Rhetorical Situations and Their Constituents
Rhetorical Review, Vol. 15, No. 2 (Spring, 1997), PP. 264-279
Keith Grant Davie
The article begins by talking about Ken Burns’s documentary, The Civil War. This discussion leads into the main subject of rhetorical analysis and how it’s used. It describes how it can be used when describing historical works like Burns. Burns describes how Bitzer, Vatz, and Consigny had articles describing rhetoric. He explains how they each had definition but if combined you come up with a better definition. The constituents of a situation are the exigence, the audience, and the constraints. It talks a lot about discourse and how it relates to different parts of the topic. It explains different aspects behind what discourse is about, why it’s needed, and its goal to accomplish. It then describes rhetors, Audience, and constraints in more detailed paragraphs.
Compound Rhetorical Situations- Discussions of a single subject by multiple rhetors and audiences.
Exigence- The matter and motivation of the discourse.
rhetor(s)- Those people, real or imagined, Responsible for the discourse and its authorial voice.
Audience- Those people, real or imagined, with whom rhetors negotiate through discourse o achieve the rhetorical objectives.
Constraints- factors in the situation context that may affect the achievements of the rhetorical objectives.
In many works we have done its key to think about audience, constraints, exigence, and rhetors. Then apply it to the work.
What is the best balance of a paper to allow Audience, Rhetors, and Constraints to all be evenly applied?