Erica's ENG2100 Blog

Hong Kong protesting for democracy:

http://www.cnn.com/interactive/2014/09/world/scenes-hong-kong-protests/?hpt=wo_c1

This article talks about the  identification of a “Rhetorical Situation”. Bitzer explains “Hence, to say that rhetoric is situational means: (1) rhetorical discourse comes into existence as a response to situation, in the same sense that an answer comes into existence in response to a question, or a solution in response to a problem.” This inspires people to think that rhetoric comes during situations with motivation to solve a problem, or exigence.  Exigence, audience and constraints are the main components of a rhetoric situation because these components have the ability to affect the persuasion of the rhetorical situation.

I found this article very interesting in a way that it goes in a scientific approach of how important exigence, audience, and constraints are. The importance of the exigence is determined by the person giving the rhetoric discourse. The speaker or writer has to bring attention to the urgent problem, which is where the audience comes in. I believe that the audience are important in the way that they are the ones to interpret whether or not the problem is worth the attention or not. Although that is how it works, the constraints are to announce the problem in a way that does not cross boundaries or to offend anyone, including groups of people and different countries.

One question I have about this article is “How are the constraints limit the freedom of persuasion in a rhetoric situation?”

In Emma Watson’s speech about Feminism, it is clear that the exigence is to raise the attention to the problem that women are not treated the same as men. She had mentioned that she believes that she has certain rights, yet not all women in the country are getting these rights. The audience, of course are the general public that somehow needs to hear this because they are the ones that are stopping women from receiving their rights. The constraints are to not to put men down when promoting feminism. As what Emma Watson said, these campaigns portray the feminist cause as “man-hating.” What she wants to say is that she wants equality, not dominance over men.

I do believe that Rhetoric is a way  to persuade people to believe what they believe with methods to prove to the audience. I also see it as a presentation of a experiment. Whether it’s already proven, or still in the process, Rhetoric is to present to the world that this point of view is worth the attention.