In about 250-500 words, I want you to explore the following questions. Be specific in your responses. You can use direct quotes from Bitzer’s piece (and in fact this might be the most helpful in your explanation of a rhetorical situation). Remember: blog posts are free and open and their language is casual. I should be able to begin to see who you are as a writer—through your voice, style and language choices.
Also, it's ok if you are a little (or a lot) unsure what this is saying. It's a difficult reading, but you should do your best to respond to the questions. Please don't spend any time on saying things like "this was a hard reading" or "I don't understand it." Do you best to think through the reading--it doesn't matter if you are completely wrong, so long as you try.
According to Bitzer, what is rhetoric? What is a rhetorical situation? Why are both important in the understanding of how to write? What do you believe comes first—the writing or the rhetorical situation? Do you believe all writing needs a rhetorical situation in order to write? Why or Why not?
What did you learn from reading this piece? Why might we start a course on argument with this reading?
Don't forget to engage with as others as part of the assignment.
Due: Monday, January 14, 2013 by class time.
According to Bitzer rhetoric is “situational”, but doesn’t mean that it “hinges upon understanding the context of meaning in which the speech is located.” (Page 3) A rhetorical situation needs to be a rhetorical circumstance that has exigence, audience and constraints. Exigence creates the rhetoric, audience is “to be constrained in decision and action” and constraints “influence the rhetoric and can be brought to bear upon the audience.” (Page 6) Both of these are important to writing because without rhetoric one wouldn’t be able to understand a situation and make the correct response as to how to deal with it in writing. Without rhetorical situation then the writer wouldn’t be able to know the correct audience they are addressing, and they wouldn’t be able to efficiently portray the information when speaking about an event. I think the rhetorical situation comes before the writing because without the rhetorical situation then someone won’t have the information they needed to write an audience and situational appropriate speech. I think that all writings need a rhetorical situation, some more than others. I think speeches use it the most, but other writing like newspaper articles and scholarly writings use it, but not to the extent of speeches. Speeches use it more because they are generally given to a large audience in response to a situation that has happened. From reading this piece I have learned a lot about rhetorical situation. I haven’t heard of this before, so I have a little bit of an understanding of what it consists of. I think this may have been one of the first pieces we read would be for us to give our own understanding of the material and see where we agree as a class and where we don’t agree as a class.
ReplyDeleteIn Bitzer’s piece on the rhetorical situation he discusses much on what truly defines a situation in which good writing takes places. Bitzer argues much that people focus fully on “What is the process by which the orator creates and presents discourse?” rather than what is the situation upon which discourse takes place. Before one can determine how to proceed, one must first determine when to proceed. That, in essence, is where the rhetorical situation comes into play. This is what much of the presentation is about, and after reading it I can see why this is one of the first things we read in a class of writing. This piece is meant to help us as a class identify rhetorical situations and act upon them to the fullest extent making sure we respond efficiently and effectively to our audience. Before good discourse can take place, one must wait for the appropriate time to speak on such discourse, the rhetorical situation. Before one can put pen to paper, or finger to keypad, one must first know when the appropriate time to start writing is. Though not all writing requires a rhetorical situation, because not all writing fulfills all the constituents, most writings of discourse and rhetoric requires a rhetorical situation. As to what is the true nature of rhetorical situations, that lies in the function of rhetorical situations. They serve to identify to the writer when he must, when the time is right and the discourse is necessary. As when Bitzer used the piece on the fishermen shouting orders. This action of discourse was quick and swift phrases that did not seem like much, but on the single utterance of a word, an entire action was carried out. The necessity of the words exemplified the exigence of the situation. Something was blocking the fishermen from doing their job and they required an order, the several fishermen acted as an audience waiting and though they may have had their own constraints as to what the best action to proceed is, the “writer” of situation, or the commander, gave his discourse on what to do and it was followed in suit. His words not only spoke to the audience, but in turn made a change as the fishermen followed orders. This is what makes a rhetorical situation. Before any writing can take place, before any words or phrases can be uttered, they must be needed, and they must be actually capable of moving mountains with their briefness. That is the importance of the rhetorical situation, to understand not only why and how we write, but when we must write. When the time is right and when words are needed.
ReplyDeleteIn Lloyd F. Bitzer’s “The Rhetorical Situation” he describes rhetoric as something that is pragmatic. What this means is that “it comes into existence for the sake of something beyond itself; it functions ultimately to produce or change in the world; it performs some task.” So essentially, Bitzer believes that rhetoric is simply a way to create the idea of something needing to be changed. So that it is realized and then changed by means of either thought or actions from others, as opposed to using a direct approach and changing it physically. The definition of rhetorical situation is “the context of a rhetorical event that consists of an issue, and audience, and a set of constraints.” Rhetoric is important to writing because, for instance, in a research paper the author is normally trying to either get something to change or stay the same, and they try to bring that point across in their paper. So rhetoric is how the author is able to bring that point across which is essential for any research paper. And rhetorical situation is important because in papers you really need to know the audience for whom you are writing to so you can change the wording and what you are writing in general to be more understandable for them. Personally I believe that rhetorical situation comes before the writing because you need to be able to know what you are writing about, and who you are writing to because without these guidelines you are just shooting in the dark. Rhetorical situations are needed in every, if not most, types of writing. This is because of the aforementioned reason of if you don’t have a topic you won’t have anything to write about, without knowledge of your audience you may not write the paper in a way that is understandable or comes off as good to the reader.
ReplyDeleteFrom reading this piece I mostly learned, first off, what a rhetorical situation, and what rhetorical discourse are because I didn’t know what they were in the first place. Because some of this class is going to be about having an opinion and then being able to defend it with facts this is a good start for the quarter because of the way the piece is written, if we don’t understand it, we can make our own opinions on what the author was trying to bring across and then discussing with fellow students on what he was actually meaning.
In terms of what is a rhetorical situation I think that it was presented the best as a “question” or a “problem”. Bitzer wrote that “rhetorical discourse comes into existence as a response to situation, in the same sense that an answer comes into existence in response to a question, or a solution in response to a problem.”(Page 5). Even though there is couple of explanations that are more complex, I think that this is the simplest way to approach it.
ReplyDeleteWhen looking at writing and rhetorical situation from a question and an answer point of view, I think that it doesn't really matter which one comes first. It’s like questions in tests; sometimes you get the answer and try to find the right question for it. It’s all determined by the writer and his approach, does he wants to discuss and explain the answer and where it came from or does he want to illustrate what questions led to a certain answer.
I don’t think that rhetorical situations are a must when it comes to writing. Because again, when you look at it from a question and an answer aspect, it doesn't make sense that all writings are problems that need to be solved. Some are writings are as simple as a story. From what I understood I don’t think that rhetorical situations are necessary in all writings.
In Bitzer's article there is never one solid definition for "rhetorical situation", however characteristics of a rhetorical situation are listed and give us better insight to what it is. The first characteristic of a rhetorical situation is that is pragmatic meaning it comes into existence for the sake of something beyond itself. Bitzer goes onto say on page three that a rhetorical situation functions to produce action or change in the world and preforms some task. It is also mentioned that a rhetorical situation is a natural context of persons, events, objects, relations, and an exigence which sternly invites utterance; a unit of speech bound by silence.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Ali that there is no order necessary when dealing with writing and rhetorical situation. I think that based on the work that rhetorical situation can be created without the author actually knowing it. I also feel that writing does not necessarily need a rhetorical situation. I don't think a rhetorical situation is necessary to the foundation of a writing, it is more of a component of writing that can be used to enhance it's meaning.
From this reading I learned that there is a lot more that goes into writing than just ideas and thoughts being translated into written language. I also learned that writing can cause a lot of discussion and is open to more interpretation then I originally anticipated. It's good that so many concepts in writing are open to argument. It makes the process of writing more interesting in my opinion.