1. Understanding the Importance of Context

2. Today’s Agenda
 Overview The Rhetorical Situation
 Lincoln Example
 Assignment: Watch Hillary Clinton and Sarah
Palin speeches (identify ethos/logos/pathos in
each)
 Clinton:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MeFMZ7fpGHY
 Palin:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCDxXJSucF4
 Also: Argumentativeness test write-up due
Friday

3. “As per our negotiation, I agree
to your suggestion of 923.”

4. Kairos
 The relationship between text and
context: neither is static!
 Having kairos;
 The right message at the right time, OR:
 Cultivating the context for the right message
 (See: ethos/pathos/logos/kairos chart on
p. 21)

5. Rhetorical Situation Analysis
 Texts have meanings because of their con/text
 For a reader: an attempt to understand a
piece of rhetoric—a text—by looking at
its situationality—its context.
 As a writer, it is an attempt to
understand a situation in preparation to
deliver the best text possible for the
occasion.

6. The Rhetorical Situation: TRACE
 Text
 Reader (audience)
 Author (speaker)
 Constraints
 Exigence

7. Text
 The piece of writing/speech that has
been or is being produced.
 Key questions: What does the text say?
What kind of text is it?

8. Reader/Audience
 The nature and disposition of the people
reading/hearing the text.
 Key questions: Who seems to be the
intended audience?

9. Author/Speaker
 The goal and purpose of the writer, as
well as the background, experiences,
and values that will determine ethos.
 Key question: What do you know or can
you assume about the writer?

10. Constraints
 The circumstances or perceptions that
might influence the audience or the
writer’s responses.
 Key questions: What has already been
said on the subject? What is the general
state of the world outside of the specific
context of the topic.

11. Constraints: Text
 How is writing a book different from
writing a newspaper column where you
have a certain number of column inches
available? How is a poem different than
an essay? What type of language is
used?

12. Constraints: Reader
 Does the source account for who it is
aimed at? Why are ads placed in a teen
magazine different than those in a car
magazine? What values does the reader
have that will effect what the author can
and can't say and what will and won't be
persuasive?

13. Constraints: Author
 What values constrain the author? Are
there things that an author has to
overcome just because of what they
look like? Does the author have ready-
made credibility for some reason, or do
they have to earn it by telling a story or
using certain language?

14. Exigence
 The event or impulse that impels or causes
the writer to want to communicate. The
exigence is what starts the controversy
going; it is whatever is making people mad,
whatever is driving them to change the
world.
 Key questions: Did something happen that
sparked the need for communication? Is
there something in the world the author is
trying to change? What is the author's
purpose?

15. Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought
forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in
liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men
are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing
whether that nation or any nation so conceived and
so dedicated can long endure. We are met on a great
battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a
portion of that field as a final resting-place for those
who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It
is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot

16. Monday’s examples
 What’s the rhetorical situation for
Kucinich?
 For McCain?

17. Today’s Agenda
 Overview The Rhetorical Situation
 Lincoln Example
 Assignment: Watch Hillary Clinton and Sarah
Palin speeches (identify ethos/logos/pathos in
each)
 Clinton:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MeFMZ7fpGHY
 Palin:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCDxXJSucF4
 Also: Argumentativeness test write-up due
Friday