Who is the Ideal Reader (of your journal article, dissertation chapter)

ByMushtaq Bilal

And why you need to imagine such a reader.

In his 1983 book Imagined Communities, Benedict Anderson writes that in the 18th century, large communities started getting imagined through two products of print-capitalism: the novel and the newspaper.

He calls them "imagined communities" and this is how they work. Even though a person has not met other members of a community, they still believe in the existence of these other members. That’s because one imagines their existence.

Anderson uses "imagined communities" to explain the idea of a nation. An American will never meet all 333 millions Americans and yet they have complete faith in the fact that they exist.

How can we use Anderson's insights to become a better, confident academic writer?

For starters, every writer (academic or otherwise) writes for an imagined audience. Even though a writer hasn't met their (potential) readers, they believe in the existence of such readers.

Your writing style and voice depends on a lot of the type of reader you imagine. If you imagine your reader to be generous and patient, you'll feel confident, and that sense of assurance will show through your prose.

But if your imagined reader is judgmental and fault-finding, you'll feel defensive, and that insecurity will also show through your work.

Example: when I write on social media, I imagine my ideal reader to be someone who patiently reads my posts. Then they follow my tips and share their feedback with me. This helps me keep my posts crisp and to the point.

But if I were to imagine my reader as someone impatient and judgmental, I'll start justifying and explaining my positions.

That will make the threads unreadable at best and insufferable at worst. And I do not want that.

I see this very often with PhD students working on their first journal article or dissertation chapter. They imagine their reader as overly judgmental.

This leads them to over-justify their positions and they end up burying their argument in a plethora of citations.

It is very difficult to develop a confident scholarly voice if you don't imagine your reader to be generous and patient. But if it's difficult for you to imagine such a reader, you can think of a real person as your ideal reader.

If you want to develop a confident scholarly voice, kill the judgmental monster of your imagination.

Instead, imagine your ideal reader as someone warm, generous, and patient.