The Rhetorical Situation

Lloyd Bitzer introduced the idea of the rhetorical situation to explain how speeches are called into existence: they are a response to a problem, but they are limited in the ways they can respond.¹ How this works will be explained in the next few paragraphs, but here's a quick example: You are sitting in a Parent-Teacher Association meeting at your child's high school when someone suggests that a particular book should be banned from the school library. If you are opposed to banning books, this suggestion is something you will want to eliminate; the meeting itself, the audience, you, and how you choose to phrase your response all provide resources for and limits on what you can say.

Rhetorical critics have developed the concept further to use the analytic theory as a critical method. If a speech properly uses the resources and constraints of a situation to eliminate the exigence that brought the speech into being, then the speech is judged a fitting response—in other words, it's a good speech. Zarefsky draws on Bitzer's ideas to define the rhetorical situation as a situation in which people's understanding can be changed through messages. More importantly, an exigence (an urgent imperfection) is removed by the speech within the constraints and through the resources afforded by four components: audience, occasion, speaker and speech. As we shall see, the rhetorical situation includes much more than the historical or social context of the message; it is a framework that explains how speeches come into being as fitting responses to the situation. (Remember, a fitting response is one that fits the situation: it makes the most of the resources and constraints to say something that eliminates the imperfection.) We can take it further, as critics, to help us assess whether a particular speech was a fitting response to its situation. We will do this in this lesson by evaluating the Challenger address. You will also do this in your Rhetorical Situation speech assignment in the eighth lesson of the course. As you can tell, your preparation for that assignment begins now.

You have re-read the rhetorical situation section in Chapter 1, so let's consider how each of the four elements can be understood and used as a tool for rhetorical criticism. Keep in mind, however, that the textbook was written to help students prepare any kind of speech; Dr. Zarefsky's discussion is aimed toward helping student prepare speeches. You will use his advice, too, when you prepare your speeches, but as a critic, you'll need to extend his discussion of the rhetorical situation as a method to analyze speeches. The rhetorical situation, as a theory and as a critical tool, is not just a convenient way to organize your comments on a speech; it prompts us to use standards of judgment based on the question “Did the speech excel in accommodating the constraints and in using the opportunities of each element in the situation so as to be a fitting response—one that eliminated the exigence?”

For example, in “I Have a Dream” by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., we know this is a great speech and an important piece of civic poetry. But, was it a fitting response to the situation? If an exigence is “an imperfection marked by urgency that can be eliminated by speech,” then what needs to be accomplished in that moment (in addition to its enduring effects)? As Dr. King states, the purpose of the speech and the March was “to dramatize a deplorable condition”—that is, to amplify and to create an emotional series of events. The exigence was that the audience needed encouragement in a difficult task, and the history tells us that the speech continues to fulfill its purpose. The immediate historical context for the speech was the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom (28 August 1963), which occurred during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. As the 16th speech on a long, hot day during a difficult period in the Movement and for the nation as a whole, the speech was constrained by decorum and plausibility, but it drew on the resources within the Occasion of the Lincoln Memorial location and the purpose of the March. The Audience of 250,000 Civil Rights supporters, the Justice Department within the Kennedy Administration, and Civil Rights supporters disenchanted with Dr. King’s non-violent approach constrained the speech with their expectations, but provided resources of shared values and common religious and political texts. The Speaker was constrained by his previous statements and the challenges to his leadership, but had the resources of previous Baptist sermons available as he diverted from the prepared manuscript in the Dream section. The Speech itself was constrained by its dramatic structure, contrasting the “fierce urgency of now” with the “cup of bitterness” to produce a dilemma; the dilemma then became a resource as the speech rose above it and transcended the constraint in the Dream section. We can judge the speech as a fitting response because it managed the constraints and used the resources successfully.

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¹ Bitzer, Lloyd F. “The Rhetorical Situation.” Philosophy and Rhetoric 1 (January, 1968) 1–14. ↩