Chapter 9 Discussion Question 3

A concept from Chapter 9 that I found interesting and also useful is rhetorical situations. Rhetorical situations are something that consists of three parts. The first part is exigence which is some sort of problem and the speaker chooses to speak about it because they feel that something is wrong and hope by speaking about it to make it right. The second piece is an audience that is addressed in order to try and convince them to take some sort of action or change their belief or attitude. The third is constraints which are the factors that control and shape the nature of communication. Current beliefs and values of the audience could be considered a constraint. Every rhetorical situation needs to have a fitting response that meets the demands of exigence, takes the audience into account and is sensitive to constraints. I think a good example would be the argument over Proposition 8. I believe that if two people are in love and want to get married they should be allowed to whether they are two males, a male and a female, or two females. It is their constitutional right. But then you have these crazy people bringing religion into it and using scare tactics. What happened to the separation of church and state? I could use the above argument to create a rhetorical situation.

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