40 The Rhetorical Situation

A key component of rhetorical analysis involves thinking carefully about the “rhetorical situation” of a text. We can understand the concept of a rhetorical situation if we examine it piece by piece, by looking carefully at the rhetorical concepts from which it is built. The philosopher Aristotle organized these concepts as author, audience, setting, purpose, and text. Answering the questions about these rhetorical concepts below will give you a good sense of your text’s rhetorical situation—the starting point for rhetorical analysis.

One way of thinking about the rhetorical situation is through the work of Kenneth Burke. He wrote about “the dramatistic pentad” to call attention to these different dimensions of persuasion. This “pentad” (so called because it has five main elements) details the rhetorical situation: who is writing or speaking (agent); what means are they using to communicate (agency); when and where is this happening (scene); why is it necessary to write or talk at all (purpose); and what is being written about (act)? It’s a tidy but imperfect way to think about some of the complications we face when we try to persuade other people. You can think of the rhetorical situation as the context or set of circumstances out of which a text arises. Any time anyone is trying to make an argument, one is doing so out of a particular context, one that influences and shapes the argument that is made. When we do a rhetorical analysis, we look carefully at how the rhetorical situation (context) shapes the rhetorical act (the text).

Click over to the next sections for examples from President Trump’s inaugural address (the text) to sift through these questions about the rhetorical situation (context).