Bitzer illustrates his idea
of rhetoric as “a natural context of persons, events, objects, relations, and
exigence which strongly invites utterances…” He values exigence, audience,
constraints, and discourse and the idea that rhetorician’s “answer an invitation
to solve a problem through discourse.” His idea of the rhetorical situation
thrives off of work that is more situational, as a response, and without a
large effort of creativity. An example of Bitzer’s idea of rhetoric would be
Bush’s response to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. His speeches
were addressed to the nation in response to an unforgettable tragedy, a method
of discourse that Bitzer highly favored, studied and referenced. As far as a
few of Bitzer’s main focal points go, Edbauer can relate to a majority of them,
but they also share differences. Edbauer doesn’t focus as hard on situational
up rises as Bitzer and has a more complicated outlook on rhetoric with outside
influences factoring into her equation, whereas Bitzer is far more strict with idea,
focuses on the impact that derives from the rhetoricians response. Edbauer
believes that an ecological or affective model of rhetoric is one that “reads
rhetoric both as a process of distributed emergence and as an outgoing
circulation process.” She places a strong emphasis on how things move through
time and as a process, while also analyzing outside sources and networks. I can
relate to and understand her idea of Rhetorical Ecology over Bitzer’s
Rhetorical Situation because she doesn’t choose to focus simply on point A and
B addressed in a rhetorical situation, but all the factors circulating and
shared between those variables. An
example of Edbauer’s Rhetorical Ecology was hard to produce, but I believe a
fitting choice would be the women’s marches held in various states this past
weekend following President Trump’s inauguration. Although the marches
technically fit both these authors idea of rhetoric, I find it fitting for
Edbauer because the marches were a result of both women and men emotionally responding
to Trump’s discourse, actions, and incidents over an extended period of time.
Emma,
ReplyDeleteI like how you apply Bitzer to an event that all of America can remember. It makes it easier for your reader to be able to comprehend Bitzer when you apply it to real life events. I also like how you tie Edbauer into it because that also helps me contrast the two readings and see how they differ and how they are similar.