Vatz's article succinctly presents Bitzer's, and lists his reasons for disagreeing with Bitzer. The wonderful Jenny Edbauer calls it "infamous," which is intriguing, and makes me wonder what its overall impact has been, if anyone happens to know and feels like sharing :). He seems to start from the position that we create meaning, and to call different aspects of Bitzer's article into question based on that given. The idea that we're socially constructed seems to underly his position, which ties his vision in with those of most of the authors we've read for this course, with the exceptions, possibly, of Gaonkar and Latour.
His arguments bring up a really basic question that ties in to rhetoric's pedagogical applications. Can the significance of absolutely every situation be thought of as rhetorically constructed, when some situations seem to be thought significant in virtually every discourse community? His discussion of assassination started me wondering what discourse community exists where the death of a leader would not be thought significant. Can we always say that historic events gain significance because of "ritualized salience"? If we think so, believing rhetoric to be the source of meaning, can we teach the approach?
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