Johnson is extending a rhetorical perspective of technical communication by moving audience theory into a type of transactional lens. He is looking at audience as “users” of information products (similar to moves made by Johson-Eilola and Spinuzzi) – claiming that “audience” is missing from collaborative writing pedagogies that are increasingly popular across technical communication curricula. “The audience has been marginalized by a preponderance of scholarship that hegemonically places the receivers of discourse at a distance…” (91).
I see Johnson extending the contemporary conceptions of “audience addressed” and “audience invoked” – as “audience involved” is an “actual participant in the writing process who creates knowledge and determines much of the content of the discourse” (93). For Johnson, the user is viewed from a socially constructed perspective; able to negotiate and work with technologists. This focus on the production of knowledge is increasingly relevant, as organizations turn to employees and customers to generate content. The users of the organization’s various information products are called on to be active participants in the knowledge production cycle.
Johnson identifies usability testing as an obvious location for active audience involvement. Again, as the information product “interfaces” become more ubiquitous, it is a logical and practical move to involve the audience (the user) in testing and evaluation activities. The writer of the user documentation is not calling the interface or the process for using the interface into reality by documenting it; the user is realizing and continually re-realizing the interface by their interaction with it. “Audiences who actually receive the intended document can have interesting effects on a writer’s conception of what need to be produced.” (101).
Yet another transactional theory to add to the map.
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