Layered Assumptions

Jacob Kowalczyk
SA 2
W350 Graban

The audience for “Letter to President Clinton on Iraq” consists of one person: Bill Clinton. The main aim of the letter is to inform President Clinton about the situation in Iraq and also to persuade him to act upon this information in a certain way. Because the text is so heavily focused on this goal of persuasion, it necessitates audience construction.
The letter, when analyzed for what it is trying to accomplish: informing and instigating action, seems best to fit into the system of discursive aims as developed by Reichenbach, whose system states that the aims of discourse are to be communicative (factually), promotive (of action), and suggestive (emotionally). Throughout the text, we see the authors giving information which allows them to make appeals to the President’s emotions: “we will be unable to determine with any reasonable level of confidence whether Iraq does or does not possess such weapons.” This is not simply a statement of fact, but a fact that the authors can assume that the president will react emotionally to. So in this sense that the authors are assuming certain reactions from the audience (Bill Clinton) to certain pieces of information, the authors are employing the concept of audience construction.
This use of audience construction is highly effective for the authors, who want to make a strong impact on the President so as to motivate him into action. The process of stating facts that the author can assume will elicit a certain emotional reaction, then, based off of those assumptions, present more facts that can be assumed to evoke certain responses to even further their goal of motivating the President into action. So, the text is heavily reliant on audience construction to make its appeal, but without the ability to assume the effects of the text, the authors would not have been able to so strongly make their case to the President.