Ong: The Role of the Audience

In Ong's ""The Writer’s Audience Is Always a Fiction," he looks at the relationship between writing and it's audience. It is worth noting though that Ong thinks it is quite misleading to think of a writer as dealing with an audience. A writer is writing to or for them and not necessarily addressing them. Ong likes to refer to the audience as "readership".  In his text he is basically asking the question,"What roles are the readers called upon to play?" Ong starts off by distinguishing the difference between writing and oratory. "Oral word is part of a present actuality and has its meaning established by the total situation in which it comes into being" (Ong 10). He is saying that the context for the spoken word is always present, the orator always knows whom they are addressing. Whereas the "audience" of writing is "simply further away, in time or space or both" (Ong 10). Writing allows for people in all different parts of the world to see it and it can be seen over many time periods. Because of writing's vast reach, there is no way for an author to write to every single individual reader that will come across their work. However an author does have to take into consideration the “social, economic, and psychological state of possible readers” (Ong 10). 


Ong then moves on to the author and the idea that they fictionalize their audience. “If a writer succeeds in writing it is generally because he can fictionalize in his imagination an audience he has learned to know not from daily life but from earlier writers who were fictionalizing their imagination audiences they had learned to know in still earlier writers” (Ong 11). When Ong says that we must fictionalize our audience he is referring to two different things. First he means that a writer must construct in his imagination an audience cast in a role, whether it be entertainment seekers, reflective sharers, etc.. He also means that the readership must correspondingly fictionalize itself. Readers have to play the roles the authors cast them in. The writer's audience is fictionalized because readers are expected to understand or make assumptions about what the author is saying. The writer also needs to assume that readers will know what he/she is talking about. Ong provides an example that is centered on A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway. Through this example Ong displays how an author may use words such as "the" or "that" and expects the readers to be familiar with what he is talking about, ultimately leading to readers making assumptions. “The late summer of that year,” the reader begins. What year? The reader gathers that there is no need to say. “Across the river.” What river? The reader is apparently supposed to know. “And the plain.” What plain? “The plain”—remember? “To the mountains.” What mountains? Do I have to tell you? Of course not. The mountains—those mountains we know. We have somehow been there together. Who? You, my reader, and I. The reader—every reader—is being cast in the role of a close companion of the writer” (Ong 13). Ong goes on to cite other authors and examples of roles that were cast upon their perspective "audiences" or readership. 

      

      Basically writing is different than oratory. A writer creates their text for their readers, whereas a speaker speaks for their audiences. Speakers give their audiences context through speaking as well as their body language and tone, but readers have to make assumptions when it comes to reading an authors writing. A quote that resonated with me was "Writing normally calls for some kind of withdrawal" (10). Ong's quote really reminded me of Barthes and his belief that an author should "die" with the birth of their text. Separating an author from their work not only gives the text freedom of interpretation based on the readers perspectives but it also gives the authors freedom to address a variety of audiences. 

      - Cailyn Callaway

      Works Cited

Ong, Walter J. “The Writer’s Audience Is Always a Fiction.” PMLA 90 (1975): 9-21. 

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