Introduction:

For the worknet project, I read and analyzed The Rhetorical Situation by Lloyd Bitzer.

Overall, he describes what makes a situation rhetorical and why rhetorical discourse is important

in those situations. Bitzer argues that rhetorical discourse has to be taken in context because that

is the only place it will make sense.

I found the worknet project difficult because it made me look at why the article was written and

not just what it actually says by dissecting each piece. This project definitely introduced a new

way of conducting research because it was almost as if I was writing a research paper backwards.

Additionally, I had to conduct more research for this article than most other projects because

most of it was about the author and what their influences were.

To clearly explain the entirety of Bitzers The Rhetorical Situation, I will first start with Choric

to discuss why he wrote the piece. Next, I include a description of works cited by Bitzer in order

to show what research went into writing the piece. Once the background of the work is

established, I include Bitzers background and why he is qualified to write such an essay. I finish

with a dissection of The Rhetorical Situation itself and what the main idea is.

Choric:

During 1967, when the article was published, America was in the midst of the Vietnam War, the

Cold War, and the Civil Rights movement, which are all rhetoric situations. There were many

protests throughout the country for all of these things, and it seemed that the country was deeply

divided. The article seems to address that during times of distress, someone needs to stand up

and say something, which relates to all of those big events. There were a lot of national

controversies happening at the same time which required rhetorical discourse from elected
officials regarding the situations. However, given that this article was written, not enough were

given. The Vietnam war specifically was met with a huge resistance and hundreds of protests.

The article is most likely addressing those situations in particular because no one was addressing

the issue created by the Vietnam War. When a national situation occurs, such as the large

number of protests about the Vietnam War, it usually requires some kind of speech or

recognition from the government. Those resistances, however, were not. Given the large number

of references to past events, Bitzer is most likely subtly arguing that most nationwide events

were not given the correct attention they should have.

Bibliographic:

The situations that Bitzer chooses as examples are famous events that everyone would know, so

readers can conclude for themselves why that specific situation called for specific discourse.

Bitzers The Rhetorical Situation was published in Philosophy and Rhetoric in Vol. 1, No. 1,

in January 1968. Since then, others have used and cited his work well over 3,000 times and

countless authors have reviewed his work. The article itself doesnt respond to any sources

directly, but uses others work to better explain his own, such as using Bronislaw Malinowskis

passage. Malinowskis passage describes how primitive fisherman use speech to communicate in

short exclamations, which doesnt talk directly about rhetorical situations, but is just used as an

example. Bitzer uses the piece to explain how Malinowski is describing rhetoric in primitive

language. Bitzer writes, These statements about primitive language and the context of

situation provide for us a preliminary model of rhetorical situation (Bitzer 4). Bitzer explains

how phrases like Pull in, Let go, and Lift the net are completely understood during a

fishing trip, but usually only in that situation. If someone were to walk down the street shouting
those phrases, people would just think they were crazy. Thus proving that discourse is purely

situational and must be seen in context of that situation.

Most of the other sources used are taken from history, such as quoting Aristotle and the

Gettysburg Address. He uses those instances as examples of famous rhetorical situations and

explained how each one contained good or bad rhetorical discourse, but doesnt actually cite

them.

Affinity:

Lloyd Bitzer was very evident in his expertise in speech and rhetoric. He received a doctorate in

rhetoric at the University of Iowa. He then went on to teach Communicative Arts for many years

as a Associate Professor at University of Wisconsin- Madison. It can be assumed that Bitzer

must be an expert in order to gain that spot in the university. Bitzer has only written few works

other than The Rhetorical Situation, but those include Rhetoric and Public Knowledge,

published in 1978, and an introduction to George Campbells Philosophy of Rhetoric. He also

wrote an essay over Aristotles work in 1958. These pieces are connected because they all

discuss rhetoric and how they can be used effectively. His identity most definitely influenced his

work because all of the pieces are directly discussing rhetoric and speech, which is what he

earned his degree in and studies at one of the best programs in America. He is an expert in

rhetoric and it is evident in his article. I learned that most academic authors work is more related

to what they earned their degree in rather than what they are teaching, but the two overlap. Bitzer

taught Communicative Arts and got his degree as a rhetorician. The connection between the two

shows in A Rhetorical Situation because Bitzer discusses rhetorical discourse, which, as

mentioned before, is speaking to persuade.

Semantic

The article mainly focuses on situations, specifically rhetorical situations, and their necessary

parts, which are exigence, audience, and constraints. Rhetorical discourse is also discussed a

number of times throughout the article and how it relates to situations. A rhetorical situation is

defined as, a natural context of persons, events, objects, relations, and an exigence which

strongly invites utterance (Bitzer 5). Exigence is defined as something that needs to be fixed

while audience is defined as people who have to ability to be persuaded by the issue and can do

something about the issue. Constraints is defined as parts of the situation with the power to

modify exigence. Exigence, audience, and constraints are all parts that are necessary to make up

a rhetorical situation. In a sense, those three definitions together are just a way of describing one

term: rhetorical situations. However, they each help add more detail to the specific meaning by

telling exactly what needs to exist for a situation to be considered rhetorical. Rhetorical

discourse, defined as persuasion by speech, is also an important aspect of rhetorical situations,

but not a necessary one. Bitzer argues, 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

(Bitzer 5). Simply put, not every rhetorical situation calls for discourse, but the discourse that

does come is completely based on the situation.

By writing all the main terms and definitions on paper, I was able to see how they all related to

one another and how the main theme of the paper all followed the same specific topic; the topic

being a discussion on when rhetorical situations occur. Most of the situations Bitzer creates or

alludes to as examples present a need for specific discourse, strengthening his argument that

certain speeches and dialogue are necessary only at certain times.

I am more of a visual learner, and I usually jot things down before I write them out, but Ive

never found maps such as the one we created useful. Creating the map was not helpful because I

felt that I was just repeating things. However, I suppose seeing how I repeated the same

information a couple times showed how the main ideas of the article was focused in content.

Overall:

This project was very different than anything I have done in the past because there wasnt much

analysis of the essay itself other than knowing key terms which can usually be found within the

title. Instead I had to analyze why the piece was written in terms of four different sections:

semantic, bibliographic, choric, and affinity. Just having to focus on main points, I learned that

articles are written very narrowly, meaning that they generally focus on one very specific topic.

Personally, I have never written anything that attentive to one particular subject, and it astonishes

me how people are able to write about one single thing for fifteen pages and not sound like

theyre repeating themselves over and over.

There is a lot of background work that goes into writing an article that I hadnt noticed before.

Academic authors spend their entire lives studying and teaching one specific topic that they

publish on. It has taught me that these articles are probably more accurate than I thought due to

the extensive background. However, that is not always true with all articles so it still helps to

look up the author, even if it isnt as extensively as this project requires. Writing the paper was

also different that anything I have previously done because each section is separated from one

another and not necessarily related. It was slightly easier because I didnt have to think of clever

ways to connect things that arent usually connected. However, I didnt entirely enjoy this

project because I felt most of the information researched was unnecessary because didnt help
me better understand the article or open my eyes to a whole other side of writing. The only

helpful part was the semantic section because it required me to look at what was specifically

being discussed.