Writing Observed, is Powerful Writing.
Tyler Pham
Kevin Roozen names the threshold concept, “Writing is a Social and Rhetorical Activity,” while I agree, it is also worth mentioning the power structures which innately lie in the relation to social activity mentioned.
Roozen states, “writers are engaged in the work of making meaning for particular audiences and purposes, and writers are always connected to other people.” Writers are always participating in some social act of writing, whenever they write any sort of piece regardless of intended audience. Classically, when we refer to a piece of writing it is usually of the physical form, but as we have learned, “All Writing is Multimodal.” While some works, such as diaries, are initially not written with the intention of being widespread, Anne Frank’s diary is a powerful piece of work expressing the terror of the times. This dairy, which had been written most likely for herself, has had a recognizable effect on people worldwide. When considering the entire body of writing since the dawn of writing, this is one example of many which represents the power of writing observed.
While one might consider writing which is never publicly published or shared, writing for oneself is still observed and enacts some sort of change (even of the most miniscule amount) on oneself.
Writers always write with an audience in mind, even if it is just themselves. However, sometimes writing is brought to the attention of an unintended audience. This makes writing a complicated activity of dancing between intention, and clarity. In a world where 250 characters can be shared to 261 million people around the world at a touch of a screen, our audiences of anything we have written has grown ungraspably large. Things we write which we might have intended for a specific group, can be shared and shared and shared tenfold. These ripples in the pool of the technological age can have unintended actions.
Andrea A. Lunsford writes, “the advent of digital and online literacies has blurred the boundaries between writer and audience significantly: the points of the once-stable rhetorical triangle seem to be twirling and shifting and shading into one another.” As writers of the digital age, how can we attempt to create a universal clarity, in a world where the words on which we define things are themselves embedded in one another.
Look to the US political landscape of 2019, where anything a politician has written, said, or done is being used as a powerful tool to usurp them. Writing is more than simply acting on the people you intend to write for, but it can cause action on those you might not even know of, and this spread of unintended action on others is a new part of this larger power.
While I do not believe there is a correct solution to resolve and sort of writing issue, I do believe it is up to today’s writer to acknowledge the power that they have as modern writers. While writers of the past were reaching for the widespread effect we have today, some of us might not want to be so far reaching, but if so, how?
Writing has always been powerful, but in a day and age where everything can be seen everywhere, it leaves writers to wonder who now is their unintended audience? Who am I as a writer to take responsibility for the possible ripples of what I do to the larger sphere of things?