Components of a Rhetorical Situation

Defined by LLoyd Bitzer, rhetorical situations are “the context in which speakers or writers create rhetorical discourse”, and they contain six components which are, rhetor or the author, exigence, purpose, audience, constraint, and affordance. Similar to the six components of a discourse community, understanding and identifying these six components of a rhetorical situation is very critical in order for it to be a true rhetorical situation. The first component, rhetor, is defined as “the person(s), real or imagined, creating a given discourse”. The rhetor is who creates the situation determines if it will meet all of the components of a rhetorical situation or not. The next component, exigence, is defined as “a condition or event -often a problem to be solved- that prompts a rhetor to create discourse”. The main way to identify exigence is to analyze the text and ask yourself, what is the author responding to? What is the main problem that this text is trying to address? These questions will set a direct path to discovering the exigence in the text. The next two components of rhetorical situations are purpose and audience. The purpose in a rhetorical text is defined as, “the author’s intended outcome or goal for a piece of discourse; also the proposed solution to the exigence’s problem”. The audience in a rhetorical situation, is “the person(s), real or imagined, whose thoughts or actions a rhetor attempts to influence through discourse”. These two components go hand in hand, because the author’s main purpose is to influence the audience that they are writing their discourse to, and try to convince them of whatever exigence they are trying to prove. The last two components are constraints and affordances. Constraints are defined as, “factors in a rhetorical situation that limit the rhetor’s options when creating discourse”. Affordances are defined as, “opportunities present in a rhetorical situation that a rhetor can exploit to benefit the discourse”. These two components are very related by being opposite of each other. When speaking or writing, Constraints refer to as the negative constraints, and affordances refer to as the positive constraints. These six components are very crucial as to identifying rhetorical situations in writing pieces, similarly to how we use six different components to identify discourse communities. These writing pieces are aimed for various different audiences, and when incorporated into your writing it allows you to focus on different aspects within a rhetorical writing piece.