What do you do?

One of the easiest things for you to do is to just go back to sleep and pretend nothing happened. La la la, zzz. Or, you could walk to school and be late. I had a student once suggest setting the house on fire as a distraction-but let's not go there.

There is another option: you can ask someone for a ride. This option differs from the others in that it requires you to interact with someone. More specifically, it requires you touse languageto get someone to help you solve your problem or accomplish your goal.

Of course, we engage in many scenarios in our daily life where we rely on our language tomake something happenby talking to other people: we try to arrange a date with someone; we try to land a job at an interview; we try to convince the teacher that we know what we are talking about; we try to get them to vote a certain way. More often than not, we go through these interactions without really thinking about how we are communicating. Most likely, this is because we've had these types of interactions many times before and have developed a habitual pattern to shape our language and delivery.

But what if we can't figure out the best way to communicate with the person? What can we do to make sure our approach to the person doesn't turn out to be wrong?

Regardless of what the goal in the particular interaction is, any time that you use language to make something happen, you are usingrhetoric1and are engaging in rhetorical activity. And while these interactions may each call for a different approach in terms of language and behavior, they all have certain things in common. Lloyd Bitzer, a rhetorician, and professor, called these interactions "rhetorical situations" and proposed a model(which is, in essence, a simplified description of observed patterns)to help us better understand how these situations operate. I will refer to Bitzer's model as the Rhetorical Situation model in the rest of the essaysAs you will see, becoming comfortable with analyzing the rhetorical situation will be of great value to you, not only in your interactions but also in your work as a student and writer.

The Rhetorical Situation model has a few elements. First isexigence,which Bitzer defines as "an imperfection marked by urgency; it is a defect, an obstacle, something waiting to be done, a thing which is other than it should be"(Bitzer 6). He is saying that there has to be a problem or issue that needs to be addressed. In the case of the missed-bus scenario I brought up at the start of this essay, the exigence is the fact that you need to get to school(hopefully without being late). It is an "imperfection" because in a perfect world, well, you would have caught your bus. An important thing to remember is that the exigence becomes part of the rhetorical situationonly if you use language to try to address it.In other words, if you decide to walk to school, instead of talking to someone to try to solve your dilemma, you do not invoke a rhetorical situation around the exigence initially created by missing the bus to school.

The second element of the Bitzer model ispurpose.Simply put, the purpose is the intended goal of your communication. What result do you want to happen? In our scenario, you want someone to get you to school. In many cases, the purpose is clearly understood from the rhetoric we use. For example, if you were to say, "Please pass the salt" it's pretty obvious that you want the salt. I could probably even figure out your exigence based on you asking for the salt: you don't think I put enough salt in my cooking-the lack of/need for flavor would be your exigence.

1You are probably familiar with "rhetoric" in terms of working with Logos, Ethos, and Pathos to analyze texts. This application of rhetoric is known as the Aristotelian model, originally developed by Aristotle in Ancient Greece. While it still has its uses, it is a limited model that is quite out of date for use in our diverse, text-oriented world with many different kinds of writing situations.

2Since Bitzer originally proposed his model in 1968, many rhetoricians and scholars have critiqued and developed his model further. In this essay, I will be including ideas that were added to his model, particularly by Keith Grant-Davie, as part of the Bitzer model.

However, things can get complicated here. Sometimes, the purpose can be a few steps removed from the exigence. As Bitzer noted, "the exigence may or may not be perceived clearly by the ... persons in the situation." Consider this: global climate change is a real problem, and it is something that several groups are seeking to address. It's fair to say that climate change is the exigence for these groups. However, when these groups communicate with people, they don't just say, "Stop emitting carbon!" or "Stop Climate Change!" They may ask you for financial contributions or your participation in a rally. The purpose of each communication may refer to the exigence only indirectly. In the most nefarious situations, someone may ask for contributions(the purpose of rhetoric)for a seemingly good cause(their supposed exigence)only to have it turn out to be a way for them to buy a new yacht(their true exigence). Hello, charity fraud and televangelists. It is therefore useful to be aware not only of the purpose of a piece of rhetoric but also to think about the exigence underneath it all. You will see why this point is important to your academic work later, trust me.

The next element of the Model to consider isthe audience.You are probably already familiar with this term. Your audience is, as you might have guessed, the intended recipient of your rhetoric. It is important to note that your audience has to be someone capable of helping you accomplish your purpose. Your audience has to have the means to respond meaningfully to your rhetoric. Back to our missed-bus scenario: your audience has to be someone who has a car and is capable of actually getting you to school. Calling up your cousin in Oklahoma would be pointless because. Same for the 5-year-old who lives across the street. However, your parents or some other members of your family who have access to a car would be a reasonable audience, as would a friend or neighbor who has the means to get you there. Effective rhetoric is targeted toward a specific audience, one that is capable of doing something about your exigence.

There is another wrinkle to this as well, however.(Welcome to college.)Sometimes our rhetoric reaches people beyond our intended audience. For example, we might eavesdrop on a conversation on the train and be moved to take some action. We are not the intended audience for the rhetoric that was passed between the people in the conversation. And yet, the rhetoric was powerful enough that itmade us into the audience!Keith Grant-Davie, discussing the ideas of Douglas Park, suggests that we not only think about our "real" audience but also keep in mind the "imagined" audience that might be affected by the rhetoric we create and present to the world(270-1). In short, the size and

the make-up of our audience is not always obvious or under our control, so it is worth keeping in mind how our rhetoric might read to multiple potential audiences.3

Contextis the next element of the Model, and it encompasses the setting, background, and other factors that play into the situation. In our case("We haven't gotten to school yet? We probably missed the first period already...")we would want to think about things like: how many times have we overslept this semester? Will driving us to school be more of a burden for one driver vs. another? How far away is the school? What is the weather? Who do you get along with best? Who is in a foul mood or not? Who owes you a favor? Context is a very expansive category and you can get caught up in a lot of minutiae. However, as you engage with more complicated rhetorical situations, understanding the context can become critical. For example, say you are presenting a business proposal(the rhetorical act)to investors from another country(your audience)to put money into your start-up(your purpose). It would not only be important to consider the immediate context(where are you making the pitch: in an office? In a less formal setting?), it would also be prudent to know something about the surrounding context: business and market conditions; relevant information about their company; and perhaps their customs so that you do not inadvertently offend them, thereby losing the investment.

Constraintsare the last element of the Rhetorical Model that I will bring up. Constraints are the guidelines or limits on language that shape your choices when you construct and deliver your rhetoric. Some constraints are word choice(diction), style, use of humor, and level of detail. As writers, we often deal with constraints such as deadlines, word and page counts, topics, and formatting. Constraints are often related to and informed by other elements of the situation. For example, you have to be careful about the phrases you choose with certain audiences. In our case, if you were going to ask Grandma for a ride, you probably wouldn't yell, "B1TCh, give mE a fucKEn RidE!" down the stairs to accomplish your purpose. More likely, you will come down the stairs, put on your best loving face, and use the most charming rhetoric to get her to take you to school: "Oh Grandma, I love you so much, can you help me out and give me a ride to school, please?" As another example, if we wanted a raise, we probably wouldn't interrupt our boss with the request, no matter how well composed it is, in the middle of her story about her vacation to Wichita-timing would be the constraint here. Constraints are also very much tied to context: the language we use

We can see this happening in social media when someone posts something intended for a specific group(intended audience)but is then misunderstood by people outside of that group(unintended audience)when the post goes viral.

to talk about race or gender has changed as our cultural reality has evolved. We are always operating within contexts that set constraints. They establish predictable patterns of communication and help us determine our best course of rhetorical action in pursuit of our purposes.

So, now you've sweet-talked Grandma into giving you a ride to school and here you are in Comp I, having learned about rhetorical situations and Bitzer's model for analyzing them. So what? Will there be a quiz? How does this help you with your work in school, as a writer?

During your college career, and beyond, you will find yourself in many different rhetorical situations, and many that will require you to use writing as a means to accomplish your goal. You may have been taught that there is a "correct" way to write academically. I'll put it bluntly: they lied. Academic writing is not a single type of paper or process but an activity that you undertake(or as some would even sayreinvent)in many different situations. In fact, every class(and even every assignment)is a new, different rhetorical situation. Writing successfully in college is not about repeating your habitual writing practices or simply doing what you've been told. It asks that you recognize the quirks of every rhetorical situation and to figure out how to put together the language that is best suited to the task at hand. The Rhetorical Situation model is one tool that can help you arrive at that understanding.

In school, you will often have a narrow range of exigences. Your exigence will usually be, "Darn, I have to write an essay/report/review." or "I need to get a good grade." However, you must recognize the audience, constraints, context, and purpose of each

assignment on its terms. It may be that one professor(audience)is deadset on 5 paragraph essays and doesn't want you to use "I"(a constraint)while another, like me for example, will throw a fit over a 5 paragraph essay.(I won't, not really. But stop writing them. Really.)Some professors are comfortable with writing that moves beyond conventions while others are less so. The context presented by an English seminar will be different from that presented by the Psychology lab, which will be different from Marketing, Nursing, and Computer Science classes.

Perhaps more importantly, different writing assignments present different purposes, some that aren't so obvious at first glance. For example, an assignment may ask you for a 2-page essay about a subject. Cool, seems easy. However, what is its real academic purpose? Is it to demonstrate your critical and analytical abilities? To assert your understanding of a topic? To offer a factual report of events or text? Each writing assignment is meant to be an opportunity for you to engage with the material of the class in a particular way. You must learn to recognize the deeper academic purpose of the work you are asked to do so that your response to the prompt is effective(and gets you the grade you're after).

Applying the Rhetorical Situation model can sometimes seem complex, with the elements of the model informing and affecting one another in a loop. Keep in mind, however, that you have already been doing this kind of thing in your mind your whole life. Every time you chose to talk to a friend a certain way, stood up to your parents, asserted yourself at work, or asked your grandma for a ride to school, you intuitively figured out a way to go about it. You(or more accurately, your brain)examined your context and determined how to best impact your audience to achieve your purpose and resolve your exigence. The Rhetorical Situation model is one academic's attempt at formalizing and packaging what we experience so that the fundamental principles underlying our experiences can be applied to situations that we come across. It is a conceptual tool that you can use as you engage in writing situations to help you make the choices that honor your voice and intentions as a writer.

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