Bodies of interest: Meaning-making in the spaces between expert and lay audiences

This paper offers one approach to teaching students in science and technology how to address the complexity of a text. Argenti's notion of constituencies is used to identify the particular interests of parties that contribute to the understanding and meaning of a communicated message. Drawing on a world-wide museum exhibit, Bodies: The Exhibition, the author presents an analysis of how the perspectives of sample constituencies play out in the context of embedded artifacts. Keywords: constituencies, expert and lay audiences, knowledge and meaning-making.