CAS100C:
Lesson 2: Understanding the Rhetorical Situation
Lesson 2 Overview
Objectives
Upon completion of this lesson, you should be able to:
- Distinguish listening and critical listening.
- Understand the importance of effective listening.
- Apply effective listening principles to the evaluation of speeches.
- Use the rhetorical situation to evaluate speeches.
- Assess Ronald Reagan's "White House Address to the Nation" (popularly known as the "Challenger" address) according to the rhetorical situation.
- Develop strategies for choosing the topics and purposes for your own speeches and for assessing similar choices made by speakers for the speeches you will analyze.
Lesson Readings & Activities
Read the chapters and additional articles first and then return to the Lesson commentary for instruction on how to apply the concepts in the activities and in rhetorical criticism. By the end of this lesson, make sure you have completed the readings and activities found in the Lesson 2 Course Schedule.
Analyzing Public Discourse
This lesson will further develop your understanding of the rhetorical situation as a critical perspective to use in analyzing public discourse. To effectively analyze public discourse, you must listen strategically. To be a citizen-critic, you must attend to what speakers say and how they say it so that you can properly draw on speeches as resources for taking part in public decision-making. Ultimately, you will then be in a better position to prepare your own speeches as part of the deliberative processes in public life.
What Is Criticism?
In Chapter 4, the author defines rhetorical criticism as "the analytic assessment of messages that are intended to affect other people" (p. 89). We can extend this definition to include texts, cultural artifacts, and other symbols that have persuasive effects. Again, almost all messages—even those that are meant simply to inform or to entertain—have some persuasive element and are therefore rhetorical. Insofar as messages influence how we think, how we act, and what we believe, they have consequences in our public and private lives and, therefore, we listen to them as citizen-critics.
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.
1 Bitzer, Lloyd F. “The Rhetorical Situation.” Philosophy and Rhetoric 1 (January, 1968) 1–14. ↩
The Rhetorical Situation: Audience
In the section on audience in Chapter 1 (and later in Chapter 5), Dr. Zarefsky describes the important roles for the audience in the speech-preparation process and provides instruction in how to analyze your audience. Keep in mind that every time he says “you” and “your” with regard to your speech preparation, you can also hear him say “he” or “her” in terms of how a speaker perceived the audience for the speeches you analyze. For example, when you consider the rhetorical situation for the Challenger address, think about how President Reagan was able to anticipate the constraints placed and resources provided by the audience. Then, as you prepare your speech about the Challenger speech, think about how your audience places constraints on and provides resources for your speech.
You may learn about the audience for a particular speech in different ways. In many cases, historical information can help you assess the audience. You might look at who was physically present when the speech was given, but also find out who read, heard, or viewed the speech through another medium (newspaper, television, etc.). Often, speakers, especially public figures, are quite aware that their audience extends beyond the live audience present at the delivery of the speech. Additionally, you can look to the speech itself to determine whom the speaker is addressing. Speakers will choose specific types of language in the speech to address and influence different audiences. By looking at a speech, you can often find clues about whom the speaker hoped to influence, even though that particular audience might not be obvious. Scholarly articles and journalistic reports also provide essential information. Ultimately, we are concerned with not only describing the audience, but also with understanding it as a constraint and a resource used by the speaker; we judge how well that was done.
When you prepare your own speeches, use Dr. Zarefsky's advice as you adapt them, in the rhetorical situation, to the needs and expectations of your audience.
The Rhetorical Situation: Occasion
The second variable you must consider in the rhetorical situation is the occasion, including the event and place at which a speech is delivered. Every speech takes place within a context that includes simultaneous events, audience expectations of appropriate behavior, and the exigence presented by the speaker. Dr. Zarefsky discusses the three genres or categories of speeches that emerge from and help shape the occasion generally: deliberative speech, forensic speech, and ceremonial speech. Since these types of speech have distinct purposes, your judgment of a speech as a fitting response must consider whether the speech achieved its purpose as shaped by the occasion. Keep in mind, though, that occasion refers to more than just genre and is shaped by date and location considerations. For example, it matters whether the president is speaking from the back of a train, from the Oval Office, or in front of a Joint Session of Congress: each of these locations, and the timing of the speech, provides resources and places constraints on the speech.
Each genre of speaking has clear expectations that a speaker should follow. Within each genre, there are sub-genres that further constrain or contribute to the effectiveness of the speech. Presidential inaugurals, for example, are in the sub-genre of presidential rhetoric, which can be further sub-divided into the genre of inaugural addresses. In this case, the speeches are almost always positive in nature. We expect an incoming president to celebrate America and democracy and would be disappointed, if not offended, if a president talked about how bad everything was in America. In evaluating the occasion, you would try to determine what the occasion was (as many speeches combine genres) and whether the speaker fulfills the expectations of the particular situation.
As you begin thinking about the analysis you will do in the Rhetorical Situation speech, you can find more help in Chapter 16, in which Dr. Zarefsky discusses the occasions for speeches and the expectations for speech genres. If you will be analyzing a speech that clearly belongs to a genre, this discussion will be especially helpful. And, as you consider the situations in which you have to give speeches, the discussion will give you guidance on how to prepare speeches that are fitting responses to the exigencies and situational requirements you face.
The Rhetorical Situation: Speaker
The third element of the rhetorical situation is the speaker; the speaker is both a constraint on effectiveness and a great source of persuasiveness. In addition to the logos of the speech itself and the pathos of appeals to audience emotion, speakers rely on ethos. The speaker’s ethos, or character (as perceived by the audience), is partly a result of the reputation the speaker has with the audience, but it is more fully formed by the judgment the audience makes of the speaker's character during the speech. Classically, ethos was understood as goodwill, good judgment, and general "excellence" as a public person. Speakers with these traits were more persuasive. More recently, social scientists have considered the idea of "source credibility," and rhetorical critics have added the psychology of "identification." Credibility is related to truthfulness and trustworthiness. Identification refers to the relationship between the speaker and the listeners: if the speaker appears to be very much like the audience, then the audience is inclined to trust the speaker's intentions and accept her arguments. If the audience sees a "sameness" between the speaker and themselves, the audience presumes that even a self-interested speaker is speaking on behalf of audience interests. Dr. Zarefsky considered identification in terms of relationship-building between speaker and audience in Chapter 1 and turns to it more fully in discussing persuasion in Chapter 14. The idea even appears in the structure of speech introductions and in stylistic matters of decorum within the occasion.
In Chapter 1, Dr. Zarefsky considers the speaker in terms of the speaker's success in achieving the goal or purpose of the speech; later, in Chapter 5, he also considers the speaker's ethos as a constraint in the rhetorical situation. Citizen-critics also examine the speaker's ethos. As a critic, you would determine how the speaker's ethos enhances or detracts from the message and how it is a resource for the speech or an obstacle to be overcome. As a speaker yourself, you would prepare for a speech by understanding how you are perceived by the audience and how that adds to your success as a speaker.
The Rhetorical Situation: Speech
The fourth element in the rhetorical situation is the speech itself. A speech that is a fitting response to the rhetorical situation helps to eliminate the exigence by having good and logical ideas. It is coherent in its reasoning and draws on audience values as well as facts and evidence in making its arguments. The language used in the speech and the arrangement of the formal parts of the speech add to a fitting response—or sometimes they detract. Most of the instruction throughout Dr. Zarefsky's book is aimed at helping you prepare a speech that is a fitting response to the rhetorical situation in which you will be speaking. You can also use his ideas, when you listen as a citizen-critic, to help you judge a speech and reach decisions in public life. And, as a rhetorical critic, you can judge a speech as a fitting response to its rhetorical situation.
These four elements—audience, occasion, speaker, and speech—make up the rhetorical situation. After analyzing these elements and considering how they imposed constraints or provided resources, you should be able to make an informed and critical assessment of a speech's quality. Critical listening, then, goes beyond simply liking a speech or even forming an assessment of the quality of ideas in it: critical listening includes an understanding of the whole rhetorical situation and using that understanding to assess a speech.
Listening Critically
Before you analyze Ronald Reagan's speech using the rhetorical situation framework, you should understand how to listen critically to the message, a skill that will help you be a better critic.
Chapter 4 in Dr. Zarefsky's text reviews basic listening skills and reasons to listen carefully and critically. These will serve you well whenever you listen to a speech as a citizen-critic in public life or when you are thinking about the listening you ask your audience to do when you prepare and give a speech. The skills can also be adapted for your work as a rhetorical critic when you listen to the Challenger address and to the speech you have chosen to study for the Rhetorical Situation speech assignment.
Critical thinking plays an important role in effective listening. Not only do you listen for the content and the art of the speaker, you also consider how you can express your judgments and defend your analysis of the speech. Usually, we can defend our judgments about speeches by using the evaluation standards discussed in Chapter 4. The fitting response in the rhetorical situation is one standard of judgment; successfully achieving the purpose for the speech is another; and ethics provides standards of judgment, as do the principles of criticism.
Listening is hard work. Effective listening matches the effort put in by the speaker (and sometimes exceeds it) in the interest of making decisions in public life, in making judgments about the quality of speeches, and in learning from other speakers how we can prepare our own speeches well. The hard work is rewarded, of course, when we can see clearly just how good a speech can be.
The Challenger Address
View “The Challenger Address” by Ronald Reagan. Then complete the Lesson 2 assignment.
PRESIDENT RONALD REAGAN: Ladies and gentlemen, I'd planned to speak to you tonight to report on the State of the Union, but the events of earlier today have led me to change those plans. Today is a day for mourning and remembering. Nancy and I are pained to the core by the tragedy of the shuttle Challenger. We know we share this pain with all of the people of our country. This is truly a national loss.
Nineteen years ago, almost to the day, we lost three astronauts in a terrible accident on the ground, but we've never lost an astronaut in flight. We've never had a tragedy like this, and perhaps we've forgotten the courage it took for the crew of the shuttle. But they, the Challenger Seven, were aware of the dangers and overcame them and did their jobs brilliantly. We mourn seven heroes—Michael Smith, Dick Scobee, Judith Resnik, Ronald McNair, Ellison Onizuka, Gregory Jarvis, and Christa McAuliffe. We mourn their loss as a nation together.
For the families of the seven, we cannot bear, as you do, the full impact of this tragedy, but we feel the loss and we're thinking about you so very much. Your loved ones were daring and brave, and they had that special grace, that special spirit that says, "Give me a challenge, and I'll meet it with joy." They had a hunger to explore the universe and discover its truths. They wished to serve, and they did. They served all of us.
We've grown used to wonders in this century. It's hard to dazzle us. But for 25 years, the United States space program has been doing just that. We've grown used to the idea of space, and perhaps we forget that we've only just begun. We're still pioneers. They, the members of the Challenger crew, were pioneers.
And I want to say something to the schoolchildren of America who were watching the live coverage of the shuttle's takeoff. I know it's hard to understand, but sometimes, painful things like this happen. It's all part of the process of exploration and discovery. It's all part of taking a chance and expanding man's horizons. The future doesn't belong to the fainthearted. It belongs to the brave. The Challenger crew was pulling us into the future, and we'll continue to follow them.
I've always had great faith in and respect for our space program, and what happened today does nothing to diminish it. We don't hide our space program. We don't keep secrets and cover things up. We do it all up front and in public.
That's the way freedom is, and we wouldn't change it for a minute. We'll continue our quest in space. There will be more shuttle flights and more shuttle crews and, yes, more volunteers, more civilians, more teachers in space. Nothing ends here. Our hopes and our journeys continue.
I want to add that I wish I could talk to every man and woman who works for NASA or who worked on this mission and tell them, "Your dedication and professionalism have moved and impressed us for decades. And we know of your anguish. We share it."
There's a coincidence today. On this day 390 years ago, the great explorer Sir Francis Drake died aboard ship off the coast of Panama. In his lifetime, the great frontiers were the oceans. And a historian later said, "He lived by the sea, died on it, and was buried in it." Well, today, we can say of the Challenger crew, "Their dedication was, like Drake's, complete."
The crew of the space shuttle Challenger honored us by the manner in which they lived their lives. We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them—this morning—as they prepared for their journey and waved goodbye and "slipped the surly bonds of Earth" to "touch the face of God." Thank you.
Lesson 2 Activities
Criticism of Criticism Speech Video (YouSeeU)
Description
In this initial speech, you will do more than introduce yourself to the class and test the YouSeeU system.
Instructions
In preparation for this speech, find a piece of published criticism about something you love. Tell us about the thing you love, what the critic says about it, and what you have to say about the criticism. Focus mostly on what you learn about criticism from reading some criticism. Your purpose in this speech should not be to persuade the audience to your point of view on your objet d'amour, or that the criticism—positive or negative—is right or wrong. Instead, you’ll explore what criticism is in this particular case and what it assumes about criticism in general. Along the way, you’ll also give the audience insight into your own background, personality, beliefs, values, attitudes, or aspirations. Particular care will be given to explain difficult concepts or aspects of the subject of which a general audience would not ordinarily be aware. Visual aids can only be used to show the thing you love. Source citations are not required unless published sources are used as supporting evidence, but be clear about the author, date, and source of the criticism you discuss. Your speech will display both mastery of the subject-matter and adaptation to the audience in its arguments and appeals, its structure, and use of language.
Length of Presentation: 2–3 minutes
Select the Criticism of Criticism Speech Video assignment in YouSeeU to record or upload your video. Be sure to post your completed video in YouSeeU during the first two weeks of our course.
Lesson 2 Assignment
Description
You will answer questions based on the reading and use the reading to analyze an example of epideictic speech. The reading will also help as you make final preparations for the Criticism of Criticism speech of introduction.
Instructions
This lesson's assignment has two parts. Please be sure to complete both parts in a single Word document and submit it to complete the assignment. Use and cite at least 3 scholarly sources from the Communication and Mass Media database at libraries.psu.edu (or from a similar scholarly database) to support your claims.
Part I: Analyzing the Rhetorical Situation in Ronald Reagan’s Challenger Address
The assignment for this lesson gives you an opportunity to show your understanding of critical listening and of the method of rhetorical criticism that involves the concept of the rhetorical situation. Looking ahead to the Rhetorical Situation speech assignment, you will also report which speech you plan to analyze using this method.
Before viewing the speech, be sure to read Chapter 4 in your textbook on listening and thinking critically. The concepts and techniques described in the chapter will help you when listening to Reagan’s address. Review, also, Chapter 6; considering the purpose behind President Reagan's speech will help you with your analysis.
In this essay, you will analyze Ronald Reagan's “White House Address to the Nation,” popularly referred to as the Challenger address, in terms of the rhetorical situation. Your essay must address each element of the rhetorical situation to provide supporting evidence for your claims by drawing from the concepts in your book, from your own observations about the speech, and from what you find in the scholarly literature. Steven Mister’s article, an additional reading for this Lesson, should also be used in your argument. These outside sources will be particularly helpful in providing specific information about the audience, the historical context, the events, the president, and NASA.
Requirements
All papers should be Word-processed and cited in the style you are most familiar with (such as APA, MLA, or Chicago). Your paper should be approximately 600–900 words, or two to three double-spaced pages, in Times New Roman;12-point font.
You must have a minimum of three scholarly sources, such as journal articles or scholarly books, for this paper (see an example that you can use for this assignment in the footnote below).1 In addition, you can use news magazines, such as Time or Newsweek, and newspaper articles for background and historical information. Sources that originate on the Internet are not acceptable. (This means that, if you have a source that was originally published in print but is available online, it is okay to use that source). Remember to take advantage of the Penn State University Libraries search engines. In particular, you may find the New York Times Historical and the ProQuest search engines helpful for this and many of your other assignments.
All papers must be free from typographical and spelling mistakes. Errors of grammar, syntax, and composition affect the assignment grade.
Please compose your essay and bibliography in a Word document and submit it as an attachment to the lesson drop box as a single document that includes Part II of this assignment.
Part II: Choosing a Topic for Your Rhetorical Analysis and Cultural Commonplaces Speaking Activities
For Part II, please indicate the topics for your two major speeches in this course. Please read the activity requirements so that you understand the specific expectations for each presentation.
The Rhetorical Situation speech will be a six- to eight-minute speech in which you analyze a speech according to the concepts of the rhetorical situation. This is an expanded version of the assignment you are doing for the Challenger address in this lesson. You may choose any speech (from such sources as American Rhetoric) that interests you and your audience, except for movie-speeches or speeches that are discussed elsewhere in the lessons for this course. You must be able to access a full-text version of the speech and, preferably, audio and/or video.
Please include
- the name of the speech,
- the name of the speaker,
- the date the speech was given, and
- where you found the text/audio/video online (providing the link or URL).
The Cultural Commonplaces speech will be a six- to eight-minute speech in which you analyze a cultural artifact according to the critical methods developed later in this course. This is an expanded version of the assignment you are doing in Lesson 8. Your artifact should be something that the audience can recognize and engage with. Examples of artifacts for this speech include (but are not limited to) pieces of art, advertisements (print, radio, television, Internet, billboards), television shows, movies, books, short stories, poetry, commercial products, monuments, video games, music, music videos, religious artifacts, and sports. This list is not exhaustive, and you can propose something not listed above that you feel strongly about.
Keep in Mind…
- Please compose proposals in a Word document and submit it as a single-document, file upload that includes Part I of this assignment.
- Note that the assignment has two parts: analyzing a speech and picking topics for the Midterm and Final speeches.
- For Part I, pay particular attention to the first two sentences in the section on The Rhetorical Situation—use the framework of the theory to explain whether the speech was a fitting response.
1 In MLA, it would be: Lule, Jack. “The Political Use of Victims: The Shaping of the Challenger Disaster.” Political Communication & Persuasion 7.2 (July 1990): 115–128. ↩