Final answer:
The audience-centered approach involves tailoring messages to the needs and preferences of the audience, choosing appropriate rhetorical devices based on their cultural context and relationship with the audience, and avoiding generic language that may lead to ambiguity.
Step-by-step explanation:
The audience-centered approach, also known as the "you" attitude, is a communication strategy that focuses on understanding and respecting the audience's needs, feelings, and preferences. At its core, it involves tailoring your message to meet the audience's interests, using a vocabulary and level of detail that they will understand and appreciate.
To effectively utilize this approach, it's crucial to recognize the common beliefs and lived experiences of your audience. This understanding allows a writer to select appropriate rhetorical devices and appeals, such as ethos (credibility), logos (reason), and pathos (emotion), to create contextually responsive compositions. Furthermore, audience awareness helps in deciding which rhetorical appeals and devices to employ by considering factors like the writer's relationship with the audience and any cultural intricacies that might influence mutual understanding.
For example, when revising a statement to better suit an audience, it helps to replace a generic use of "you" with a specific subject to clarify the message. Instead of saying, "You must plan your document carefully," one could say, "Writers must plan their documents carefully." This clarifies that you're specifically advising writers, not just any random individual.
In sum, the audience-centered approach requires a deep understanding of the audience's viewpoint, cultural background, and the relationship between the speaker and the audience. It ultimately aims at crafting a message that appeals directly to the audience, encouraging them to understand, accept, or act upon the writer or speaker's viewpoint.