Monday, January 23, 2017
Journal 2
Bitzer's Rhetorical Situation can be defined as an event that consists of an issue, an audience, and a set of constraints. An example of this concept in the real world would be the Women's marches that happened recently. The exigence, or need/demand, would be the need to protest against President Trump's negative, racist, and misogynistic comments towards women and minorities. The next constituent is the audience. The audience comes from everyone who is following the marches or know what is going on with them. The audience is the group of people to whom the people protesting are aiming their message to, which would be the country and the world. The last constituent is a set of constraints. The constraints could be any number of things. One of them could be people. People could get in the way of how the women's marchers' message gets across to the public, as in the media could distort or shield a message from getting across correctly. Another constraint could be a person's gender, social class, and/or race. Edbauer's Rhetorical Ecology theorizes the way texts and discourses move through time and space. An example of this in the real world today would be magazines or articles that circulate around the world. These pieces of work could be studied to see what types of rhetoric they contain and see how they affect the areas that they reach. For example, if a primarily democratic magazine finds its way into a primarily republican area, it could have some sort of political impact on that area. I believe Bitzer and Edbauer would agree that rhetoric has to follow a pattern, in other words, have a structure like issues, audiences, and constraints. However, it seems Edbauer suggests that rhetoric be seen as ecological rather than situational, where circulating texts are constantly transforming audiences.
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Allen,
ReplyDeleteI also used the woman's march as an example of exigence and audience response. I believe this example portrays an excellent example to Bitzer's audience response to a rhetorical situation. Rhetoric is meant to persuade an audience's perspectives and opinions or to shape the immediate future. I believe Trump's, almost could say hate words, triggered an uproar to the majority of the audience that did not agree with his demeaning beliefs and comments about women and minorities. I also enjoyed your example of circulating articles and magazines. They do elaborate Edbauer's ideas of circulation well -- to reach a broader audience using a specific medium.
I like what you said about Edbauer's texts being circulatory. When I read her piece, I immediately thought of her idea of rhetoric being changed over time rather than changed by the views of different demographics. This helped me to look at her work from a new angle.
ReplyDeleteI loved how you used the women's marches to explain Bitzer's definition of Rhetorical Situation. It's very relevant, so I think it will help everyone understand the definitions of exigence, audience, and constraints, regardless of their beliefs and affiliations with the women's marches.
ReplyDeleteAllen,
ReplyDeleteI really like how you connected Bitzer’s Rhetorical Situation to the Womens marches, it helped me to better understand and connect to Bitzer’s ideas of exigence, constraints and audience. I also liked how you explained the idea of audience when it comes to the women’s marches because audience was very important in Bitzers Rhetorical Situation.
Allen, I really liked your example for Edbauer's theory, "circulating texts are constantly changing audiences." It helped me really understand her work better and in a different light.
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