JR 2 - Jacob McMenamin

              Today I read a popular weekly webcomic that focuses on science. This particular strip was a graph depicting the change in average global temperature over the past 20,000 years. A continuous dotted line representing the global average in Celsius ran down the vertical length of the comic strip, with time being the vertical axis and temperature being the horizontal. The line gradually shifts towards the center of the graph over several thousands of years, remains steady for the most part, then in the past twenty years or so, swings dramatically to the right, indicating an unprecedented increase in average global temperature.

              I think Bitzer would say that there is a clear rhetorical exigency for this particular text, and the situation already exists and demands a response: it is a response to skeptics and deniers of human-induced climate change, an urgent and pressing topic, presented within the constraints of an illustrated webcomic. The discrete elements of discourse are all present in this particular situation. However, Edbauer may interpret this comic as a part of a wider cultural network. She might say that it’s a response to a public understanding of what “climate change” is and what those words might evoke. She may refer to a larger public debate over climate change, its political significance, or other effects it may have within a broad context.  She may agree that a exigent situation exists demanding a response to climate change skeptics, but she might argue that such a situation is impossible to be contained, as it requires knowledge of situations over the period of many years, as evidenced by the graph.