But that's just the point! Writing in school is performing a set task
with no meaning outside of performing the task for the sake of receiving
a (hopefully favorable) evaluation, i.e. an good grade. There is usually
no further purpose or use to it. This we were all inured to by the time
we escaped from high school. One might call this text production for
its own sake, or discourse for discourse's sake. HOWEVER....
Whatever else the xmca community is, I assume it isn't fictitious, and
that the very real people who belong to it are doing very real things
somewhere out there on the planet beyond the immediate ken of my
computer!
Another angle to the question: Am I _talking with_ you or _writing to_
you? The short response-time frame and ease of communication make it
feel ambiguous.
Rachel
On Mon, 12 Jan 1998 12:02:38 -0600 Martin Nystrand
<nystrand who-is-at ssc.wisc.edu> writes:
>The problem of addressing a community--and a fictitious one, at
>that--without the possibility of conversing with anyone particular
>face to
>face is pretty much the problem of writing in school, isn't it.
>Usually
>this problem is formulated as one of including the (reified) Reader
>(in the
>suggested guise of everyone). A more practical approach, however, is
>writing in such a way that one does not _exclude_ those particular
>people
>one hopes to address. This approach, no doubt, includes a wider
>audience de
>facto.
>
>Marty