Oh No! Not Another Definition of Rhetoric! In short, rhetoric
is a mode of altering reality, not by the direct application of
energy to objects, but by the creation of discourse which changes
reality through the mediation of thought and action. The rhetor
alters reality by bringing into existence a discourse of such a
character that the audience, in thought and action, is so engaged
that it becomes a mediator of change. (4)
Slide 4
The Rhetorical SituationThe Rhetorical Situation Bitzer
conceives of the rhetorical situation as composed of three
parts:
Slide 5
The Rhetorical SituationThe Rhetorical Situation Bitzer
conceives of the rhetorical situation as composed of three parts:
Exigence
Slide 6
The Rhetorical SituationThe Rhetorical Situation Bitzer
conceives of the rhetorical situation as composed of three parts:
Exigence Audience
Slide 7
The Rhetorical SituationThe Rhetorical Situation Bitzer
conceives of the rhetorical situation as composed of three parts:
Exigence Audience Constraints
Slide 8
The Rhetorical SituationThe Rhetorical Situation Bitzer
conceives of the rhetorical situation as composed of three parts:
Exigence: An imperfection marked by urgency; it is a defect, an
obstacle, something waiting to be done, a thing which is something
than it should be (6)
Slide 9
Exigence The 2011 Libyan civil war began on 15 February 2011 as
a civil protest and later evolved into a widespread uprising. On 25
February, most of Libya was reported to be under the control of the
Libyan opposition and not the government of Muammar al-Gaddafi.
Gaddafi remained in control of the cities of Tripoli, Sirte and
Sabha. By 15 March, however, Gaddafi's forces had retaken more than
half a dozen lost cities. Except for most of Cyrenaica and a few
Tripolitania cities (such as Misrata) the majority of cities had
returned to Gaddafi government control. On 17 March, the United
Nations Security Council passed a resolution which authorized
member states "to take all necessary measures to protect civilians
and civilian populated areas under threat of attack in the Libyan
Arab Jamhariya, including Benghazi, while excluding an occupation
force. This began a new phase in the conflict. Obama then responded
to this exigence with this speech.with this speech.
Slide 10
The Rhetorical SituationThe Rhetorical Situation Bitzer
conceives of the rhetorical situation as composed of three parts:
Exigence Audience: Since rhetorical discourse produces change by
influencing the decision and action of persons who function as
mediators of change, it follows that rhetoric always requires an
audience (7)
Slide 11
Audience Steve Jobs, the (previous) CEO of Apple presents the
(then) newest version of the iPhone (4) to an expectant
audience.presents the (then) newest version of the iPhone (4) to an
expectant audience By appealing rhetorically to his audience, Jobs
aims to encourage them to buy his product.
Slide 12
The Rhetorical SituationThe Rhetorical Situation Bitzer
conceives of the rhetorical situation as composed of three parts:
Exigence Audience 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
exigence (8).
Slide 13
Constraints The Debt Ceiling Crisis: An increase in the debt
ceiling requires the approval of both houses of Congress.
Republicans and some Democrats insisted that an increase in the
debt ceiling be coupled with a plan to reduce the growth in debt.
There were differences as to how to reduce the expected increase in
the debt. Initially, nearly all Republican legislators (who held a
majority in the House of Representatives) opposed any increase in
taxes and proposed large spending cuts. A large majority of
Democratic legislators (who held a majority in the Senate) favored
tax increases along with smaller spending cuts. Supporters of the
Tea Party movement pushed their fellow Republicans to reject any
agreement that failed to incorporate large and immediate spending
cuts or a constitutional amendment requiring a balanced
budget.
Slide 14
Rhetorical Situation Scavenger Hunt Now were going to go out in
the world (or, at least, around Williams Building) to see how
rhetorical situations occur all around us in different forms. Ill
give your group fifteen minutes to browse around Williams to find
three rhetorical artifacts and then discern for each one what its
exigence is, what the intended audience is, and any constraints
that the artifact presents. I want each group to find one artifact
that is primarily textual, one that is primarily visual, and one
other artifact of your choice (be creative!). After fifteen
minutes, return to the classroom, take a five minutes to organize
your thoughts, elect a new spokesperson, and be prepared to share
with the class what your findings were.
Slide 15
Slide 16
What form of media first comes to mind when you hear the word
genre?
Slide 17
What forms of media come to mind when you hear the word genre?
Movies
Slide 18
What forms of media come to mind when you hear the word genre?
Movies Books
Slide 19
What forms of media come to mind when you hear the word genre?
Movies Books Television
Slide 20
But Devitts looking furtherBut Devitts looking further For
Devitt, genre is a dynamic response to and construction of
recurring situation, one that changes historically and in different
social groups, that adapts and grows as the social context changes
(580). Genres construct and respond to situations (578); they are
possible responses that writers choose and even combine to suit
their situations (579).
Slide 21
Consider the Zombie Movie First, heres an earlier incarnation
of this genre: Night of the Living Dead. Heres a movie created in a
context of intense race and class conflict Night of the Living
Dead
Slide 22
Consider the Zombie Movie Then, theres the post- 9/11 zombie
movie, 28 Days Later. Heres a film created in an atmosphere of
terror, and ongoing epidemics 28 Days Later.
Slide 23
But Devitts looking furtherBut Devitts looking further Amy
Devitt writes that [t]reating genre as form requires dividing form
from content, with genre as the form into which content is put
(574). What does she mean by this? What might the implications of
such a division for writers? Editors? Designers?
Slide 24
Slide 25
Audience In what follows, I want to open further this problem
in meaning, to clarify some of the conceptual traps in the way
"audience" is typically used, and to suggest some general reference
points that may be useful in thinking about the theory and the
teaching of audience (248).
Slide 26
The meanings of "audience, diverge in two general directions:
The Bitzer Camp ...one toward actual people external to a text, the
audience whom the writer must accommodate... The Ong Camp...the
other toward the text itself and the audience implied there, a set
of suggested or evoked attitudes, interests, reactions, conditions
of knowledge which may or may not fit with the qualities of actual
readers or listeners (249).
Slide 27
What does Ong think? [h]owever real the readers are outside the
text, the writer writing must represent an audience to
consciousness in some fashion; and the results of that "fiction"
appear in what the text appears to assume about the knowledge and
attitudes of its readers and about their relationship to the writer
and the subject matter... More accurately, the writer must create a
context into which readers may enter and to varying degrees become
the audience that is implied there. (249)
Slide 28
What does Bitzer think?What does Bitzer think? According to
Park, Lloyd Bitzer's definition of the rhetorical situation is a
useful reference point here, since it...presents external
circumstances as forming a defining context to which discourse must
respond in fitting ways. The audience, in this view, is a defined
presence outside the discourse with certain beliefs, attitudes, and
relationships to the speaker or writer and to the situation that
require the discourse to have certain characteristics in response.
In Bitzer's terms the more structured the rhetorical situation, the
more precise its characteristics, including those of the audience,
the more it determines the specific features and content of the
discourse (248).
Slide 29
Audience? 1. Anyone who happens to listen to or to read a given
discourse: "The audience applauded." This meaning is inextricably
rooted in common usage, but it is useless and misleading in serious
rhetorical analysis. 2. External readers or listeners as they are
involved in the rhetorical situation: "The writer misjudged his
audience." This meaning of "audience" comes into play in analyses
of the historical situation in which a given discourse appeared or
in studies of the actual effect of discourse upon an audience. 3.
The set of conceptions or awareness in the writer's consciousness
that shape the discourse as something to be read or heard. We try
to get at this set of awarenesses in shorthand fashion when we ask,
"What audience do you have in mind? 4. An ideal conception shadowed
forth in the way the discourse itself defines and creates contexts
for readers. We can come at this conception only through specific
features of the text: "What does this paragraph suggest about the
audience?" (250)
Slide 30
Reagan as Audience? Ronald Reagan cuts subsidies for mass
transit; a committee of mayors drafts a letter to argue for
continued support. It is easy to say that Reagan is the audience
for this hypothetical letter. But it is not Reagan as Reagan that
the letter addresses but Reagan in his position as President and as
representative of a set of attitudes on the subject of mass
transit. Whatever other notions or knowledge of him as a person the
writers may have in mind will have to be screened out as
irrelevant. (251)
Slide 31
Audience=Contexts? Here it becomes clear that "audience" is
merely a rough way of pointing at that whole set of contexts. One
can represent all that in shorthand fashion by saying that the
audience is people who believe such and such, or who are interested
in such and such, or who have a certain level of background
knowledge. But a precise analysis of audience would have to
examine, point by point, what is being assumed as understood, what
is elaborated, what is assumed as the readers' range of attitudes
or preconceptions about the subject at hand, and so on (251).
Slide 32
Chaim Perelmans Universal Audience Perelman argues in The New
rhetoric: A Treatise on Argumentation that appeal to reason is
conceived as an appeal to an ideal [universal] audiencewhether
embodied in God, in all reasonable and competent men, in the man
deliberating or in an elite (68). Does this help?