Preliminary Recommendations

E.3. aims

E.3.1. audience

-- the person or group of people for whom the text is created.

E.3.1.1. the immediate audience

-- people forming part of the communicative event, with at least a theoretical opportunity to participate.

E.3.1.2. the wider audience

-- for example, a readership, viewership.

Cross-cutting with this are the following:

E.3.1.*.1. audience size

-- for example, under 5 / 5-20 / 21-50 / hundreds / thousands.

E.3.1.*.2. audience constituency

 

E.3.1.*.2.1. members of the general public

   

E.3.1.*.2.2. informed lay people

 

E.3.1.*.2.3. professional people

 

E.3.1.*.2.4. specialists

 

E.3.1.*.2.5. students, trainees

 

E.3.1.*.2.3.1-n. list of professions

 

E.3.1.*.2.4.1-n. list of specialists

 

E.3.1.*.2.5.1-n. list of study and training courses

 

E.3.1.*.3. author-audience relationship

 

E.3.1.*.3.1. distant

-- no personal acquaintance, and further separated by institutional roles that depersonalise.

E.3.1.*.3.2. neutral

-- no personal acquaintance, but both author and member of audience are considered as individuals.

E.3.1.*.3.3. close

-- personal acquaintance, or the assumption of it. (Note this is a place where the reflexive categorisation may conflict with the judgement of the researcher, e.g. in commercial circulars which are personalised by computer working from mailing lists)

E.3.2. outcome intended

 

E.3.2.1. information

-- an unlikely outcome, because texts are very rarely created merely for this purpose. Mainly reference compendia.

E.3.2.2. discussion

-- polemic, position statements, argument.

E3.2.3. recommendation.

-- reports, advice, legal and regulatory documents.

E.3.2.4. recreation

   

E.3.2.4.1. fiction

-- including faction.

E.3.2.4.1.1. novel/novella/short story

 

E.3.2.4.1.2. historical, thriller, etc.

 

E.3.2.4.2. non-fiction

 

E.3.2.4.2.1. biography

 

E.3.2.4.2.2. autobiography

 

E.3.2.4.2.3. letters

-- the published variety, not correspondence.

E.3.2.5. religion

-- holy books, prayer books, Order of Service. As well as a category of text on external criteria, religion is an important topic, which is allocated on internal criteria. Hence, unless care is taken this category may overlap with others in this hierarchy, and it is recommended that it is only used for texts that cannot be properly classified under other headings. To have a religious topic (e.g. a biography of a religious figure) is not enough for classification here.

E.3.2.6. instruction

 

E.3.2.6.1. academic works

-- these are written for a specialist audience (see E.3.1*.2.4.). It follows that the author is also a specialist.

E.3.2.6.2. textbooks

-- these are written for a student audience, and therefore the author has an appropriate reputation for expertise, whether academic or professional.

E.3.2.6.3. practical books

-- these are written to teach and guide the exercise of practical skills.