Rhetoric with Bitzer

Rhetorical Situations and Bitzer

This is not the first time I have read Lloyd F. Bitzer's "The Rhetorical Situation", but I think I finally understand it to an acceptable extent. There are a few points in the text that I believe I have thought of examples that are very prevalent.

When talking about rhetoric, the theory of rhetoric comes up with many standards to it, "audience", "speaker", "subject", "occasion", and "speech" being the standards. Very rarely is the rhetorical situation discussed. Bitzer goes on to talk about rhetoric being situational, meaning that it is not rhetoric if there is not a response to the given situation. The situation exists if there exists a need to respond to the given discourse.

This made me think of examples that can be used for this, a quarterback of a football team or a commander of an armed force. These "speakers" are presented with times in which many of the things they do/say are rhetoric, and are put in rhetorical situations. The quarterback if forcing a response based on what he does/says based on the given situation the quarterback is in. This works the same way with a commander.

Finally Bitzer defines rhetorical situation, and gives three constituents of any rhetorical situation "exigence, audience, and constraints". The first definition directly correlates to my examples.

" 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."

He also goes on to say that the exigence is only rhetorical if it can be modified. A direct situation that this occurs is when a quarterback audibles, telling his team (audience) what needs to happen, to fix the situation.

To further solidify the example:

"In any rhetorical situation there will be at least one controlling exigence which functions as the organizing principle: it specifies the audience to be addressed and the change to be effected."

Bitzer continues to go one describing the rhetorical situation, but I think what I have described above correlates closely with my examples. It does meet the other criteria of the situation as it can easily be seen.