Expressive Pedagogy Response

Throughout the readings over expressive pedagogy, I kept returning to the idea of audience. Elbow's idea that disregarding audience would lead to better writing in which the writer has a clearer, more authoritative voice, intrigued me. Reflecting on the many academic papers I've written for various classes in high school, undergraduate, and graduate school, I seldom recall considering audience (except for my one creative writing class where I was convinced my professor hated me, but that would lead me off into a tangent). However, I think I considered audience subconsciously. My writing within this blog is very different from my writing for my history research papers, and yet is different from my writing in my journal, and is different also in the thank you note I just wrote to my Grandpa. How does my writing differ? Most clearly in two ways: how honestly and unabashedly I express myself and how much attention I pay to grammar. My journal is certainly more revealing than my research paper, but is it more expressive? I think the answer to that question revolves around another question: what am I trying to accomplish with my writing?

Of course, the answer is different in each scenario mentioned above. Within my journal, I'm mostly trying to express myself, record events, and allow my brain to process events and thoughts through writing them on the page. I feel successful at some times more than others; however, I do not know how much this has much to do with consideration of audience. The audience of my journal is me, or my future self, I suppose.

For more public writing, papers and thank you notes, I have specific goals that mostly involve communicating my thoughts and feelings to an outside audience. Now being probably the first time I've really thought about my consideration of audience, I'm fairly certain it's subconscious (for me). However, I'm not sure that being aware of my audience makes me less expressive or effective in my writing. If my goal is to communicate to my professor or my Grandpa, how could I be more effective in doing so if I disregarded them?

I think that while some have to be encouraged to consider audience, it would be an interesting exercise for me to intentionally disregard audience. I do not know if I could. In just thinking about it, it seems that I would revert to my journal writing style. Would that be better or more expressive? I suppose I would have to try to find out.