Journal 2

Bitzer and Edbauer have generally contrasting philosophies on the concept of rhetoric. Bitzer’s rhetoric is largely situational and is focused on three main aspects: the audience, the exigence, and the constraints. An example of Bitzer’s rhetoric played out in real life would be any professional sports team. The exigence is the players’ call to action to win the championship, the audience would be the fans that support these teams, and the constraints would be factors such as injury and opposing teams.

Edbauer, on the other hand, believes that rhetoric should be seen as ecological rather than situational. She believes that Bitzer’s rhetorical situation complicated the standard ‘sender-reciever’ public communication model. Edbaur’s rhetoric revolves around the concept of exigence being a more complex of various audience and speaker perceptions and institutional or material constraints. An example of this form of rhetoric would be suggests that rhetorical context is always changing and cannot be isolated to one particular audience, creator, or text. An example that would demonstrate Edbauer’s rhetorical theory would be an old student yearbook photo repurposed as a meme. Although the photo was originally taken to create a lasting memory of the student, a new creator has taken the text and used it in a manner to appeal to a new audience rather than its original intended audience.

Although I comprehend both theorists’ rhetorical ideologies, I think I agree with Edbauer’s definition of rhetoric more than I do with bitzer’s. I believe that with the advances that the digital age have brought, rhetoric is much less constrained to a sole purpose. The ability to edit a photograph or alter a text and apply it to separate audiences is much easier with the use of technology than it was before. I think that because a message with one intention can be understood and used for a separate intention, Bitzer’s standard rhetorical triangle type of philosophy is outdated and no longer accurate. In the words of Edbauer, “the rhetorical situation is part of an ongoing social flux”. Rhetorical context can be repurposed and used to convey many different messages which leads me to find Edbauer’s rhetorical ecology more relatable.