Rhetorical Situation

Rhetorical Situation

1. Vats

   • Believes that a rhetoric create a situation
   • meaning is not discovered in situations, but created by rhetors.
     • politicians believes that we should change the health care system is fine to begin with. The Rhetor creates the situation of changing the health care system
   • does not believe in rhetorical situations
   • Critique on Bitzer
     • opposes Bitzer by arguing the rhetorical meaning is not intrinsic in events
     • believes that perception of meaning or feeling in a situation is only a result of a single person/ speaker's perception
     • essentially, meaning is created, not discovered in situations

2. Bitzer

   • The rhetorical situation is a complex of persons, events, objects, and relations representing an actual or potential exigence which can be completely or partially removed (by discourse)
   • Exigence
     • A situation that demands/ leads to rhetorical speech/ writing. An imperfection (problem) marked by urgency (School shootings, bridge broken - needs to be fixed urgently so that people can cross.)
       • does not appear when it cannot be changed by human interaction, such as a natural disaster or death
   • Audience
     • capable of influence, mediators of change (ex: political debates-politicians influence people to vote for them
   • Constraints
     • person's events, objects, relations which are parts of the situation because they have the power to constrian decision and action needed to modify the exigence
       • (example: town meeting, half people want to rebuild the bridge, half don't... the reasons for having different opinions about what to do with the bridge are considered constraints)
   • Inartistic
     • outside of the art/ rhetorical situation (personal reasons)
   • Artistic
     • within the rhetorical situation
   • Fitting Response
     • to prepon - appropriate, fits within constraints of situation
   • Mature and Decay
     • arguments mature and decay