Rhetoric and Its Situations

Philosophy & Rhetoric, 1973

In the opening Unes of "The Rhetorical Situation," Lloyd Bitzer states, "if someone says, That is a dangerous situation, his words suggest the présence of events, persons or objects which threaten him, someone else or something of value. If someone remarks, I find myself in an embarrassing situation, again the statement implies certain situational characteristics."1 These Statements do not imply "situational characteristics" at all. The Statements may ostensibly describe situations, but they actually only inform us as to the phenomenological perspective of the speaker. There can be little argument that the speakers believe they f eel f ear or embarrassment. Their Statements do not, however, tell us about qualities within the situation. Kenneth Burke once wrote of literary critics who attributed to others the characteristic of seeking escape: "While apparenüy defining a trait of the person referred to, thè term hardly did more than convey the attitude of the person making the référence."2 The same goes for the attribution of traits to a situation. It is a fitting of a scene into a category or catégories found in the head of the observer. No situation can hâve a nature independent of the perception of its interpréter or independent of the rhetoric with which he chooses to characterize it. In his article Bitzer states, "Rhetorical discourse is called into existence by situation"3 and "It seems clear that rhetoric is situational."4 This perspective on rhetoric and "situation" requires a "realist" philosophy of meaning. This philosophy has important and, I believe, unfortunate implications for rhetoric. In this article I plan to discuss Bitzer's view and its implications and suggest a différent perspective with a différent philosophy of meaning from which to view the relationship between "situations" and rhetoric.

This study offers a critical analysis of Lloyd F. Bitzer's model of rhetorical criticism, "the rhetorical situation." Since the article of the same name in 1968, this model has come under intense scrutiny and criticism, yet remains today a substantive approach to rhetorical criticism. This study evaluates the critiques of Richard Vatz and Barbara Biesecker and concludes with an analysis of Bitzer's model in light of those critiques.

2013

There is no doubt that the tinderbox of the American Revolution existed long before Thomas Paine immigrated to the American colonies in 1774. However, few could argue that Paine's pamphlet Common Sense was not one of the sparks that contributed to America's political and military revolution that led to the Declaration of Independence in 1776. According to Merrill Jensen, author of The Founding of a Nation: A History of the American Revolution, 1763-1776, the ideas that Paine expressed in his pamphlet, Common Sense, were not his own. Jensen claims that Paine was merely using his rhetorical skills to translate the complex ideas of Paine's contemporaries into a more common language as a means of communicating with the average readers of Paine's day. 1 Using the tool that Lloyd Bitzer gave students of rhetoric in his 1968 article, "The Rhetorical Situation," this paper will examine the social, cultural, and historical context of Thomas Paine's Common Sense. According to Lloyd Bitzer, discourse comes into existence as a response to a given situation. Just as an answer follows a question or a solution follows a problem, discourse follows a given rhetorical situation. Essentially, the rhetorical situation must exist as a necessary condition that precedes discourse and discourse is rhetorical discourse according to how it functions as a response to the rhetorical situation that made the utterance possible. In addition, the utterance itself is limited by the rhetorical situation. The situation controls the response in much the same way that a question controls the answer to the question. For Bitzer, the rhetorical situation can be defined as: A complex of persons, events, objects, and relations presenting an actual or potential exigence which can be completely or partially removed if discourse, introduced into the situation, can so constrain human decision or action as to bring about the significant modification of the exigence.2 Bitzer goes on to add that "prior to the creation and presentation of the discourse, there are three constituents of any rhetorical situation." Bitzer calls these three constituents

[Currently in preparation for publication.] This thesis examines rhetorical situation theory. Drawing upon previous literature ranging from the original Bitzer-Vatz-(Consigny) debate through recent genre studies on rhetorical situation, I present a modified version of rhetorical situation theory in light of the common ideas, disputes, strengths, and limitations of earlier works. I begin with a review of important literature in Chapter Two in order to illustrate both the similarities and differences in other theories. Then, in Chapter Three, I discuss the importance of audience, particularly fictional audiences, to the rhetorical situation. I present a modified version of rhetorical situation theory in Chapter Four and illustrate the rhetorical situation by discussing examples in Chapter Five. I also offer a universal example for rhetorical situations, one that is not designed to support any theory in particular.

Argumentation, 2000

'Rhetorical Analysis Within a Pragma-Dialectical Framework' raises three questions. First, what is the relation between the methods of winning a dispute and the methods of securing agreement studied in pragma-dialectics? What is the relation between rhetoric and dialectic? This is a question to which van Eemeren and Houtlosser offer a clear answer, but I will invite them to reconsider in light of my other two questions. Second, how do the methods of verbal manipulation in general, whether competitive or cooperative, relate to the methods used to arrive at something greater than agreement, such as truth or the accurate representation of nature? This second question could be posed as the relation between dialectic and rhetoric and the methods of science. Third, discourse often has purposes that have nothing to do with resolving disputes, and which therefore do not reach the threshold at which dialectic, for van Eemeren and Houtlosser, begins. Often people speak merely to be heard, to express themselves and create their identities within a community. Just as I wonder about the relation between both rhetoric and dialectic and science, I wonder about their relation to purely expressive discourse, a connection perhaps hinted at in Aristotle's discussion of epideictic rhetoric, but surely needing more analysis.