What is it? The rhetorical situation is the context, or the circumstances surrounding an event, which affects the end result. While it is easiest to think about rhetorical situations solely in writing, they exist all around us. Keith Grant-Davie, author of "Rhetorical Situations and their Constituents", says that we must "examine rhetorical situations as sets of interacting influences from which rhetoric arises, and which rhetoric in turn influences" (Grant-Davie 264). In writing, the rhetorical situation is composed of the writer, their exigence, and the audience. Being able to identify these components and how one relates to the other is key not only in reading but in going deeper into your own writing. Once you identify the writer, exigence, and audience in other writings, you can more effectively use them as sources to support your own ideas. Margret Kantz, author of "Helping Students Use Textual Sources Persuasively" and college English professor, uses Kinneavy’s triangle to illustrate the rhetorical situation. She goes on to explain that even though all compositions involve these three aspects, different types of writing “may pertain more to a particular point of the triangle than to the others” (Kantz 80). However, I believe that each component of Kinneavy’s triangle plays an equal part in fully understanding a composition. A rhetorical situation cannot exist without a perceived problem that can be solved through discourse.
Why am I Reading This? Identifying the Exigence Do you ever get about halfway through a reading and wonder “What the hell does this have to do with what I’m supposed to be learning”? Don’t worry… you’re not alone. Identifying the topic of a discourse can help you better understand why you’re reading it and what you should be getting out of it. Sometimes the exigence, or purpose, of a composition is easy to spot. For example, in Karen Rosenberg’s “Reading Games: Strategies for Reading Scholarly Essays”, both the audience and the exigence can be found in the same paragraph. Rosenberg states that “if your reading assignments confound you…then pay attention,” clearly addressing her audience as students who have difficulty with academic reading. She goes on to say that she “[has] some insights to share with you designed to make the reading process more productive, more interesting, and more enjoyable” (Rosenberg 211). We now know that she is writing to students in order to teach them how to more easily read assigned texts. Unfortunately the writer won’t always spell out their exigence that easily. In cases such as these, you will need to assess what you know about the author, who the audience is, and information you gathered from the text to determine the purpose.
Importance of the Speaker in the Rhetorical Situation Learning background information about the writer can help you to understand a number of things about a text. For example, discovering that the writer of an article on cellular respiration is a biology professor would establish credibility with you as the reader. Because you now know that this person knows a great deal about their field, you are more likely to believe the claims that they make in their article. Knowing their background could also play a part in establishing who the intended audience is. In Milo Beckman’s “Why I Write Bad”, he writes about the cycle of teaching and creating “fluffy” writing that “sounds good” instead of genuinely good, original writing in the school system. Before reading the article, we can deduce that Beckman is a student at Harvard University because of the fact that the piece is published through a student-run news site, The Harvard Crimson, for the school. That prior knowledge combined with statements like “It’s not our fault that the system’s broken, but it’s on us to fix it” (Beckman) identifies the audience as fellow students (“us” being the operative word given that we’d already identified Beckman as a student himself). Understanding your audience also plays a huge roll both in your writing and in understanding your reading. For more information on this, click to the next page using the button below.