Blog post #9

The three constituents are exigence, audience, and constraints. The first is exigence, defined in Bitzer’s article as imperfections marked by urgency. Bitzer writes that there are two types of exigence, non-rhetorical and rhetorical. Non-rhetorical cannot not be modified, this means that they happen naturally, and one cannot effect it. The examples that Bitzer gives for non-rhetorical are death, winter, and natural disasters. These three things happen and cannot be changed by the writer. Whereas the rhetorical exigence is capable of being modified the example he gives is a person harming others. That can be changed based on different attributes in that person’s life. The next constituent is audience. Rhetoric audience and audience are different. The audience is just who the work is for whereas Bitzer states that a rhetoric audience is capable of causing change in the work. I don’t understand this very well but I will try to figure it out through the class discussion. His example is a scientist. He writes the results for an audience that wants to gain the knowledge but the audience has no effect on the work and what changes occur to the work. The third and final constituent are constraints. By Bitzers definition constraints are people, events, objects, and relations that have the power to effect decisions and actions that modify the exigence. Constraints are what effect the rhetorical exigence and whether or not sa person partakes in an action. So the man that harms other, that decision to harm others is based off of constraints in his life up until that event.