Bitzer

==Bitzer, Lloyd “The Rhetorical Situation” (1966) == toc
 * Bitzer adds occasion to Kinneavy’s triangle (encoder, decoder, reality)
 * Trying to justify need for rhetorical investigation and discourse and rhetoric as a discipline – contrast with science – and to distinguish rhetoric as more than “mere craft of persuasion”
 * Bitzer is the seed of genre studies – “it is clear that rhetoric is situational” (3)
 * No utterance is understood unless meaning contexts and utterance are understood together
 * “rhetorical situation” – nature of contexts in which speakers or writers create rhetorical discourse – presence of rhetorical discourse “obviously indicates the presence of a rhetorical situation” –“complex of persons, events, objects, and relations presenting an actual or poetnial exigence which can be completely or partically removed if discourse, introduced into the situation, can so constrain human decision or action as to bring about the significant modification of the exigence.”
 * not just a persuasive situation; not just a historic context – rhetorical discourse obtains its rhetorical character from the situation that generates it“rhetoric-as-essentially-related-to-situation”
 * 3 constituences of any rhetorical situation
 * exigence
 * audience to be constrained in decision and action
 * constraints which influence the rhetor and can be brought to bear on audience
 * exigence is an imperfection marked by urgency – not all are rhetorical exigences –if it cannot be modified, it is not rhetorical (like Aristotle’s probability is domain of rhetoric??? – rhetoric addresses “imperfections to be modified by means of discourse”)
 * in any rhetorical situation there is at least one controlling exigence –specifies the audience to be addressed and the change to be effected
 * a speech is rhetorical when
 * it is in response to a rhetorical situation; rhetorical situation invites //a fitting // response;
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; background-color: transparent; color: #000000; color: #000000; font-family: serif; font-family: serif; font-size: 16px; font-size: 16px; text-align: start; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; vertical-align: baseline;">it prescribes (constrains) a fitting response (which is there and prescribed for the rhetoric to “read”),
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; background-color: transparent; color: #000000; color: #000000; font-family: serif; font-family: serif; font-size: 16px; font-size: 16px; text-align: start; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; vertical-align: baseline;">real situations have real exigences, not contrived “sophistic” ones – real rhetorical situation creates a rhetorical response;
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; background-color: transparent; color: #000000; color: #000000; font-family: serif; font-family: serif; font-size: 16px; font-size: 16px; text-align: start; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; vertical-align: baseline;">situations have simple or complex structures,
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; background-color: transparent; color: #000000; color: #000000; font-family: serif; font-family: serif; font-size: 16px; font-size: 16px; text-align: start; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; vertical-align: baseline;">rhetorical situations come into existence and either mature or decay or mature and persist – the situation recurs and as we experience them and the rhetorical responses to them, a form of discourse (forms, style, vocab, grammar…) is established (here is the genre seed)
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; background-color: transparent; color: #000000; color: #000000; font-family: serif; font-family: serif; font-size: 16px; font-size: 16px; text-align: start; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; vertical-align: baseline;">Bizter says in best possible world, “there would be communication perhaps, but no rhetoric--since exigences would not arise” but in real world rhetorical exigences abound – world invites change conceived and affected by human agents that address a mediating audience
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; background-color: transparent; color: #000000; color: #000000; font-family: serif; font-family: serif; font-size: 16px; font-size: 16px; text-align: start; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; vertical-align: baseline;">Bitzer assumes meaning is intrinsic in rhetorical situations and it simply needs to be observed. Much like I find myself disagreeing with anyone so far who seems to believe that language/communication is not socially, culturally, historically, or discursively situated, I find Blitzer’s attempt to define situations as self-contained units of meaning flawed. He seems to want to make rhetoric socially situated and patterned (genre?) but at the same time, not, because the meaning is fully contained in the situation.

Vatz, Richard. "The Myth of The Rhetorical Situation." //Philosophy & Rhetoric// 6.3 (1973)
Vatz claims that rhetorical situations are not objective realities, but rather created by the rhetor. He claims that "no situation can have a nature independent of the preception of its interpreter or independent of the rhetoric with which he chooses to characterize it" (154).

Consigny, Scott. "Rhetoric and Its Situations." //Philosophy & Rhetoric// 7.3 (1974)
Consigny explicates both Bitzer and Vatz's arguments and claims that their antinomy rises from their incomplete views that fail to accommodate for rhetorical practices. He argues that Bitzer is correct in claiming that rhetorical situations are shaped by particularities, but wrong when he claims they are wholly determinate. Moreover, he argues that Vatz is correct by assuming the rhetor creates and translates information to create the situation, but wrong because he does not acknowledge that there are real constraints on rhetoric.

Consigny argues that rhetoric's status as an 'art' helps mediate the differences between Bitzer and Vatz. In other words, the rhetor has flexibility in how she responds to rhetorical situations. Consigny further argues that topics (commonplaces) are a way for rhetors to explore or manage indeterminate contexts.