Journal 2 Talia Colarusso

   For this journal entry I went first to my typical source of news to find an article, The Huffington Post. I check it every day usually when I wake up just to try and keep up with everything going on in this crazy world. Today the post that caught my eye was one on Stanford enforcing a new hard liquor ban,presumably having something to do with the recent Brock Turner rape incident. The article talks about how these sexual assault cases are becoming so apparent in colleges all over the U.S. that actions like banning liquor from campus are becoming more and more common. The ban of the hard liquor from campus is supposed to lessen the frequency of these cases happening along with other cases such as fights, vandalism and so forth.
   Now when it comes to how Bitzer and Edbauer would intemperate this article my hunch is that they would have very different interpretations. I feel this way because their views on rhetoric are so vastly different. To begin to understand how different their views are I first had to start with the basics, brushing up on the definition of what rhetoric actually is. One quick google search later and the deffiniton I found was "the art of effective or persuasive speaking or writing, especially the use of figures of speech and other compositional techniques" thank you Google.
   Bitzer's theory of the rhetorical situation has three main components, exigence, the audience, and constrains. If Bitzer were reading the article I chose he would see the underlying topic of the current rape cases causing campuses to ban hard liquor as the exigence, since this topic has a sense of urgency. especially for the audience who will be reading it since it will be mostly college student. The article will appear to have constraints to him since it will be swaying the audience in a specific direction.
  Edbauer will take a different approach to viewing the article since his views on rhetoric differ so vastly from Bliter's that she even makes a point to bash Bliter's views in the beginning of his article. She sees the topic of rhetoric as being a much larger and more complex thing than Blitzer does. She believes it goes beyond just exigence,audience,and constrains. To Edbauer rhetoric is almost a living thing that will continue long after the article has disappeared.
   To wrap it up  I believe Blitzer and Edbauer would have different interpretations of the article because to Blitzer when the all the buzz and debates around these rape cases end and a ban on hard liquor is made the rhetorical situation will end along with it. To Edbauer the situation will not end because it goes far beyond the constrains of just those who read the article, it will continue to affect college students all over the U.S. for a long time to come.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/stanford-hard-liquor_us_57bc8b95e4b0b51733a61336?section=us_college