“I don’t date girls under 5’2.”

It’s funny the fragments that stick with you. Moments isolated in time that just keep floating back-and-forth inside your mind.

Some random guy said the above quote after a hike I recently went on. Somewhere between reflecting back on the beautiful hike we’d all just experienced and discussing shoe sizes, this guy throws out that comment. I almost came back with a penis comment—almost. Instead I turned and glared at him (as best as one can glare with large sunglasses) and said, “I bet you really get a lot of girls then, huh.” Really, do people not know how to read their audience?!? He was surrounded by women, and while many of them were above 5’2, not all of them were. Uh, geeish!

The understanding of audience seems so crucial to understanding a lot of life’s experiences, yet, how many people don’t really read their audience. Ironically even those in my own cohort of friends and family don’t always read their own audiences—not a critique, mind you, just an observation. And I’m not suggesting that I’m always do myself, in fact, I'm still learning to respond to this understanding. It's something I stress in my teaching as I try and teach the importance of understanding your audience to both my freshmen and my upper level classes because I believe it’s one of the most important rhetorical concepts they can learn (next to, of course, reflection and genre). Understanding an audience helps teach them that their audience is not merely the teacher and that some day they will be writing to real-life audiences outside of school. I think it’s important for them to start to make those connections early.

Interestingly, I was reminded today of just how important understanding my audience is for my own dissertation. My committee that eventually reads my dissertation makes up my audience and this is so important because there are specific things I am doing/will do to make sure that my audience knows and understands what I am saying. I have read different books and different articles because I want to be sure that I understand case study methodology, for example. Some of the stuff I’ve read I won’t even put in my dissertation but you better believe I’ve read it and will keep in my back pocket just in case!

Reading/understanding audiences are a part of being a competent writer, but also part of being a competent speaker, friend, family member, or basically, all around person.

The random guy probably didn’t mean much with his comment, but as can been seen in #27 of my fun and fabulous facts post, I have a tendency to be sensitive about my height. We all have that one (or two) thing(s) that push our buttons…perhaps if you had grown up hearing midget jokes you would be tiny bit sensitive too (or had the nickname of Willow—from the movie about little people--I'm just sayin').

Moral of the story: whether in a casual conversation, writing for your first-year comp instructor, or writing your dissertation you need to read and understand your audience. I’m guessing the random guy didn’t have 1101/1102 at FSU because perhaps then he might know a little more about audience. ;-)