Journal 2

Bitzer focuses on the importance of exigence, constraints, and audience when looking at the rhetorical situation. Exigence in Bitzer’s mind is something that cannot be changed. Constraints are limits on a situation or writing, and the audience are the ones being persuaded or affected by the rhetoric. Bitzer says that the rhetorical situation is a very cut and dry system and only the event taking place has effect on it. One real life example of Bitzer’s view on the rhetorical situation is the protests for women’s rights. The exigence in this situation is the hope for gender equality and to put an end to mistreatment. The audience would be pretty much everyone who has seen, heard, or experienced some of these protests. Her constraint would be those against gender equality and fighting against them. Edbauer on the other hand believes in a very fluid system where rhetoric is viewed as an ongoing development and an ever changing process. She does not disagree with Bitzer’s views, she just feels like there is more to what he has to say. A real life example of Edbauer’s view would be anything directly related to social media. With social media stories become an ongoing process and are turned into much larger jokes then they should be. The death of vine is recently one of these moments. Vine was bought out by twitter and they were stopping the app. People took tis to a whole new level and made jokes or memes about the app being over. They made videos to “remember” the best of vine and wrote obituaries. Another more serious example of this would be everything dealing with the inauguration these past few days. Social media takes stories that could be true or untrue and spreads them like wild fire and situations arise from it. This shows how something can be an ongoing process with one little click of a button. Personally I don’t really have a preference on which view I like better, but Bitzer is very straight to the point and cut and dry which can make something easier to understand.