Blog post #9

Blitzer stated in his article that everything necessary for a rhetorical situation could be comprised into these three specified constituents, exigence, audience, and constraints.

Exigence is the first of Blitzer’s three described constituents.  Exigence is an imperfection marked by urgency that needs alteration or to be fixed or addressed in any context.  This divides into two categories: non-rhetoric and rhetoric. Non-rhetoric’s are things in a specified situation that cannot be changed, as in natural disasters, the seasons, and death.  It becomes rhetoric when there is a possible chance of positive modification to the situation.  An example of this would be the fight against abusive families because it would provide awareness, happiness, and well being to so many people and a push for change would be occurring. 

The second constituent is the audience.  The audience is very important because rhetoric influences change through the decisions and actions of a person, which presents the constant need for an audience when dealing about rhetoric.  For example, surveys that uses audience's information to change the production and organization of the topic or situation.

The third necessary rhetorical constituent is constraints.  These constraints are made up of persons, events, objects and relations that form part of the situation.  They have the ability to “constrain” or making the changes difficult, due to the actions and decisions needed to go through with the exigence.  For example, religious beliefs and become constraints to many political problems, personal problems and social problems.  Personal beliefs and opinions come into the mix making the modification difficult.