Ong-Audience

    Ong makes it clear in his article, that he is determining differences between the practices of oral and written expression. He discusses how audience vary between a writer and a speaker, which makes very good sense to me.
    Verbal communication must be reduced to simpler mechanics in order for an audience to fully comprehend the information that is being given to them (10). He describes how a reader can pretend that a speaker is in front of someone who is reading, by pausing and imagining someone actually speaking the information that is being read (11). However, the author must also fictionalize the audience to know how to write and form the information properly in order for an audience to identify and understand what is being read (11). "A reader must play the role in which the author has cast him."(12).
    Being a writer, speaker, or reader, all of these have some role to play in order to gain the ultimate understanding of what is being said read or written. A writer must fictionalize the type of audience he wants his words to be read by and he has to do it in a way that will work. A speaker must do the same but a different process will be used because they can express importance with their voice. A reader, to me, is the hardest role because they have to analyze what is trying to be said. Unless the writer uses side notes and bullet points, this can be hard for a reader to accomplish.
 
Samantha Oellrich