Also, I think that if we have certain audience in mind, our work can be read by those people who are able to expand our studies.
ReplyDeleteIf we are writing to some audience who are not familiar with the terms we use or we want more people to understand our beliefs, we can adjust the way we write based on whom we are writing to.