Journal 2-JLS

Consider the obituary of an everyday person. I think according to Bitzer this would be a rhetorical situation that wouldn't exist, as we could not predict when the person would be passing, and it wouldn't be impactful enough to need to be thought of beforehand, so what would be the point? Death of an individual person is not necessarily an exigence, while a natural disaster that kills thousands of people would be. So would Adolf Hitler’s obituary be considered a rhetorical situation? Would it not have been written after his death in a way to attempt to convince the world that he was not as horrible a human as we all believed? Would it not have mentioned family members, those he mentored who loved him so, or the good deeds he attempted? Would it mention the art that he left behind, his creative soul attempting to bring light and wonder into this world? If someone who did not hear of his atrocities in life but read of his triumphs in death have a completely different view of the man who was? Edbauer spends a lot of time quoting other people, and using their examples to fuel her response, and I had a difficult time separating the two. Maybe that was her point? For example, we have a place in town called ‘railroad square’, which is a common gathering place for a community of people that consider themselves “free spirited” or outside of the norm in some aspect. When people speak of railroad square (commonly shorted to the acronym ‘RRS’) it changes the mood of the conversation-for better or for worse, obviously depending on to whom you are speaking and the topic of conversation. I don't believe that Edbauer’s writing of rhetorical situations would be valid without Bitzer, as his viewpoint is the building block of this entire conversation. I think I relate more to Bitzer’s way of looking at rhetoric than Edbauer, but that likely to be because I found Bitzer easier to read than Edbauer.