Terry’s Blog

One thing that has surprised me a little is how writing for a blog introduces a new sort of self-consciousness into my writing, and I think this is to do with the ambiguities of audience. Thinking of Charles Cooley’s notion of the looking glass self, I am usually clear and self-confident about the audience I am writing for (students, fellow academics, family, etc.) and have a fairly clear idea of how they see me and what their expectations of me are (no doubt somewhat mistaken at times!) and what I am trying to acheive - to teach something, to influence, to impress, etc. With a personal blog the entries are sometimes for me but others have a variety of putative audiences, some unknown. I don’t know if this is common but some of my blog entries, including this one, are saved as ‘private’ to begin with so I can develop them a bit, spell check, find a url, etc. before making them public. Others I just post without much hesitation. It is often the ones for which I am not sure about the audience(s) that lead to the most hesitaion about going public. Some never see the light of day!

I assume I am not alone in this. I also assume that it is something to be taken into account when introducing students to this type of writing and encouraging and motivating them.

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