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Summary Of Lloyd Bitzer's The Rhetorical Situation

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Lloyd Bitzer, in his work, The Rhetorical Situation, explains that communication becomes rhetorical when the speaker is addressing an existing situation that invites a response. He outlines the elements of the rhetorical situation as containing exigencies that can be altered by agents of change. According to Bitzer, the rhetorical situation presents constraints controlling the character of the rhetoric used to address it. On June 16, 2015, Donald Trump officially announced that he is running as a Republican candidate for President of the United States. During the primary election, he must compete with other GOP candidates to win the nomination to run as the Republican representative in the general election while simultaneously addressing Democratic …show more content…

Specifically, a candidate must convince the voters that he or she is the person for the job. Among the Republican candidates who are running against the current (and potentially future) party in power, there is the perception of an existing exigency (a situation urgently requiring change). This perception, along with the competitive nature of the election cycle, creates a rhetorical situation. According to Lloyd Bitzer,
“rhetorical discourse comes into existence as a response to a situation…the situation controls the rhetorical response…rhetoric is a mode of altering reality…by the creation of discourse which changes reality through the mediation of thought and action…Let us regard rhetorical situation as a natural context of persons, events, objects, relations, and an exigence which strongly invites utterance” (Philosophy & Rhetoric, Volume 1, 1 – …show more content…

The first competition is between ostensibly like-minded competitors who compete to win their party’s nomination. The second competition that is simultaneously taking place is between these competitors and the representatives of the opposing party. In the first competition, the candidate must convince their potential voters that they are the best candidate to represent those voters in the general election. When Donald Trump announced that he is running for president as a Republican candidate, he responded to the constraints present in the first competition by highlighting perceived weaknesses of his primary competitors

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