Bitzer vs. Vatz

When I began reading the Bitzer article I began disagreeing with it. He makes good points about the influence of context, etc., but his idea that “situations” invoke or create the rhetoric just didn’t suit me. While I’ve since read the Vatz and the Edbauer, at the time I had my own arguments. I’ve met people who create crisis through rhetoric. These are not highly public people, but people that belong to my small circle of those I’m acquainted with. By phrasing something in a particular way, e.g., “The neighbor is intoxicated”, as opposed to, “So and So is having a drunken fit” the situation takes on a different tenor. Rather than the rhetoric fitting the situation, the situation is made to fit the perception of the person uttering the words. Bitzer states, “Thus the second characteristic of rhetorical situation is that it invites a fitting response, a response that fits the situation” (Bitzer 9). While this can be true, I don’t believe it to be true in all situations.

Vatz states, “The world is a scene of inexhaustible events which all compete to impinge on what Kenneth Burke calls our ‘sliver of reality’” (Vatz 156). So, in effect, he is agreeing in part with Latour. Everything strikes out in one way or another to have an impact on that which surrounds it. Vatz goes on to speak of meaning, “Therefore, meaning is not discovered in situations, but created by rhetors” (Vatz 157). So, the meanings from the “scene of inexhaustible events” merges with our “sliver of reality” to create a rhetor who creates meaning. He goes on to tell us, “In short, the rhetor is responsible for what he chooses to make salient” (158). This, to me, creates a more “salient” role of rhetoric within the academic, public, and private versions of the lives we live.

That’s all.