Lloyd Bitzer, "The Rhetorical Situation," Philosophy and Rhetoric, 1 (January, 1968) 1. (1) rhetorical discourse comes into existence as a response to a situation, in the same sense that an answer comes into existence in response to a question or a solution in response to a problem; (2) a speech is given rhetorical significance by the situation, just as a unit of discourse is given significance as answer or as solution by the question or pr oblem; (3) a rhetorical situation must exist as a necessary condition of rhetorical discourse, just as a question must exist as a necessary condition of an answer; (4) many questions go unanswered and many problems remain unsolved; similarly, many rhetorical situations mature and decay without giving birth to rhetorical utterance; (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 and not persuasive intent, but the situation is the source and ground of rhetorical activity--and, I should add, of rhetorical criticism. "a complex of persons, events, objects, and relations presenting an actual or potential exigence which can be completely or partially removed if discourse, introduced into the situation, can so constrain human decision or action as to bring about the significant modification of the exigence. exigence audience constraints Richard Vatz: The Myth of the Rhetorical Situation Philosophy & Rhetoric, Vol. 6, No. 3. (1973) “exigences are not the product of objective events, but rather are a matter of perception and interpretation” It is not until the rhetor selects particular facts or events—by means of a creative interpretive process—that a situation can be imbued with salience and meaning. Vatz takes the opposite view of Bitzer. Bitzer claims that rhetoric is situational, Vatz argues that situations are rhetorical. Bitzer argues that exigence invites utterances Vatz argues that utterances invite exigence. Bitzer states that the situation controls the rhetorical response Vatz states that rhetoric controls the situational response. Bitzer argues that rhetoric obtains its character from the situation generating it Vatz argues that situations obtain their character from the rhetoric that creates them and that groups of interested   people within societies create meaning and then read that meaning into current events by a process of mutually agreed upon symbol (rhetoric) [what’s notable, ironic, and little known/remembered is that while painting Bitzer as a realist in rhetorical clothing, Vatz was ACTUALLY A REALIST even more guilty of the errors he’s accusing Bitzer of. there was a battle between realists [gol darnit… there’s world out there and it’s not just sitting around waiting for rhetorical theorists to name it in order to bring it into being} and the rhetoricians who tend to be symbolic interactionists (the world is there but we don’t know what it means until we name it. Vatz tries to use Bitzer’s most famous concept against him . . . to show that Bitzer is actually a realist in the way that rhetoricians deny] Bitzer attempts clarification Bitzer, Lloyd, "Functional Communication: A Situational Perspective," in E. E. White, ed., Rhetoric in Transition (University Park: Pennsylvania State UP, 1981),21-38. "This essay considers rhetoric as a functional, or pragmatic, communication and thus a critical mode of functional interaction in which the chief interacting grounds are persons on the one hand and the environment on the other." http://interactivemedia.bradley.edu/ell/303/Bitzer2.html The problem/issue here is that Bitzer wrote this in opposition to Vatz’s metaphysical accusation that Bitzer’s concept requires him to be (proves him to be) a realist: someone who believes in absolute reality in which meaning resides (prior to language). (a chair is a chair) Bitzer wasn’t. Nor was his system designed that way. So he writes the later article mostly against that notion. He’s not so much defending “the rhetorical situation” as trying to show that one can use the concept without being a realist. In the doing, he doesn’t offer exceptionally useful clarification of the concept. Barbara A. Biesecker Rethinking the Rhetorical Situation from Within the Thematic of Difference Philosophy and Rhetoric, 22 (1989) 110-30 http://www.rowanfirstyearwriting.com/uploads/1/2/9/3/12938517/biesecker1989.p Moves from both positions (Bitzer and Vatz) to a realization that the audience’s meanings are neither fixed before (as part of a so-called “situation”) nor after the rhetorical response. Instead, linguistic ambiguities (like “what’s the situation,” “what does it mean,” and “what’s the right response?”) are worked out subjectively and (especially) intersubjectively. For Biesecker, both Bitzer and Vatz overly proscribe/constrain the role of the audience. Bitzer and Vatz write more about the situation and the exigence and the response than about the audience. For Biesecker, it is the audience that “decides” about the situation (is it rhetorical or objective?), the response (is it called for and if so, fitting?), and the meanings (what meaning got made?). Critics/Analysts have to attend more to audience subjectivities than do either Bitzer or Vatz. === I. A major problem with the B & V models is that they treat communication as a linear process . . . before . . . therefore . . . after. Remember that the construction and display of meanings in organizational contexts are always cyclical . . . spiral-like. II. It doesn’t matter WHO wins. The issue that that critics have to pay very close attention to these variables and how they work within practical matters of organizational meaning making.