Summary of Lloyd Bitzers The Rhetorical Situation.

Rhetorical situation does not mean merely understanding the context in which the speech is located; it
does not refer to the setting in which the interaction between speaker, audience, subject, and purpose
takes place; it does not necessarily depend on a persuasive situation; nor is it embedded in an historical
context: A work is rhetorical because it is a response to a situation of a certain kind (3).
Also, a work of rhetoric is pragmatic; it comes into existence for the sake of something beyond itself;
it functions ultimately to produce action or change in the world; it performs some task. In short,
rhetoric is a mode of altering realityby the creation of discourse that changes reality through the
mediation of thought and action (4).
Rhetorical situation [is]a natural context of persons, events, objects, relations, and an exigence
which strongly invites utterance (5).
Hence, to say that rhetoric is situation 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 problem;
(5) a situation is rhetorical insofar as it needs and invites discourse capable of participating with
situation and thereby altering its reality;
(6) discourse is rhetorical insofar as it functions (or seeks to function) as a fitting response to a
situation which needs and invites it.
(7) Finally, the situation controls the rhetorical response in the same sense that the question controls the
answer and the problem controls the solution. Not the rhetor, not the persuasive intent, but the situation
is the source and ground of rhetorical activityand, I should add, of rhetorical criticism (5-6).
A rhetorical situation has three parts, the exigence, the audience, and the constraints.
An exigence is a reason, a defect, an obstacle, something waiting to be done (6). There will be many
exigences, but, according to Bitzer, not all are rhetorical. Only those exigences that can be modified
are rhetoricalthe changes of season, Bitzer notes, are exigences, but nothing can be done to modify
them.
The audience is the second part of a rhetorical situation. For Bitzer, a rhetorical audience consists
only of those persons who are capable of being influenced by discourse and of being mediators of
change. [] the rhetorical audience must be capable of serving as mediator of the change which the
discourse functions to produce (8). For the purposes of teaching the rhetorical situation, keep in
mind that not all audience members must act in order to be part of the audience. In other words, an
audience member could hear a speech but choose not to act or be unable to act.
The constraints on a rhetorical situation emerge as a result of the persons, events, objects, and
relations which are parts of the situation [and] have the power to constrain both decision and action
needed to modify the exigence (8). Sources of constraint include beliefs, attitudes, documents, facts,
traditions, images, interests, motives, etc (8). Two main classes of constraints: those originated by the
rhetor, and those which are operative.
In addition to these three parts of the rhetorical situation, the orator and the text must also be included
once they come into existence.

Hess's somewhat conflicting perspective on kairos is exemplified by the disagreement between Lloyd
F. Bitzer and Richard E. Vatz about the rhetorical situation. Bitzer argues that rhetorical situations exist
independent of human perspective; a situation invites discourse. He discusses the feeling of a missed
opportunity to speak (kairos) and the tendency to later create a speech in response to that unseized
moment