The Rhetorical Situation
Rhetorical Situation refers to any set of circumstances that involves at least one person using some sort of communication to modify the perspective of at least one other person.
Over the course of the 20th century, “rhetoric” came to be used as a descriptor for all use of communication (ancient Greeks known as the Sophists also had a broader view of the term "rhetoric"). The simplest explanation for this is that “rhetoric” in the persuasive sense implies an effort on the part of speakers to get what they want out of other people.
The newer sense of “rhetoric” implies that whenever humans communicate with other humans, they seek to elicit any number of responses ranging from understanding to emotional reaction to agreement to enlightenment or any one of almost limitless reactions. At its most basic, communication is the set of methods whereby humans attempt to identify with each other.
Every rhetorical situation has four basic components: an author, an audience, a text of some sort, and a context in and through which each situation occurs.
Author: Authors’ purposes in communicating determines the basic rationale behind other decisions authors make (such as what to write or speak about, what medium to use, etc.). An author’s purpose in communicating could be to instruct, persuade, inform, entertain, educate, startle, excite, sadden, enlighten, punish, console . . . you get the idea.
Audience: Have varied purposes for reading, listening to, or otherwise appreciating pieces of communication. Audiences may seek to be instructed, persuaded, informed, entertained, educated, startled, excited, saddened, enlightened, punished, consoled. . . again, you get the idea.
Text: any form of communication that humans create. Three basic factors affect the nature of each text: the medium of the text (ex:media), the tools used to create the text (ex:the language used, how you execute the text, the way your body moves, tone of voice), and the tools used to decipher the text (ex: powerpoint, video).
Context: every rhetorical situation occurs i specific contexts, environment, or settings. For instance, the time of both author and audience, the place of both author and audience, and the community or conversation that authors and/or audiences engage in are factors.
Place: Similarly, the specific places of authors and their audiences affect the ways that texts are made and received. (Ex: academic platform, outside march).
Community / Conversation: In various rhetorical situations, “community” or “conversation” can be used to refer to the specific kinds of social interactions among authors and audiences.
EXAMPLE:
Consider a simple grocery list. Identifying the basic components of author, audience, text, and context reveals that even a simple text like a grocery list has its own specific rhetorical situation.
Author
Let’s say that this particular list is written by an elderly retired woman who sends her husband on an errand to the grocery store. She gives him a list of things to buy.
Author’s Purpose
Her purpose in writing the list are straightforward. She wants to make sure that her husband does not forget anything that she sends him to the grocery store to buy.
Author’s Attitude
Her attitude while writing the list is direct and serious. She doesn’t want him to forget anything!
Author’s Background
Her background includes a few decades of marriage to her husband and all the experience (from her perspective) that suggests to her that she needs to give him a list to make sure he doesn’t forget anything.
Audience
The audience for this grocery list is the author’s husband who is an elderly retired man. He runs errands for his wife on occasion.
Audience’s Purpose
This particular man wants to buy the groceries quickly. While he does not mind running errands for his wife (and wants to be the kind of man who does nice things for his wife), he wants to hurry back and watch a ball game on television.
Audience’s Attitude
This man’s attitude is slightly annoyed because he might miss the start of his game.
Audience’s Background
Similar to his wife’s background, this husband has a few decades married to his wife and all the experience (from his perspective) that tells him he doesn’t really need the list his wife wrote him.
Text
The text is the grocery list itself.
Medium of the Text
The grocery list is a handwritten list of five items. The list reads, “1% milk, whole wheat bread, non-fat grated mozzarella cheese, cookies for the grandkids (you decide), 8 bananas.” Notice how the varying specificity reflects the woman’s varying attitudes of seriousness about what her husband buys. She is specific about everything except the cookies which she is fine with letting her husband decide.
Tools to Make the Text
The grocery list is written on the back of an old receipt in black ballpoint pen ink. She writes small to get the whole list on the back of the receipt. She relies on her years with her husband to know other specifics that are otherwise omitted from the list (e.g. whether he should get a quart or gallon of milk or whether he should get one or two loaves of bread).
Tools to Decipher the Text
The husband carries along his reading glasses, but even still has difficulty reading the small handwriting on the grocery list. The husband also relies on the conceptual tools he’s developed over decades of marriage to his wife. For instance, he knows that there is no more milk in the refrigerator at home, so of course he should buy a whole gallon of milk.
Context / Environment / Setting
Time
Let’s say this grocery list was written a year or so ago.
Place
It was written in the small home of the retired couple in Seattle, Washington, USA. It was thrown away in a garbage can outside the grocery store while the husband carried the few groceries back to the car.
Community / Conversation
The community and conversation is narrow and intimate including only the elderly retired woman and her husband. . . that is unless someone different finds the list and discusses it with someone else. At that point, a different community and conversation has begun discussing the text.
“Time” in this sense refers to specific moments in history. It is fairly common knowledge that different people communicate differently depending on the time in which they live.
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