Journal 2: Bitzer vs. Rice (Edbauer)

Bitzer and Rice are quite similar yet different in a multitude of ways. On one hand, Bitzer's view of the rhetorical situation is very constrained. He zeros in on the rhetor, audience, and exigence with a very narrow scope. He doesn't take into account negative exigence or outside experiences/forces. On the other hand, Rice is looking more at the generalized picture. Yes, there is a rhetorical situation where a rhetor communicates to an audience and creates exigence, but she sees the domino effect of previous exigencies. She notices how outside forces come into play when seeing a rhetorical situation. Not only that, she observes the way that the exigencies create another rhetorical situation.

A beautiful example would be the women's march on Tallahassee. In fact, you could include all of the women's marches over this weekend. These marches are applicable to both Bitzer and Rice. In the case of Bitzer, each march could be it's own rhetorical situation. I would consider the rhetor to be the women leading the march, the audience to be bystanders, and the exigence to be when the bystanders choose to take action because of the way the march made them feel. Looking at Rice, you start to notice outside factors. Perhaps the exigency of a woman isn't only because of the march, but because of past experiences that come into play when the march gave her a surge of emotion. The audience more than likely has outside influences or experiences guiding their feelings in a certain direction. Where all of the women's marches could be considered separate rhetorical situations while following Bitzer's model, you could argue that they are all linked through Rice's; There's a common cause or feeling that brought each woman (and man) to these marches to protest together.

A second example could be Meryl Streep's speech at the Golden Globes this year. Her words slowly descended from humor into a heavy call to the people for action against current administration; mostly to the press to "call them on the carpet." If you haven't seen it, it's a moving speech that has her audience ready to act. This is where you see a lot of Bitzer. The rhetor, Meryl, entices her Golden Globe audience to act, creating exigency. However, Rice is much more applicable in this situation. Her audience was not just one she could see, but one which she couldn't. The golden globes were streamed live around the globe for millions to bear witness. She says "Disrespect invites disrespect. Violence incites violence," and what she calls our new president out for recent actions, it creates millions of new rhetorical situations branching out and even reaching to our president who, as par the usual, fired back in a series of tweets the next morning. One of the tweets was so boldly self-confident that it proved her point; he tweeted "Meryl Streep, one of the most over-rated actresses in Hollywood, doesn't know me but attacked me last night at the Golden Globes. She is a..." He also attempted to say that he did not MOCK a disabled reporter, but simply showed him..." and lastly accused the media of being dishonest (again). I believe that in these examples, there is much more than meets Bitzer's eye.