Rhetorical Situation and its Constituents

1. Rhetorical Situation and its Constituents Grant-Davie’s “Rhetorical Situations”

2. Serious cereal analysis

3. What are the key concepts? • In the OWL PPT? • In Grant-Davie’s text?

4. Definitions from Covino’s “What is Rhetoric?” • Exigence: “a need, a gap, something wanting, that can be met, filled in, or supplied only by a spoken or written text. We can say that the exigence of a situation calls forth a text” (10-11). • Constraints: “Features of the audience’s – and perhaps the speaker’s or writer’s – frames of mind, belief systems, and ways of life that lead the audience to accept the speaker’s or writer’s ideas and to act upon the exigence” (11).

5. Rhetorical Situation Writer Rhetor Purpose Exigence Context/Culture Constraints

6. Which terms are we going to use? Let’s vote! • Writer or Rhetor • Purpose or Exigence • Context/Culture or Constraints

7. Rhetorical analysis – in pairs • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7r4e5Wg4PDI • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sh163n1lJ4M

8. Group analysis • Analyze the rhetorical situation of the text • 1 student MUST be responsible for taking notes; • 1 student MUST be responsible for reporting conclusions. • Tell the rest of the class about your findings