This keyword is probably one of the central concepts in every writing course that I teach. Composers design texts within situations where a text does something. I design college composition courses to introduce students to strategies for feeling out rhetorical situations in college. I have to break this concept into pieces to get my head around it. So if you haven’t read the shorter entries for situation (Foundations) and rhetoric (Rhetoric), you might want to check them out first.

A rhetorical situation, for our purposes, is a situation that seems to invite us to respond with a text to what rhetoricians call an exigence, a gap or imperfection in what folks in the situation think or what they are doing (see also the entry on exigence). An exigence–a gap or imperfection–demands a response. A rhetorical situation invites someone to say something to someone with in the limitations of the situation. “Say,” by the way, stands in for all sorts of modes, from providing a video to writing a comment to publishing a research study to whatever. These situations call into existence an audience and a problem or need to be addressed as well as a set of limitations. A Facebook post or a provocative question raised in a lab group meeting can create an exigence for a composer. Most students view such situations in school as situations that invite them to earn a grade rather than opportunities to fill in a gap and change the situation by identifying a problem and posing a next step. That’s something we will have to get over.

Lloyd Bitzer (1968) sort of put this concept on the map. His essay is in our library—it ain’t that easy a read. I’ll offer some longish quotes in this overview. Here’s Bitzer on rhetorical situation and exigence:

Let us regard rhetorical situation as a natural context of persons, events, objects, relations, and an exigence which strongly invites utterance; this invited utterance participates naturally in the situation, is in many instances necessary to the completion of situational activity, and by means of its participation with situation obtains its meaning and its rhetorical character. (Bitzer, 1968, p. 5)

Okay, that needs unpacking. For Bitzer, a rhetorical situation is some “natural” scene full of people, relationships, events, and stuff. The scene “strongly invites” someone to say something. You know you are in a rhetorical situation when saying something or creating a text feels “natural,” the right thing to do, something that you have to do to stay in the scene. More, being in the situation invites participants to influence others by making texts.

We get into rhetorical situations all the time. When I’m leaving work later than I planned, I’m in a rhetorical situation that demands I send a text to my wife with an emoji hoping that I can influence her not to be mad at me. The gap is Linda not knowing that I’m late and also not knowing I’m sorry or maybe not knowing why I’m late. I send a text.

School rhetorical situations are more complicated. The exigence that students often face is a gap in teacher’s evaluation of their skill or knowledge. The natural response is to influence a teacher to give a particular grade. I always try to identify a context for student writers and tell them not to try to influence me. I realize that’s a big ask. Writing for a context that a teacher defines runs against what most students have learned to do in school, and it’s hard work to imagine a context that someone else defined for you. It’s not particularly “natural” and so hard to feel. I still do it. Maybe I hope that it helps learners learn how to read rhetorical situations.

Here are some ideas that might help you read a rhetorical situation.

• Texts are designed in response to situations/contexts
• Texts gain their meaning from situations/contexts.
• Many rhetorical situations/contexts come and go without seeing a text produced.
• Sometimes a demand for a text (an exigence) doesn’t make it clear what text will best serve.
• Sometimes a demand for a text makes clear what audience has a need and even the constraints that a designer has to deal with.

Rhetorical situations need and invite the production of texts that can alter the situation/context, texts that can frame problems and needs and offer ways to respond to and even solve problems and meet needs. Texts, it turns out, can change the world. Don’t believe me. Think about an Obama speech or Trump or Musk tweet.

Here’s a bit more from Bitzer (1968):

Rhetorical situation may be defined as a complex of persons, events, objects, and relations presenting an actual or potential exigence which can be completely or partially removed if discourse, introduced into the situation, can so constrain human decision or action as to bring about the significant modification of the exigence. Prior to the creation and presentation of discourse, there are three constituents of any rhetorical situation: the first is the exigence; the second and third are elements of the complex, namely the audience to be constrained in decision and action, and the constraints which influence the rhetor and can be brought to bear upon the audience. (Bitzer, 1968, p. 6)

More unpacking. A rhetorical situation is a context that presents an exigence that can be filled or “modified” by a text–let’s use “text” for Bitzer’s word “discourse.” Writing a text modifies some gap or imperfection that an audience has. That kinda makes sense. Maybe the three “constituents” also help: rhetorical situations are made up of an exigence, an audience “to be constrained in decision and action” and limitations that composer works with. My text to Linda meets an exigence; she’s my only audience (though she might role her eyes and share it with a friend); I have to write in English or Spanish on a phone. As a text writer, I’m responding to an exigence so as to affect an audience and I work with the limitations that are part of the scene.

If you have read my notes on situation and exigence, you might just expect that I want to complicate Bitzer a little if he is not already complicated enough. Demands for texts, exigencies, and audiences are not things laying around in places like so many rocks waiting to be picked up. They are constructed by a designers’ activity in contexts that are already full of lots of texts. More, designers don’t satisfy exigencies by slapping together the right components, the right kinds of sentences and claims and paragraphs and citations. Exigencies are satisfied through interactions between people and texts in contexts. Designers have to get engaged in networks of events, encounters, relationships. Designers do stuff in networks. It’s not enough to know stuff. And as they do stuff, new events, encounters, relationships pop up in the network.

Relevance for ENGL&101 students and teachers? Every time we sit to write or design an assignment, we sit down to rhetorical situation. We had best ask

• What exigencies can we find, feel, and make in the situations that we take up?
• What audience(s) might our designs both satisfy and also bring into being?
• What limitations do we need to be aware of (Bitzer calls them “constraints”) and how can we push up against those limitations that are always already changing anyway?
• What sort of response is “fitting” and will circulate the effects that you are interested in?

References

Edbauer, J. (2005). Unframing models of public distribution: From rhetorical situation to rhetorical ecologies. Rhetoric Society Quarterly, 35(4), 5–24.

Resources

HtWA. Context is taken up in the discussion of genre (Chapter 2), and there are chapters on audience analysis (Chapter 4) and writing a rhetorical analysis (Chapter 14). Good start.

OWL. There’s a decent discussion of rhetorical situation that goes on for a bit.