Purpose and audience: Why and for whom is the multimodal text created?

When you think about the purpose of a multimodal composition, you might ask, What is this composition meant to accomplish? Convey information? Inspire action or feeling? Make an argument?

Thinking about audience, you might ask, Whom is this meant to appeal to? Whom is this designed or written for? What assumptions is the composer making about the audience’s beliefs and values?

Consider again the public service message with the two cheetahs. Why do you think the composers of that message decided to use the pronoun you in “Fashion claims more victims than you think”? Most public service messages aim to encourage or discourage specific behaviors. If the statement read “Fashion claims more victims than people think,” it might be easier for the audience to dismiss the issue as someone else’s fault or problem. Perhaps the composers hoped that addressing the statement to “you” would empower their audience to act—to refuse to buy furs or to spread the message. If the words are essential for reaching the audience, why do you think they’re so small? Would the effect be different if they spanned the top or bottom of the image? Perhaps some viewers would feel alienated if they encountered the direct address (you) and the word victim before developing a sympathetic feeling toward the cheetah mother and cub.

Or take the example of restaurant menus. What is the purpose of a menu? The straightforward answer might be “to provide food options.” But a menu might have other purposes as well: to differentiate a particular restaurant from its competitors to show that the restaurant specializes in a particular type of food (for example, using the colors of the Italian flag or photos of pasta to show that the food is Italian), or to explicitly call attention to healthier menu options or options for people who have food allergies.

Who is the audience for a menu? The simple answer might be “hungry customers.” But imagining how customers might encounter the menu reveals more about the intended audience. Although some customers viewing the menu might already be seated in the restaurant, others might be considering the menu online, trying to decide where to eat dinner. In making their decision, they might be comparing the menu side-by-side with another restaurant’s menu. They might be considering different factors related to their dining decision, such as how much money they want to spend on their dinner. Higher prices might indicate that the restaurant aims to attract an older crowd. Unusual font choices might mean that the restaurant seeks an eclectic audience.

For multimodal compositions, the actual audience might be much broader than the intended audience, so it’s important to consider how and where the composition has been published. Student composer Marisa Williamson created a video essay, “To the Children of America,” for a class. Though her intended audience was fairly limited—her instructor and her peers—her actual audience grew when she published her school project on a video-sharing Web site.

Related topics:

Genre: What kind of multimodal text is it?

Features: Which modes are represented? How do they function?

Meaning: What effect does the composition have on the viewer?

Considering purpose and audience for a multimodal project

Recognizing an unintended audience