Ede's and Lunsford's "Audience Addressed, Audience Invoked"

In their 1984 essay,"Audience Addressed/Audience Invoked: The Role of Audience in Composition Theory and Pedagogy," Lisa Ede and Andrea Lunsford seek to engage with:

"One important controversy currently engaging scholars and teachers of writing...in composition theory and pedagogy"[1] (155):

Specifically, they ask:


 * "How can we best define the audience of a written discourse?"


 * "What does it mean to address an audience?"


 * "To what degree should teachers stress audience in their assignments and discussions?"


 * "What is the best way to help students recognize the significance of this critical element in any rhetorical situation?"[1] (155)

Reference to Bitzer's "The Rhetorical Situation"
Ede and Lunsford indirectly refer to Bitzer's theory of rhetorical situation throughout the essay and especially in their conclusion:

"A fully elaborated view of audience, then, must balance the creativity of the writer with the different, but equally important, creativity of the reader. It must account for a wide and shifting range of roles for both addressed and invoked audiences. And, finally, it must relate the matrix created by the intricate relationship of writer and audience to all elements in the rhetorical situation. Such an enriched conception of audience can help us better understand the complex act we call composing." [1] (169-170).