Keith Grant-Davie, author of the, Rhetorical Situations and Their Constituents, begins his article by first addressing how rhetoric, can be defined. Composition theorists like Grant-Davie himself, say it can be explained as an activity, an event or situation. His example of advertisements really helps convey how rhetorical situations form. Sometimes they are forced messages and other times they happen naturally. "Language does things" is a simple way to conclude what and how rhetorical situations occur.
Rhetorical situations don't stand alone either. They are made up of constituents as well. Those constituents being, exigence, rhetors, audience and constraints. The rhetor is the person who generates the discourse(discourse is the action being taken) and is often looked at as the "authorial voice". The exigence happens when the rhetor senses a situation needs discourse or a time where discourse is resolved. This discourse action happens to an audience whether it negative or positive. And the final constituent is constraints where a factor may affect the overall outcome and prosperity of reaching rhetorical objectives.
Lastly, a compound rhetorical situation is when the constituents match up similarly within a group of people. Grant-Davie gives an example of a public debate, "Examples of this kind of compound rhetorical situation can be found whenever public debate arrises, as it did recently in the editorial pages of a local newspaper in a rural community in the Rocky Mountains." There are always people with their own opinions on each side, but to more complex issues not everyone is going to be exactly the same regarding feelings, emotions and thoughts. That's what makes the situation rhetorically compound. Each rhetor is trying to create exigence and changes the other rhetors' minds.
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