• Marks a turning point in the US study of rhetorical theory
• Sets out to define rhetoric as discourse responsive to a particular kind of situation

View of Rhetoric

• For Bitzer, rhetoric is action.
• He defines rhetoric as "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."
• "Language is a mode of action and not an instrument of reflection." 
• You have to understand rhetoric in its context; it's meaningless outside of the circumstances that created it.
• Rhetoric is pragmatic; it has practical things to do. It is primarily concerned with getting things done.
• Rhetoric is always persuasive.

The Rhetorical Situation described

• To understand rhetoric, you have to understand some thing about the situations that create it.
• Bitzer defines the "rhetorical situation" 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 so as to bring about significant modification of the exigence."

• It has three components:

1. Exigence "an imperfection marked by urgency; it is a defect, an obstacle, something waiting to be done, a thing which is other than it should be."

• It issituation that causes a need for rhetoric (or utterancy----Something that stands in the way of something desirable getting done which can be rectified through utterance
• This is the problem or inadequacy you want to correct with your message.
• An exigence is "rhetorical when it is capable of positive modification and when positive modification requires discourse or can be assisted by discourse

• This means a situation is not rhetorical if:
• It cannot be modified.
• It can be modified only by means other than discourse, like medicine or money, for instance.

• There is always at least one controlling exigence in a rhetorical situation.
• Bitzer uses the national crisis arising directly after the assassination of JFK as an example of rhetorical exigence—speeches by LBJ and others helped to calm or improve the situation rhetorically.

2. Audience "Properly speaking, a rhetorical audience consists only those persons who are capable of being influenced by discourse and of being mediators of change." Those who can affect the situation if adequately and properly affected by the utterance (universal/particular--those capable of being influenced and those capable of influencing)

• This means that the audience is more than just people who hear your message
• The audience, in this sense, is made up of those people who could be changed by your message and who could make changes because of it.
  

3. Constraints- “besides exigence and audience, every rhetorical situation contains a set of constraints made up of persons, events, objects and relations which are parts or elements of the situation because they have the power to constrain decision and action needed to modify the exigence” i.e., beliefs, attitudes, documents, facts, traditions, images, interests, motives, etc. that stand in the way of the audience responding properly (i.e., fittingly) to the exigence.

• Constraints are tools that the speaker can use to help make changes.
• Some constraints are originated by the speaker (Aristotle called them artistic proofs: logos, pathos and ethos).
• Some constraints come from the situation (Aristotle called these inartistic proofs, like testimony and other facts).
• Therefore one’s own rhetorical abilities is a constraint as is available evidence, possible arguments, audience beliefs, etc.
  
• Characteristics of rhetoric that is sensitive to its situation.
• "Rhetorical discourse is called into existence by the situation...out of necessity."
• The rhetorical situation "invites a fitting response,” that is, the rhetorical situation actually “dictates” or “prescribes” the response to it
• "Situations come into existence, then either mature and decay or mature and persist."
• Thus not all discourse is rhetorical.
• One of the components could be missing--no audience, no exigence that can be modified by discourse, no audience that can act. Scientific and poetic discourse are not rhetorical.
• There can be communication without rhetoric

What Bitzer does mean by the rhetorical situation:

• Rhetorical discourse comes into existence as a response to a situation, in the same sense that an answer comes into existence in response to a question or a solution in response to a problem;

• A speech is given rhetorical significance by the situation, just as a unit of discourse is given significance as answer or as solution by the question or problem;

• A rhetorical situation must exist as a necessary condition of rhetorical discourse, just as a question must exist as a necessary condition of an answer;

• Many questions go unanswered and many problems remain unsolved; similarly, many rhetorical situations mature and decay without giving birth to rhetorical utterance;

• Discourse is rhetorical insofar as it functions, (or seeks to function) as a fitting response to a situation which needs and invites it.

• Finally, the situation controls the rhetorical response in the same sense that the question controls the answer and the problem controls the solution. Not the rhetor and not persuasive intent, but the situation is the source and ground of rhetorical activity--and, I should add, of rhetorical criticism.
  

Richard Vatz. "The Myth of the Rhetorical Situation," Philosophy and Rhetoric 6:3 (1973): 154-161.

Writing in response to Bitzer and arguing that

• Meaning is not intrinsic in events, facts, people or “situations,” nor are facts “publicly observable.”
  
• We learn facts and events through someone’s communicating them to us
  
• rhetors translate chosen information into meaning in an act of creativity and interpretation

• "No situation can have a nature independent of the perception of its interpreter or independent of the rhetoric with which he chooses to characterize it."

• No situation is separate from interpretation.

• Since the speaker chooses his or her own discourse, a situation is based upon that speaker's point of view or perception. Vatz states that a situation becomes an exigence because it is named as such.

Three key components to the myth:

• First, rhetors create the situation.

• Second, the rhetor is responsible for what he chooses to make salient.

• Third, when a rhetor fails to address a situation, it can go unnoticed even though it may require attention. The situation itself cannot construct the meaning alone. It requires the interpretation of the rhetor to communicate and produce the meaning.

Meaning-context relationship

Bitzer: "virtually no utterance is fully intelligible unless meaning-context are understood"

Vatz: "meaning is not discovered in situations, but created by rhetors"

Is rhetorical situation determinate?

Bitzer: Determinate: "it is the situation which calls for the discourse into existence"

Vatz: Indeterminate: "the very choice of what facts or events are relevant is a matter of pure arbitration"

Exigence

Bitzer: "exigence strongly invites utterance "

Vatz: "utterance strongly invites exigence"

Fitting response

Bitzer: "the situation controls the rhetorical response"

Vatz: "the rhetoric controls the situational response"

Implications for rhetoric

If meaning is viewed as intrinsic to situations, rhetorical study becomes parasitic to philosophy, poly sci and whatever other discipline can inform us as to what the “real” situation is

If, on the other hand, meaning is viewed as a consequence of rhetorical creation, your paramount concern will be with how and by whom symbols create the reality to which people react—rhetoric becomes of utmost import

If we accept Bitzer’s view that “the presence of rhetorical discourse obviously indicates the presence of a rhetorical situation, then we ascribe little responsibility to the rhetor with respect to what she has chosen to give salience.

On the other hand, if we view the communication of an event as a chose, interpretation, and translation, the rhetor’s responsibility is of supreme concern

To view rhetoric as a creation of reality or salience rather than a reflector of reality increases the rhetor’s moral responsibility