Yup, here it is. My follow up on my post from yesterday on Bitzer's Rhetorical Situations. After going to class and discussing Bitzer, it makes more sense to me now, as Baudrillard did as well.
Rhetorical situation is composed of a few different elements. First off, rhetoric, as we defined in class, is a mode of altering reality through persuasion and discourse. Thus said, discourse is defined as communication, whether its language, purpose or meaning. Then there's the 3 main parts of rhetoric situation, according to Bitzer. Audience, exigency and constraints.
The example used in class was, easily enough, our class. The primary audience is the class. The secondary audience is, if you will, the creepers who peer in the windows at us or walk by the door and hear what we're discussing. Finally, the tertiary audience could be considered anyone with no invested interest in the class or our activities.
Next, the exigency of our class. We went through a lot of examples, but I came away with the idea of exigency being any event in the class. For example, when the whiteboard marker wasn't working, a student spoke up about it. Then the professor threw it out and got a new one. Another example that was on my mind at the time was my stomach growling for the last 30 minutes of class, so I snacked on pretzels.
Finally, constraints. Any distraction in the classroom could be considered a constraint. The humming of the printer in the back of the room, side conversations, friends passing by outside.
All in all, it's simple. I was just over thinking it again!
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