Audience, genre, and purpose are essential key terms for successful writers; they must grasp these basic but essential terms if they want to be successful. The audience is important because a writer must know who their piece is for. Writers must know the proper writing genre since it will set up an expectation for the readers. By knowing the author’s purpose, the readers will easily understand what you are trying to communicate with them and why you are trying to reach them. Seeing why these three terms are crucial to successful authors, I will now analyze three works to see how their authors use these key terms. The three works that we will be looking at are Billy Collins’s Commencement Address at Colorado College, Donovan Livingston’s Spoken Word Commencement Address at Harvard, and Gloria Anzaldua’s “How to Tame a Wild Tongue.”
The genre of Gloria Anzaldua’s “How to Tame a Wild Tongue” is a memoir she depicts her relationship between herself and her language and how her language is her identity and culture. Her work is a memoir because it is a factual story that focuses on a relationship between the writer and person, place, or thing. In How to Tame a Wild Tongue, she focuses on the relationship between her language and identity. She speaks the Chicano language, a “border tongue” the Chicanos created this language to identify themselves as a distinct group of people. They are shamed by both the Spanish and the Americans for speaking their language. In this book, she tries to convince her people not to be ashamed of their language and identity; however, her audience is also people who do not know about the Chicano hardships or do not care about it. “If a person, Chicana or Latina, has a low estimation of my native tongue, she also has a low estimation of me.” (Anzaldua 8). She is telling the audience how connected her language is to her identity. If you mock or hate her language, you also hate her because it is her identity it’s all she has. The purpose of Gloria Anzaldua’s “How to Tame a Wild Tongue” is to educate people about the Chicano’s identity and how they are taught to hate it and be ashamed of it.
Billy Collins’s Commencement Address at Colorado College is a graduation speech. His speech is inspiring, comedic, and light-hearted. His graduation speech’s comedic aspects make it memorable and are traditionally very inspiring, telling the audience that they have worked hard to get where you are, never give up, and keep on trying no matter how hard it gets. However, Colin flips this on its head in his speech “Another motto I hold dear is if at first you don’t succeed, hide all evidence that you ever tried.” (Colin 2). This shows how unusual and different his speech is. The humorous tone mixed with the contradictory nature of his speech makes it unforgettable. Audience Collin’s audience is a graduation class, specifically a graduation class at Colorado College. He knows his audience well and understands them as he states in the first paragraph, “I think you deserve to know that this will be a finite experience. It is well-known in the world of public speaking that there is no pleasure you can give an audience that compares to the pleasure they get when it is over, so you can look forward to experiencing that pleasure 13 minutes from now. All the pre-law students just looked at their watches.” the fact that the pre-law students looked at the watches to make sure that the speech would only last 13 minutes shows how well he understands his audience. The purpose of this speech is to inspire students not to worry too much about the future and to not worry about the expensive houses or fast cars to instead live in the present and go out and experience life. “Time is more valuable than money.” (Colin 4) “When your time is done, you will not be remembered for what clothes you wore or what kind of car you drove” (Colin 5). He wants the students not to worry about the material but to live life instead, make new experiences, meet new people and cherish who and what you have.
Donovan Livingston’s Spoken Word Commencement Address at Harvard genres is a graduation speech and spoken word poetry. The poem is about racial inequalities in our education system. Livingston purpose of inspiring teachers and professors to help students realize their full potential “Unfortunately, I’ve seen more dividing and conquering In this order of operations — a heinous miscalculation of reality. For some, the only difference between a classroom and a plantation is time.” (Livingston). Livingston stated that many students feel like the classroom is a plantation or a prison because they cannot reach the full potential. They feel they are only in the classroom to fill quotas of diversity “How many times must we be made to feel like quotas” (Livingston). His audience is not only the educators but also the kids who have been made to think that they cannot reach their full potential “So a child can see their potential from right where they stand.” (Livingston). The purpose of this poem is to motivate the educators not to put down the students but instead to raise them up and let them reach the Stars.
In conclusion, all three authors have used genre, audience, and purpose to strengthen their writing. For example, if Anzaldua did not have a purpose for writing, her short story would have been aimless. She could have been jumping from topic to topic because she would not know why she is writing. If Colin did not know his audience so well, he would not tailor his message to his audience. Nevertheless, since he knew his audience, he could make jokes that they would understand and enjoy while teaching them a vital life lesson. If Livingston did not know the genre of his speech, he would not be able to call back to when he was in high school and was not allowed to have his graduation speech be a poem.
Works Cited
Anzaldúa, Gloria. How to Tame a Wild Tongue. Aunt Lute Books, 1987. Everett, https://www.everettsd.org/cms/lib07/WA01920133/Centricity/Domain/965/Anzaldua-Wild-Tongue.pdf. Accessed 30 September 2020.
Collins, Billy. “Commencement Speech Transcript.” Graduation Wisdom, 19 May 2008, https://www.graduationwisdom.com/speeches/0135-Billy-Collins-Gives-Brilliant-Witty-Commencement-Speech-Address-At-Colorado-College-2008.htm. Accessed 30 September 2020.
Livingston, Donovan. “Donovan Livingston’s Harvard Graduate School of Education Student Speech.” YouTube, Harvard Graduate School of Education, 25 May 2016, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9XGUpKITeJM&ab_channel=HarvardGraduateSchoolofEducation. Accessed 30 September 2020.
