Keith Grant-Davie’s article “Rhetorical Situations and Their Constituents” covers a number of crucial subjects, including the audience, exigence, rhetors, and limits. The article raises many significant issues regarding the understanding of rhetorical situations. According to Grant-Davie, the article’s primary goal “is to review the original definitions of the term and its constituents, and to offer a more thoroughly developed scheme for analyzing rhetorical situations” (264).
What stood out to me was how Grant-Davie defined constraints and audience. The term “audience” still refers to the group of individuals that a certain discourse is intended for, but it goes beyond the concept of “a homogenous body of people … assembled in the rhetor’s presence” (270). Because a rhetor can influence an audience just as much as an audience can influence a rhetor, the roles of the two are intertwined. He also focuses on constraints, “Factors in the situation’s context that may affect the achievement of the rhetorical objectives” (272) and their role in discourses. In writing and discourse constraints are both limitations and guidelines. In another point of view constraints can be seen as obstacles and restrictions. The audience is often one of the biggest constraints. For example, a discourse about neuropsychology is changed and limited if the audience has only taken an introductory psychology course.
Personally, reading the article has increased my understanding of discourse analysis. Grant-Davie has shown me very important aspects that need to be examined when analyzing any type of discourse.
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