The rhetorical situation takes into consideration exigence, audience, and constraints of a given rhetorical situation. In the text, Bitzer defined exigence as “An imperfection marked by urgency; it is a defect, an obstacle, something waiting to be done, a thing which is other than it should be” (Burgchardt and Jones, 37). The exigence is the problem that the author is addressing in their form of rhetoric. The text defined the audience as, “ those persons who are capable of being influenced by discourse and being mediators of change” (Burgchardt and Jones, 38). The audience would be the people who the author or speaker is addressing. Finally the text defines the constraints as, “persons, events, objects, and relations which are parts of the situation because they have the power to constrain decision and action needed to modify the exigence” (Burgchardt and Jones 38). A constraint is a limit put on the author or speaker, that could be from the situation they are in, who they are speaking to, or their medium itself. The goal of the rhetorical situation is to see if the response the author gave was appropriate for the given situation.
I will be using this theory to look at Dermot Kennedy’s song Rome. Rome is a breakup song.
“But last night
It hurt me to hear you say it felt broken
And even though I tried
All these memories run my mind in slow motion” (Kennedy, 2019)
The exigence of the song is the breakup itself. The audience of this song includes the girl he broke up with, and others who have been through break ups. Though a break up song can be relatable to a lot of people, his target audience would be young adults in their twenties and early thirties. The constraints for this rhetorical situation would include the length and structure that is required for a song. His medium is a constraint because it limits what he is able to say due to length and format. A song also can limit the writer’s word choice, they would need to choose words that rhyme and fit in a rhythm pattern. Ultimately, I think his message is appropriate for the rhetorical situation. In the lyrics, he is looking back and reflecting on the relationship, which is what everyone does during a breakup. The song captures the emotions and thought process a person goes through during a break up. I believe he took his audience and exigence into consideration when creating this song.
References:
Burgchardt, C. R., & Jones, H. A. (2017). Readings in rhetorical criticism. State College, PA: Strata Publishing, Inc.
Kennedy, Dermot. Without Fear. (2019)
Elyse's Rhetorical Criticism Blog 
Just a test comment 🙂 It didn’t email me with the comments on last week’s post, so I’m setting one early this week to see if it was a timing issue. Feel free to ignore this 🙂
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Is there something I need to do on my end to fix the comment issue?
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I read this 🙂
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You’ve applied the method completely (all 3 parts), advanced a clear claim about a fitting response, and supported it with details from the text (including direct lyric quotes). You’ve done exceedingly well explaining the method. Great start!
I have a few suggestions:
1) I would recommend a few more supporting details in your analysis. For example, you can point back to the lyrics to support your claim that this is about a breakup — but where can we see evidence that he’s specifically addressing this audience? How do you arrive at the conclusion about the ages here? Is it in the song, in our cultural norms, etc? What constraints does the shorter format, style of musical lyrics, etc. introduce, specifically? I think you’re right, but a few more details would pin that down.
2) Once you are feeling a bit more comfortable with the platform, you might start integrating images, video, etc. to help supplement your points and break up the text a bit more.
Note that revision suggestions aren’t for right now. They’re to use at the end of the semester, when we will revise and polish everything for the final post/paper. For now, they’re just in the bank of comments you can revisit later. 🙂
This is a great start. You’re using the method, providing sufficient examples, and heading down the right path. Keep at it!
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I love the way you applied the rhetorical situation method and really dug deep into the song. The method you applied was used good with all three parts of it put into play. The exigence of the song was clear and I was able to actually understand the meaning of the song without actually having to listen to the song. I fully understood with you being able to put the lyrics into the text and actually break down the examples from the songs. This post actually made me more intrigued in what type of music Kennedy engages in and how his music connects to the rhetorical situation. This was something I was able to get behind and actually understand. The only thing left is to actually see how more things you can incorporate and how you apply any of the other methods to the music. That way would be helpful and make your topic standout.
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I read this!
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I read this!
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i really like the way you applied the Rhetorical Situation method in this post. By giving definitions for specific key terms, it helps the reader follow along with understanding what you are specifically referring to. Also, there may need to be more visual representation added to the post rather than just reading it. You could possibly add clips of the song to the blog posting as well. Other than that, this post was awesome!
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Thank you for the suggestions!
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