During our last class, we spent the majority of time talking about Bitzer's The Rhetorical Situation. Our group focused mainly on the specific things that (according to Bitzer) make a situation rhetorical. To sum them up, there must be a situation (exigence), an audience, a fitting response, a situation that happens BEFORE the response is composed, and finally, the situation must actually be real and not fictive.
I agree with all of these except that the situation must happen first. I do not understand why that is necessary. Pretend we had a president that was involved in some sort of conspiracy, created a speech in response to a situation, then made that situation happen and presented the speech to the public, in an effort to persuade them that everything would be fine and they were taking care of the situation. Would that not be a rhetorical situation?
I guess the easy answer would be, no it isn't a rhetorical situation, since the speech would've been written before the situation occurred and therefore the speech was not actually written as a response to something that had already happened. A speech can't be written in response to something until that something has already occurred. I think Bitzer would argue that if the President wrote a speech before the situation occurred, it would be violating the 'the situation must be real and not fictive' part of what makes a rhetorical situation.
ReplyDeleteI agree that by Bitzer's definition this would not qualify as rhetorical situation. However, I'm sure this type of event has occurred before. Maybe not in the United States, but think about some of the crazy dictators throughout history and even still today controlling other countries. If someone actually did write a speech in "response" to an event that they planned themselves, the general public would have no idea and therefore the speech could be classified as rhetorical situation in their eyes.
ReplyDeleteThat is very interesting. I agree and believe all three of the parts of the situation can be interchangeable. Therefore, the speech itself could be created before the actual exigence.
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