Grant-Davie_Rhetorical_Situation_Handout

One of my colleagues was kind enough to email Grant-Davie and ask him if he had any additionally materials for teaching rhetorical situations. He obliged with this helpful outline. Hopefully this will help make rhetorical situation a little more clear.

__**A HEURISTIC FOR DEFINING AND DESCRIBING**__ __**RHETORICAL SITUATIONS**__

For more on rhetorical situations and rhetoricians who have analyzed them, see Grant-Davie, “Rhetorical Situations and Their Constituents,” Rhetoric Review, 15.2 (Spring 1997): 264-279.

A rhetorical situation arises whenever a rhetor (either a speaker or a writer) sees a need to communicate with an audience in order to accomplish a goal. The rhetorical situation is the set of related factors whose interaction creates and influences a discourse—which may take the form of a speech or a piece of writing. The rhetorical situation is the environment in which the discourse will exist and operate.

To analyze and understand rhetorical situations better, it can help to break them down into a set of constituent parts: exigence, rhetors, audiences, and constraints. The questions below are designed to help explore each of those four constituents. Since all constituents of a rhetorical situation may influence each other, answers to each of the questions below should be reconsidered in light of answers to the other questions.


 * EXIGENCE: the matter and motivation of the discourse.**

Exigence is the driving force in a rhetorical situation that makes a rhetor take the trouble to communicate. It often appears as a problem that needs to be solved or some condition that needs to be changed (or prevented from changing). Exigence is the answer to questions like these: “So what?” “Why should we care about this subject?” “What’s the big deal?”

Exigence concerns “matter” in two senses: the subject matter and why that subject matter matters to the people involved in the situation. The following questions are designed to help rhetors or rhetoricians think about and understand the exigence or matter of a rhetorical situation from various different angles. They are grouped under three general questions that were generated by stasis theory and that reflect related but distinguishable sources of motivation: 1) the subject matter and the issues and values it represents, 2) the timing (kairos) and significance of the discourse, and 3) its objectives:

What subjects does the discourse address? What deeper issues are represented by the subject matter? (What is it really about?) What values are at stake? What problems, questions, or conflicts need to be resolved? At what stases do arguments need to be made, and why?
 * 1) What is the discourse about? (These questions engage the stases of Fact and Definition.)**

Why is now the right time for it? What factor (e.g., an event, occasion, assignment, other discourse) has prompted it? Why do the problems, questions, or conflicts that the discourse will address matter? What might happen if the discourse is not delivered?
 * 2) Why is the discourse needed? (Stases of Cause/Effect and Value)**

What are the aims, goals, or desired outcomes of the discourse? Does it have both primary and secondary objectives? How is the audience supposed to react to the discourse? (Attitude change? Action?)
 * 3) What should the discourse try to accomplish? (Stasis of Policy)**


 * RHETOR(S): person(s) responsible for the discourse and its authorial voice.**

Although “who is the rhetor?” may appear to be a simple question, it can be complicated by, for instance, the various professional and personal roles a rhetor may choose to play—or be required to play—in different situations. It can also be complicated by the existence of multiple rhetors or by the institutional voice that a rhetor or team of rhetors may need to create for workplace discourses.

Who initiates, creates, delivers, and takes responsibility for the discourse—a single rhetor or a team?

If a team, how is responsibility for the discourse shared amongst the members? Is there a hierarchy of responsibility and power? Who has the final editing rights?

What ethos—character, image, reputation—do the rhetors bring to the situation and try to maintain or change through the discourse?

What role or roles will the rhetors play in the discourse? What voices do they use and whom. will those voices represent? What other options are available to them?

Do these roles change during the discourse?

What relationship exists or might be created between rhetor(s) and audience(s)?


 * AUDIENCE: person(s) with whom rhetors negotiate to achieve the rhetorical objectives.**

(The questions below assume that the discourse is written rather than oral, but they can easily be reworded to apply to the audience of a speech.) In institutional situations, rhetors may sometimes also be secondary audience members, as when a junior writer drafts a document that is ultimately intended for a primary audience of customers but that must first satisfy a boss who will be the rhetor officially credited and responsible for the document. Therefore, to the junior writer, the boss is both a secondary audience who will critique the draft and a co-rhetor. It can get complicated.

What range of people might read the discourse? What patterns or groupings can be found within that range?

What might be their reading situations? Where and for what purposes might they read it? What constraints might affect the way they read it? (See below for additional constraints that are related to other factors besides the audience.)

What range of roles will the audience be inclined to play while reading the discourse, and how might those roles differ from the ideal role the rhetor wants them to play?

What stances are audience members likely to adopt in response to the message?

How might those roles and stances help or hinder the rhetor in achieving the rhetorical objectives?

What roles might the discourse induce the audience to play? (How might it shape its audience?)


 * CONSTRAINTS: contextual factors or influences that may affect the achievement of the rhetor’s objectives.**

Constraints are all the other factors (besides the rhetor and the audience) that surround the delivery of a discourse and can influence the way it is received by the audience. Constraints can be positive (“assets” working in the rhetor’s favor) or negative (“liabilities” working against the rhetor’s case).

What are the rhetor’s assets and liabilities in the situation? What factors in the situation’s context might help influence the audience for or against the rhetor’s case? “Context” may include the background to the situation defined in terms of geography, history, culture, morality, religion, politics, economics, intellectual/professional discourse community, forum or place of publication, etc. Context may be local, national, global. “Factors” may include events (both natural and caused by humanity), people (besides the audience), traditions, prevailing attitudes, laws, other discourses, etc. (For example, some rhetors at the 2008 Republican National Convention found themselves constrained by Hurricane Ike, which made landfall during the convention and led them to change their speaking plans. The hurricane became part of their rhetorical situation.)

How might the rhetor address each of the constraints—harnessing its positive effects or minimizing its negative effects?

Does the situation restrict the form of the discourse? Are there limitations on text length, structure, appearance, style, etc.?

How might the content of the discourse constrain readers positively, i.e., lead them toward the rhetor’s objectives? Which is likely to be the rhetor’s most effective material and which the least?

How will the discourse, as it develops, become a constraint on itself, influencing what the rhetor can add to it without losing coherence (the parts of a discourse need to be consistent with each other)?