Chapter Three, Readers and Contexts of Use, stresses that knowing your readers is very essential to communicate successfully when using technical communication. Another important point from this chapter is that the writer needs to realize who will be reading their document and how to present their information to those types of people.
This chapter breaks down the different kinds of audiences into primary, secondary, and tertiary readers. In my eyes, primary readers are the most important and valued readers to the writer. They are the ones that will actually do something with the information you are providing and are basically the people you are writing for. Secondary readers are basically supervisors and or bosses who force the primary reader to search for information. Tertiary readers are pretty much the people who you do not expect would ever want to read your document. Primary readers fuel the technical writing community with the ever important need for knowledge.
This chapter also stresses the importance of knowing the readers needs, values, and attitudes. Knowing the needs pretty much just consists of knowing what your reader needs to know. It is important to also know your readers values about the situation and their attitude towards you or your document’s stance on the subject.
The place that people actually read your document will have an impact on them. The four different types of contexts that need to be kept in mind are the physical, economic, political, and ethical context. Physical context is basically where your readers use your document and how it affects them. Economic context is how the economy will influence your reader’s view of your document. Political context is pretty much how the reader’s views on politics affects their impression of you, your document, or others. Ethical context is pretty much if your document steps on the boundaries of the beliefs of good or bad that your reader has. In my opinion the physical and ethical contexts are the most influential. Physical is obviously the most important because it is the reader’s first opinion of the document, and ethical is next because I believe everyone always compares everything to their own thoughts or values.
This chapter opened my eyes a lot on how to make my own technical writings or documents. The main thing I got from it was that I do not just need to make my document, but I need to think about who will be reading it and why. I also will have to think about how my ideas will affect the reader in more than just the technical sense.
Response
After reading your response on “place” where a person is reading a document referring to the physical, political, economical, and ethical context. I agree that the physical place is the most influential in having context present. When you are in certain places, like a library, you will be more likely to read, having a different attitude, towards the information presented. Being in a library setting where other people are focused and studying as well; a person’s ability to become a primary audience, is more likely to occur while being focused on reading the information thoroughly rather than being in a place that can detain your thoughts, making that person less attentive on focusing on the information being presented.
Zebulon Rouse
Reply
I do agree that the physical context is the most important of the four different contexts that were presented in the chapter. I also feel that the physical context is the easiest to accommodate. I feel that, for the most part, the physical context in which you are writing a technical document for is pretty obvious. I mean, if you are writing some sort of instruction manual then you know the general environment in which people will be reading your document. I believe that this also helps you to know which bits of information need to be highlighted or brought to the attention of the reader.