When we were comparing different definitions of rhetoric on the second day of class, Lloyd Bitzer inevitably made an appearance. I just read Bitzer in my Digital Literacies class and feel that his ideas--though we may not always agree with them--are essential to the study of rhetoric and discourse. Let this function as a sort of informal guide to Bitzer’s epistemology for those who have not read his work, or would just like a refresher.
Lloyd Bitzer is an American rhetorician and is renowned for writing “The Rhetorical Situation”, in which he asserts that situations prescribe certain rhetorical responses or meanings. “The Rhetorical Situation” asserts the following: rhetoric is situational, situations invite a “fitting” rhetorical response, and the rhetorical situation is composed of the exigence, audience, and constraints.
Firstly, Bitzer insists that rhetoric is situational. He compares this to “primitive” language in which a situation demanded certain verbal responses: for example, if several fishermen are fishing together, then situations will arise that demand what they say or how they say it; for example, they might instructions like when to reel in or drop a net. Bitzer believes that we are similarly obligated to speak in rhetorical situations.
He also defines rhetoric as a mode of altering reality" via discourse. Rhetoric does not physically alter objects in reality, but nonetheless changes it through “mediation of thought and action”. In other words: rhetoric does not physically create a wall (or a chair, or a cat, or what have you) but it actively influences our perceptions of it.
Secondly, he provides a more concrete definition of the rhetorical situation as “a complex of persons, events, objects, and relations presenting an actual or potential exigence which can be completely or partially removed if discourse, introduced into the situation, can so constrain human decision or action as to bring about the significant modification of the exigence”. More simply, it’s a situation in which an exigence--a problem--can be changed via discourse. He clarifies that there are non-rhetorical exigencies, like death and natural disasters, which cannot be changed by discourse.
Rhetorical exigencies, Bitzer says, are “imperfections marked by urgency” and control rhetorical situations. Essentially every political issue is a rhetorical exigence, for example. Exigencies are important they essentially provoke the rhetorical situation.
Audience and constraints also make up the rhetorical situation. Audience is pretty self-explanatory, but constraints require a bit of an explanation. Bitzer’s constraints refer to everything that has the power to influence the rhetorical situation. They do not necessarily refer to one’s limitations, but instead to all the things at one’s disposal. The three artistic proofs, the speaker’s personal character, the size of the room that one is speaking in--all of these things are constraints. The exigence, audience, and constraints all come together to create the rhetorical situation.
Thirdly, rhetorical situations invite “fitting responses”. A fitting response is just that: a response that fits the situation. For example, if the president was supposed to address some national crisis and instead started talking at length about his childhood or some other unrelated issue, that would be an unfitting response. Bitzer also insists that fiction cannot create real discourse, though it can emulate it.
Many have taken issues with Bitzer’s ideas about the rhetorical situation. Richard Vatz, another rhetorician, criticizes Bitzer on the basis that people assign meaning to situations, and without inherent meaning situations cannot prescribe a certain response. Even though I agree with Vatz, I think Postman may have agreed with Bitzer. Bitzer’s belief that rhetoric is shaped by situation is strikingly similar to Postman’s ideas about how the medium of a message shapes its meaning. We could even say that Postman believes that medium “prescribes” thought processes. As we continue to read Postman, we should definitely keep Lloyd Bitzer in mind.
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