Rhetorical Situation & Rhetorical Approach

Business writers write to get things done—to accomplish goals, to motivate action, to persuade audiences, to sell products and ideas, etc. Because the contexts, audiences, and purposes of business writing are all unique, professional writing isn’t formulaic. Instead, to achieve various purposes within a range of contexts to diverse audiences, professional writers must take a rhetorical approach. A rhetorical approach entails understanding the rhetorical situation and identifying the various possibilities for effective communication within its constraints.

What is Rhetoric?

“Rhetoric” has become a dirty word. Particularly in political discussions, it’s common to hear accusations of politicians using “just rhetoric” or using “false rhetoric.” By this, critics usually mean that someone is using empty words or dishonest words—employing unethical means of persuasion, or trying to fool an audience with meaningless talk, impressive words, or slick (but dishonest) reasoning.

But this is not the definition of rhetoric Aristotle gave us. Aristotle’s definition of rhetoric had no positive or negative connotation. Rhetoric was considered a skill that most rhetoricians advocated for the betterment of society. Historically—from the ancient origins of classical rhetoric to the present—rhetoricians have practiced and taught rhetoric in order to show people how to be good citizens, to use rhetoric for the benefit for the community and not just for self-gain.

While Aristotle isn’t the first to offer a definition of rhetoric, his definition is the most referenced. According to Aristotle, rhetoric is “the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion” (Rhetoric, Book 1, Ch 2). Let’s unpack his definition and put it in plainer language:

Rearranging the syntax, adding perspective, and putting it all together: If you practice effective rhetoric, you can—in any situation—identify the best techniques for accomplishing your purpose.

While unethical speakers may have dishonest purposes, that’s not the fault of rhetoric—it’s the fault of the speaker. Rhetoric helps speakers see what is possible and most effective; it does not lead speakers to choose unethical (or ethical) tactics.

What is a Rhetorical Situation?

A rhetorical situation is a situation that calls for rhetoric. While different scholars have different models, generally, a “rhetorical situation” refers to the circumstances in which a rhetorical text is written. The circumstances include:

• the writer (and the writer’s purpose for writing),
• the audience (those who can help the writer accomplish her purpose)
• the context (everything in it—the culture, the social norms, the audience’s background, biases, and preferences… anything and everything that might effect the writer, the audience, and the message)

(optional) For a detailed presentation on one model of the rhetorical situation, see this slideshow from the Purdue OWL. For a more scholarly take, read up on Lloyd Bitzer’s “Rhetoric Situation” (in Wikipedia or Bitzer’s original 1968 scholarly journal article).

Sample Text / Analysis of the Rhetorical Situation

Below is a letter written by a former student at USF. A few context notes now, and a few more below:

• “OASIS” is the name of USF’s online registration system.
• At USF, if students do not attend the first day of class, they are automatically dropped from the course roll.
• Blackboard is a learning management system (LMS) like Canvas
• The poor formatting (lack of paragraph breaks) and mechanical errors were in the original letter.

Read the letter below at least twice–really read it and try to understand it.

The basic background: This student signed up for a class and later decided she didn’t want to be in the class. As I said above, at USF, students are required to attend the first day of class. If a student does not attend class on the first day, the registrar is notified and the student is automatically dropped from the class roll (i.e., they are no longer registered for the class).

The student assumed that if she didn’t attend the first day of class, he would be automatically dropped. But she wasn’t. She was not dropped from the course, and a few days later, she discovered she had to pay for a course she didn’t want to take. This was her attempt to get a refund from the registrar.

A Close Reading of the Letter

In this sample close reading, I go through and annotate the letter, responding in ways to help point out weaknesses in the letter, ones that can be resolved by thinking more about the rhetorical situation.

Key Elements of the Letter’s Rhetorical Situation

The purpose of the letter is to secure a refund for a class not dropped by the end of the drop/add period.

The audience is the USF registrar, an institution that must follow rules, and is committed to applying the same rules to all students (and thus unlikely to grant special favors). The person who reads the letter will probably have to adhere to certain rules regarding refunds, and will have to convince their superior that this student’s predicament falls within the bounds of these rules. Also, many of the employees at the registrar are adults without a college education. Are they likely to sympathize with the ethos the student projects?

The text centers on the student not attending class, and what the policy says. It should focus more clearly on why a refund should be given. There must be situations in which the registrar does give refunds. It’s likely this information is published somewhere.

The writer uses a tone and evidence that make her seem childish and unreasonable. Soon, we’ll discuss how the three appeals—logos, ethos, and pathos—can work together.

What is a RHETORICAL APPROACH?

Taking a rhetorical approach means examining the specific rhetorical situation we find ourselves in, identifying strategies that might work, and using the best strategies in our writing. According the Program in Writing and Rhetoric at Stanford, “The rhetorical approach recognizes that what works in one situation may not work in another; communicators must be attentive to the contexts and communities in which they hope to work.” To do that, writers must evaluate specific audiences and contexts to make informed choices about structure based on an assessment of the rhetorical situation.” (A Rhetorical Approach to Writing at Stanford).  

Put more simply:

• In some rhetorical situations, only certain genres (or types of communication) will work. You wouldn’t ask your supervisor for a day off by sending a singing telegram, would you?
• In some rhetorical situations, only certain types of evidence will work. You wouldn’t try to convince your parents that you’ve been studying hard by showing them how many pens you’ve run dry over the course of the semester, would you?
• In some rhetorical situations, only a certain tone or approach will work. You wouldn’t ask your professor for an extension on an assignment by shouting to her across the cafeteria, would you?
• In some rhetorical situations, only a particular audience will work. You wouldn’t try to get a date on Friday night by appealing to your crush’s math tutor, would you?

Rhetoric already helps you make choices (or dissuades you from making those bad choices above, hopefully). Rhetoric helps us choose the most effective means to get our message across.

Formulaic Approach vs. Rhetorical Approach

Lots of people take a formulaic approach to professional writing—they decide what genre they will write in, find a sample or template, and then plug in their information. For example, someone taking a formulaic approach to writing a small business proposal might find an example of a business proposal somewhere and then follow the same organizational pattern, writing style, and visual design, plugging in their information where appropriate.

But professional writing is more than knowing formulas or knowing the parts of business genres—it’s more than memorizing the typical parts of a business letter, sections of a proposal, or organization of a business report. (There is no single way to write in any genre, and besides that, if professional writing was about knowing the parts of a letter, we could just Google it or look it up in a book.) Professional writing is far more than a codified body of knowledge, a set of formulaic genres, or a bunch of fill-in-the-blank templates.

Instead, professional writing is a set of skills—it’s recognizing the best ways to reach audiences and achieve goals, and the ability to put those skills into practice.

Since professional writing is a skill, it’s something we can think about, practice, and improve. Rather than using templates or formulas, we’ll use a heuristic—a process or method—to help us identify our options and select the best ones.

Our heuristic will help us make conscious choices about what and how to write.

Wait… What’s a Heuristic?

A heuristic is a flexible process, method, or strategy that can be used in any situation to generate ideas. It’s not a template, formula, or a fill-in-the-blank worksheet, and not all of it’s components will be helpful in every writing situation. Part of what a heuristic does is to help you see what components are more or less important in any particular writing situation.

According to Janice Lauer, Ph.D., Distinguished Professor (Emeritus) at Purdue University,

Heuristics aren’t rule-goverened (formulaic) or random, but instead, heuristics guide writers toward conscious activity without prescribing the final product.

You’ve probably used heuristics before. Free-writing, mind-mapping, journalist’s questions (who, what, when… etc.), and outlining are all writing heuristics, though much less structured than the one we’ll use for professional writing. Our heuristic—our flexible, “practical methodology”—is called a PAGOS plan.

We can use PAGOS—purpose, audience, genre, organization, and style—as a frame for analyzing and examining existing texts (like KT’s letter above). We can also use PAGOS as a means to rhetorically approach planning for our own communication. We’ll get into more detail in later material, but for now, think of a PAGOS plan is a set of questions to ask yourself about the elements of a particular writing situation before you start drafting.

Purpose:	What does the writer want to accomplish? What does the writer want to happen as a result of the communication situation?
Audience:	Who will read the document? What does that reader care about? What does the reader know? need to know? want to know?
Genre:	What genre (type or category of communication) is most appropriate for the communication situation? What are the conventions (rules) of that genre?
Organization:	How should the writer organize the text? (Give details or background first and request last? Make request first and give details last? etc.) Why?
Style:	What tone, level of formality, and diction should the writer use? How should the writer communicate information—in paragraphs? in a list? in a visual?