Second Blog Post...(on audience addressed and blogs)

I have been working on this second blog post since December 1, 2006, so prepare to be dazzled by my brilliance.

Not quite. In reality, what happened was this; I created this blog with much excitement a year and a half ago with every intention of dropping by every day to wax rhetorical/linguistic/pedagogical. After a few weeks, the new semester began, I became bogged down with teaching and research, and once I actually sat down to write another post, I realized I had lost my blog. I literally misplaced it in the great chasm of the Internet (thank you, Steve, for reminding me to capitalize that, even though I know you are not reading this), having forgotten I created it through blogspot. But a week ago I decided to hunt it down, and lo and behold, here it is, intact.

If a blogger makes a post in cyberspace and no one is around to read it, does it make a sound? Yes, I realize that I have mangled one of the great philosophical questions concerning the presence of an audience, but, well, you know what I mean. The question of blogs and their audiences (and how the audience shapes the genre) is one that interests me greatly. I am considering having my Fall 2008 advanced students (perhaps even my first years) create a blog for the purpose of recording various structured freewrites and research logs. Many of them, no doubt, will have already had experience with blogging on myspace--a *good* thing, in my opinion. They will likely come in without the knowledge that one can create a very engaging academic blog that allows them to collaborate productively with peers, and so this little rhetorical adventure will (1) allow them to expand their knowledge of a genre they are well aware of, thereby allowing them learn by association, and (2) let them write for a real audience--an audience addressed (me, their immediate peers in the class, and whatever cyber-couch-potato-riffraff who randomly searches blogs and happens to find theirs) rather than invoked.

So, back to whether this post makes a "sound" (or perhaps "resonates" might be a more appropriate word) if no one reads it. In fact, is this even a blog if no one reads my posts? I don't know yet. I'm sure that over the coming months I will mention to someone that I, too, have a blog, and they will peruse it and perhaps even tell someone else, and eventually I will gain some small readership of likeminded rhetoric dorks who enjoy pondering things like this to no end. But for right now, it feels kind of cozy posting in what may be the last tiny undiscovered corner of the net.