The three constituents that Bitzer uses for rhetorical situation are exigence, audience, and constraints. Exigence is basically a situation that is unavoidable and has to accomplished one way or another, but is only rhetoric when it is capable of a positive modification and when the positive modification requires discourse or can be assisted by discourse. Bitzer uses the example of a defense attorney given the decision that his client is guilty. The DA can go to a higher court to try and get the appeal overturned for his client, so he would have to weigh his options. Another example of this would be a student deciding to go to class, if the student goes they might learn something new or get extra points on the next exams, but maybe the teacher will not give any extra credit and the student might already know all the material that will be taught that day.
The second constituent Bitzer gives is audience. Audience is who the discourse is aimed at, but the audience is not needed to complete the discourse. An example of this is a new drug released to help people suffering from insomnia, the audience was not needed to create the drug, but they were used for the benefit of the drug. The rhetoric audience must be the mediator for the product and capable of changing the discourse if the product doesn't work.
The final constituent Bitzer gives are constraints. Constraints are made up of people, things, and objects which are parts of the situations because they have the power to constrain decision and action needed to modify the exigence. An example of this would be two classes on the play-wright Shakespeare, one class could be the life and death of Shakespeare and the other could be performing the plays by Shakespeare. The two topics have to be separated because they deal with two different aspects of the same person.
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