The rhetorical situation talks about how important a rhetorical situation can be. He explains how a simple everyday situation can become one that revolves around rhetoric. Along with all these, he also tells us the 3 major points in a rhetorical situation; exigence, audience and constraints. He goes in depth and explains to us how each of these elements influences a situation. After all this, he concludes his argument by presenting another set of statements that puts together all the ideas he previously presented.

I think that Bitzer explains the concept of rhetoric very well. He thoroughly explained the elements of a rhetorical situation. He also engages the reader by giving us examples of rhetorical situations that us readers can relate to. Such examples include the Declaration of Independence, and JFK’s inaugural address.

Are there times in a rhetorical situation where one of the elements can be ignored?

An example of a rhetorical situation is the speech that Emma Watson gave at the UN about feminism. The audience of the speech were the people in the UN and men and women that came to listen to her speech. A constraint that the speech had was she couldn’t say too much about one gender because it could potentially offend someone. The exigence of the speech was gender inequality.