Blog 8

Define the three constituents of Bitzer’s rhetorical situation & provide examples of each.

1. exigence: "any exigence is an imperfection marked by urgency; it is a defect, an obstacle, something waiting to be done, a thing which is other than it should be." in rhetorical writing, an exigency is what inspires someone to write. Usually the exigency needs to be presented and explained to an audience to gain support before it can get fixed. Exigencies are not always rhetorical, for it to be so, it must be modifiable and requires discourse. Some examples of rhetorical exigencies include racism, pollution, bullying, drug abuse, drunk driving, etc.

2. audience: rhetoric is persuasive writing, so there always must be an audience to persuade. Bitzer defines a rhetorical audience as consisting "only of those persons who are capable of being influenced by discourse and of being mediators of change" In rhetoric, understanding what types of people composing the audience is extremely important. For someone giving a rhetorical speech on drunk driving, it would not be rhetorical if the speech were given to students at an elementary school because they are not necessarily capable of being influenced since they cannot drink or drive, and they cannot be mediators of change if they aren't influenced by the topic. A more appropriate audience that would make the speech rhetorical would be an audience of college students. They are the prime targets for this exigency because it effects the lives of people around them or perhaps even themselves.

3. constraints: Bitzer says "every rhetorical situation contains a set of constraints made up of persons, events, objects, and relations which are parts of the situation because they have the power to constrain decision and action needed to modify the exigence" Constraints are essentially the parts of the rhetorical situation that convince the audience to take action to positively modify the exigence. Bitzer's examples of constraints include beliefs, attitudes, documents, facts, traditions, images, interests, motives. An example of a constraint for the drunk driving example could be images of car accidents caused by drunk driving, or statistics on how many people die each year from drunk driving.