Journal Reflection #2 - Shannon Herlihy

The classical analysis of the rhetorical situation was pioneered by Bitzer, who claimed that public discourse arises in response to situations that require it. This discourse can only be regarded as rhetorical if the audience is capable of acting as mediators of change. Alongside this audience, a rhetorical situation will also be comprised of at least one exigence and several constraints.

When applied to a piece of everyday writing, like a college textbook, Bitzer’s perspective becomes clear. An academic textbook is produced due to some outlying exigence that calls for its fabrication. This exigence may be something grand, like the need for fresh written material on a new field being studied, or something quite simple, like producing a new edition of a textbook when the previous material becomes too outdated to use. This exigence is solved by the production of the textbook in question. To continue, the author/company producing the form of rhetoric must consider the audiences it will reach. In this case, a college textbook aims to reach college-level students. This audience is quite diverse at the individual level; some students will read the material out of necessity to fulfill class expectations while others will read it for substance, applying it to their current knowledge in their chosen field of study. Lastly, the constraints of the situation can stem from the writer – their personal beliefs, biases, and studies/experiments, the company they work for – or from external causes – the audience may not understand the material, the textbook’s graphics may be too distracting from the written material, etc.

Edbauer’s ecological perspective places less restraint on the situation itself. With this theory, the situation is viewed in a much more fluid manner. It centers on the idea that the social field is all connections, contacts, and moveable parts. In this case, the college textbook must be analyzed by way of the social response. How will different audiences react to the textbook? Will these varied reactions cause social evolution in the understanding of the textbook’s material? Can different meanings arise from the same textbook when read through different eyes? This perspective places more importance on the entire, ongoing process of the rhetorical situation, rather than a strict set of characteristics that define it.