Toulmin’s model, with its mapping of the decisions an arguer makes along the

way to justify a claim, demonstrates how contextualized and specific to each case
practical argument is. He offers an approach for understanding and analyzing the
process involved in the everyday process of constructing messages based in infor
mal reasoning. His model became popular in communication classes for teaching
argumentation, audience analysis, the process of persuasion and attitude change,
and even the social reasoning process in interpersonal interactions.'*^

Bit z e r’s Rhet orical Situation

Lloyd Bitzer developed the idea of the rhetorical situation in 1968 to explain the
process by which rhetorical discourses are created.''* His starting point was the term
situation itself. Unlike terms such as audience, speaker, subject, and speech, the nature
and characteristics of the situation (the context in which discourse is generated) had
not been folly articulated. Realizing that the presence of rhetorical discourse obvi
ously signals the existence of a rhetorical situation, Bitzer set out to map what com
prises a rhetorical situation and to suggest its importance to rhetorical theory.
Bitzer defines the rhetorical situation quite specifically and sees it as more than
the historical context itself or its influence. For Bitzer, the rhetorical situation gives
rise to rhetorical discourse: discourse comes into being in response to a situation
and is given significance by that situation. Bitzer defines a rhetorical situation as a
“complex of persons, events, objects, and relations presenting an actual or potential
exigence which can be completely or partially removed if discourse, introduced
into the situation, can so constrain human decision or action as to bring about the
significant modification of the exigence.”"*^
This definition includes the three major aspects of the rhetorical situation—
exigence, audience, and constraints. For Bitzer, the exigence is an “imperfection
marked by urgency,” something which is “other than it should be.”"** Bitzer is care-
fol to note that not all exigences are rhetorical; an exigence that cannot be modified
by discourse is not rhetorical. Thus, death is not a rhetorical exigence in and of
itself because it cannot be changed. W hat does delineate a rhetorical exigence is
that discourse can assist in addressing the imperfection. Bitzer believes that in any
rhetorical situation, there is a controlling exigence that fonctions as an organizing
principle, specifying the change desired and the audience to be addressed. The exi
gence in essence invites a fitting response to a situation—a response that meets the
needs of the situation and of the audience in terms of content and style.
The audience, according to Bitzer, consists of those “capable of being influ
enced by discourse and of being mediators of change.”"*®The audience, then, is not
just anyone who happens to be exposed to the discourse created to address the rhe
torical situation: the audience must be capable of generating change. Both the dis
course created and the capacity of the audience to respond to it are governed by
constraints—the third feature of the rhetorical situation—^which the rhetor must
manage but also can harness to attempt to appropriately and effectively address the
exigence. The constraints the rhetor must manage are similar to what Aristode in
ancient Greece called “inartistic proofs”—people, objects, relations, attitudes—
that inhibit the possibilities for rhetorical action; the constraints the rhetor can
make use of to positively enhance a rhetorical response are Aristotle’s “artistic
proofs," those capacities such as personal character, style, ethos, and the like under
the control of the rhetor.
 Bitzer notes that many rhetorical situations arise without giving birth to rhetor
ical utterance. Rhetorical situations evolve to the point when rhetorical response
would be most fitting. When the forthcoming discourse misses in terms of timing
or any other feature, audiences recognize the misstep. When a president dies, a par
ticular exigence is strongly controlling, and it is appropriate to grieve and eulo
gize—not complain or talk about problems of succession. Responses that are
especially fitting for a situation often stand the test of time (Abraham Lincoln’s
Gettysburg Address, for instance). They addressed the particular rhetorical situa
tion especially well, but they also speak to ongoing and persistent rhetorical situa
tions. We return to such discourse again and again to see how to manage a difficult
and recurring rhetorical situation.
Bitzer’s rhetorical situation generated considerable interest. Among the most
interesting is whether the rhetorical situation is actually constructed by external
material conditions or constructed linguistically by communicators. Richard Vatz
offers the most coherent statement of this dilemma.^® He suggests that there is not
simply a single set of facts that exists in the world. Rather, we learn about any par
ticular set of facts because they are communicated to us. So first, someone chooses
which facts to present, and the very fact of selecting some elements and not others
implies greater importance and significance for particular facts. The process of
communicating the “situation” is an act of interpretation and choice. The rhetor
functions as an interpreter and translator, sifting and sorting among the possibili
ties to construct an exigence to address. According to Vatz, then, “meaning is not
discovered in situations, but created by rhetors.”^' He alters Bitzer’s description of
the rhetorical situation, then, arguing not that exigence invites utterance but that
utterance invites exigence; not that the situation controls the rhetorical response
but that rhetoric controls the situational response. Ultimately, Vatz views rhetoric
creating reality rather than reflecting reality, giving rhetors considerable responsi
bility for what exigence gets created and why.

B ur k e’s T h e o ry of Identification
Kenneth Burke is a giant among symbol theorists.^^ He wrote over a period of
50 years, and his theory is one of the most comprehensive of all symbol theories. In
contrast to the theories of Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca and Toulmin that focus on
understanding how rationality is negotiated in the process of message construction
in everyday situations, Burke’s theory addresses the message at a more general level.
Burke’s view of rhetoric begins with his concept of action. Burke starts with
the distinction between action and motion. A c t i o n consists of purposeful, volun
tary behaviors; motions are nonpurposeful, nonmeaningful ones. Objects and ani
mals possess motion, but only human beings have action. Burke views the
individual as a biological and neurological being, distinguished by symbol-using
behavior or the ability to act. People are symbol-creating, symbol-using, and sym
bol-misusing animals. They create symbols to name things and situations; they use
symbols for communication; and they often abuse symbols by misusing them to
their disadvantage.
Burke’s view of symbols is broad, including an array of linguistic and nonver
bal elements as well. People filter reality through a symbolic screen. Burke agrees
that language functions as the vehicle for action. Because of the social need for peo
ple to cooperate in their actions, language shapes behavior. Especially intriguing
for Burke is the notion that a person can symbolize symbols. One can talk about
speech and can write about words. History itself is a process of writing about what
people have already spoken and written in the course of events, thus adding
another layer of symbols to the actual events.
Language, as seen by Burke, is always emotionally loaded. No word can be
neutral. As a result, your attitudes, judgments, and feelings invariably appear in the
language you use. Language is by nature selective and abstract, focusing attention
on particular aspects of reality at the expense of other aspects. Language is eco
nomical, but it is also ambiguous. Language can bring us together or divide us—
and this paradox plays an important role in Burke’s theory. When symbols bring
people together into a common way of understanding, identification Is said to occur.
The opposite, division or separation, can also happen; language can promote identi
fication, or it can promote separation and division.
When you and a friend are relaxing next to the swimming pool on a warm
summer morning, you communicate with each other in a free and easy manner
because you share meanings for the language in use. You are, in Burke’s terms,
experiencing consuhstantiality. On the other hand, when you are trying to order rice
in a remote Indonesian restaurant, you may feel frustration because of your lack of
shared meaning with the waiter. Consubstantiality is one way identification is cre
ated between people. In a spiraling fashion, as identification increases, shared
meaning increases, thereby improving understanding. Identification thus can be a
means to persuasion and effective communication, or it can be an end in itself.
Identification can be conscious or unconscious, planned or unplanned.
Three overlapping sources of identification exist, according to Burke. Material
identification results from goods, possessions, and things, like owning the same kind
of car or having similar tastes in clothes. Idealistic identification results from shared
ideas, attitudes, feelings, and values, such as being a member of the same church or
political party. Formal identification results from the arrangement, form, or organiza
tion of an event in which both parties participate, such as attending a trade show.^^
If two people who are introduced shake hands, the conventional form of handshak
ing causes some identification to take place. Identification is not an either-or occur
rence but a matter of degree. Some consubstantiality will always be present merely
by virtue of the shared humanness of any two people. Identification can be great or
small, and it can be increased or decreased by the actions of the communicators.
People of lower strata in a hierarchy often identify with people at the top of the
hierarchy, despite tremendous differences or division. This kind of identification
can be seen, for example, in the mass following of a charismatic leader. In such a
situation, individuals perceive in others an embodiment of the perfection for which
they themselves strive. Second, the mystery surrounding the charismatic person
simultaneously tends to hide the division that exists. Burke refers to this phenome
non as identification through mystification}^
Burke introduces another term that helps explain how identification works.
This is the concept of guilt. This term is Burke’s all-purpose word for any feeling of
tension within a person—anxiety, embarrassment, self-hatred, disgust, and so
forth. For Burke, guilt is a condition caused by symbol use. He identifies three
related sources of guilt, the first of which is the negative. Through language, people
moralize by constructing myriad rules and proscriptions. These rules are never
entirely consistent, and in following one rule, you necessarily are breaking another.
creating guilt. Religions, professions, organizations, families, and communities all
have specific rules about how to behave. We learn what is acceptable and what Is
not throughout life and therefore judge almost any action as good or bad depend
ing on the rules we learned. Such judgments are a source of guilt as well.
The second reason for guilt is the principle o f perfection}' People are sensitive to
their failings. Humans can imagine (through language) a state of perfection. Then,
by their very nature, they spend their lives striving for whatever degree of perfection
they have set for themselves. Guilt arises as a result of the discrepancy between the
real and the ideal. A peace activist might be motivated by this kind of guilt, for
example, when speaking at a rally. The activist declares that war is a barbaric and
inappropriate method of resolving conflict in the twenty-first century. This speaker
can imagine a world without war and is motivated to speak out because of the prin
ciple of perfection.
A third reason for guilt is the principle o f hierarchy. In seeking order, people
structure society in social pyramids or hierarchies (social ratings, social orderings),
a process which is done with symbols. Competitions and divisions result among
classes and groups in the hierarchy, and guilt results. Ethnic strife is a perfect exam
ple. Burke, then, places strong emphasis on the role of language and symbols in
bringing people together or driving them apart.^* He shows that we can develop
strategies for doing either.
Although Burke’s theory is hard to place in this book, we see it primarily as a
theory of the message because Burke is concerned with the ways in which mes
sages can be structured to create identification or division. Burke observes that
communicators develop strategies for identification and division.^^ In preparing a
speech, for example, you may want to attract certain audiences to your way of
thinking through identification, while distancing yourself from other audiences by
creating division. Strategies of naming involve the use of language to describe some
thing in a way that engenders identification or division. A politician trying to get
votes, for example, might refer to a topic of common interest as “our shared
vision.” Strategies of form involve particular methods or means of expression, includ
ing, for example, specific forms of argument such as syllogisms or other types. A
politician might tell a story, knowing that narrative is a form that would appeal to
his audience. Strategies of spiritualization appeal to a transcendent value or ideal, as
might be the case when a politician says, “God bless America.” Message strategies,
then, make use of forms of identification that will create commonality with certain
listeners. Such strategies will almost certainly involve guilt (in the Burkean sense).
Burke’s intention was not to provide a list of ready strategies but to present a set of
ideas that speakers can use to determine the unique forms of identification (and
perhaps division) that might be used in a particular message.
Burke wrote throughout the middle of the twentieth century, but his ideas
anticipated a whole movement in communication research around message strate
gies, which, ironically, were produced not within Burke’s tradition at all but from a
psychological perspective. We present some of these theories that deal with mes
sage strategy later in the chapter. We move next, however, to Walter Fisher who,
like Burke, sees messages as consisting of symbolic action in the form of both
words and deeds; his theory extends the notion of the human as a symbol-using
animal in that he secs all symbols as “created and communicated ultimately as sto
ries meant to give order to human experience.
Fish er’s N arra tive Paradig m
Walter Fisher is particularly interested in the ways narration functions in con
trast to the rational paradigm, suggesting that both paradigms represent and inform
the various ways humans recount and account for human choice and action.
The rational paradigm has been privileged within the study of rhetoric since
the time of Aristotle. This paradigm presupposes that humans are rational beings
and that argument Is the paradigmatic mode of human interaction. Furthermore,
argument is governed by context—legislative, scientific, legal, forensic. The arguer
must know the subject matter and exhibit skill in advocacy; these are the criteria by
which rationality is assessed. Rationality, then, as conceptualized within this para
digm, requires a particular kind of society—one that privileges participation in
decision making of those deemed competent and qualified. It follows, too, that
rationality must be taught, which includes teaching the values of citizenship and
public debate, argumentative structures and modes, how to evaluate arguments,
and how to construct an argument so as to be most rhetorically effective.
In contrast to the rational paradigm, Fisher describes narrative as a different
way of conceptualizing how humans communicate. His starting point is the innate
nature of narration to humans: “the narrative impulse is part of our very being
because we acquire narrativity in the natural process of socialization.”^' Storytelling
is a universal function, a natural human capacity, which crosses time and culture; it
does not demand a particular kind of society, as does the rational paradigm, in order
to be acmalized. Rather, humans naturally comprehend their actions and those of
others in the form of stories; the messages they construa are ways of “recounting
and accounting for” in order to relate a “‘truth’ about the human condition.”®^
According to Fisher, all individuals have the capacity to be rational within the
narrative paradigm. Rationality is determined by narrative probability and narra
tive fidelity. Narrative probability has to do with whether the narration offered is a
coherent story—characters behave in consistent ways, plots unfold in understand
able sequences, and the narrative makes sense as one way to understand and
explain the world. Narrative fidelity, on the other hand, refers to whether the story
told rings true with the stories already accepted as true. For one individual, stories
of government conspiracy make total sense and affirm a rather paranoid concep
tion of the world and those in it; for someone else, such tales of conspiracj' are dis
missed outright as having no fidelity whatsoever, and stories that affirm openness,
positive intent, and well being will resonate instead.
Fisher thus suggests that identification, not deliberation, is the hallmark of
meaning-creation in the narrative paradigm; the communicator and the audience
are equally active in co-constructing a shared story that makes sense to them by
identifying together the “good reasons” for that interpretation. Similarly, the narra
tive paradigm is descriptive rather than normative. One does not need to use a par
ticular set of argumentative processes or assess an argument by particular standards
of logic; instead, in the narrative paradigm, understanding is the goal: does a par
ticular story make sense as an interpretation of a particular event or experience?
Within the narrative paradigm, then, rhetoric consists of a vast array of stories—
some competing, some affirming, but all of which offer various “truths” about the
human condition. Stories that will be remembered are those that resonate with the
human spirit and human values that transcend temporal and cultural differences.
 Though he begins by distinguishing the narrative from the rational world para
digm that has characterized the traditional study of rhetoric, Fisher in fact does not
call for a rejection of the rational paradigm. Rather, he seeks to offer the narrative
paradigm in order to encourage a rethinking of the ways human communication is
accomplished. To think o f messages as stories shifts the sense of what rhetoric is
from formal and elitist to generative and active.
Fisher teaches that stories are more than rhetorical devices. They are ways of
connecting to the ideas and ideals of society and particular audiences. In other
words, there is a strong sociocultural element to Fisher’s work.

T h e So cio cu lt u ral T ra d itio n

The rhetorical tradition in communication theory helps us understand the
arguments and rhetorical strategies a message contains. But communication is a
great deal more than message structure and strategy. Important, too, is how mes
sages, both verbal and nonverbal, play out in social groups, which is the focus of
the sociocultural tradition. Here we look at theories of speech acts, language and
gender, and feminine style as representative of the sociocultural tradition.

Speech A c t T h e o ry
If you make a promise, you communicate an intention to do something in the
future, and you expect the other communicator to recognize that intention. If you
say, “I promise to pay you back,” you assume the other person knows the meaning
of the words. But knowing the words is not enough; knowing what you intend to
accomplish by using the words is equally important. Speech act theory, most nota
bly attributed to John Searle, is designed to help us understand how people accom
plish things with their words.*^ This line of theory finds a foundation in Ludwig
Wittgenstein’s ordinary language philosophy and J. L. Austin’s work on speech as
expression of intention.^
Whenever you make a statement like, “I will pay you back,” you are accomplish
ing several things. First, you are producing a piece of discourse. This is called an utter
ance act, a simple pronunciation of the words in the sentence. Second, you are
asserting something about the world, or performing a propositioml act. In other words,
you are saying something that you believe to be true or that you are trying to get oth
ers to believe to be true. Third, and most important from a speech-act perspective, you
are fulfilling an intention, which is called an illocutionary act. Finally, there is the perlo-
cutionary act, which is designed to have an actual effect on the other person’s behavior.
Let’s say that your friend sends you an e-mail that says, “I’d like to go out
tonight.” Your friend’s English sentence is an utterance act, not unusual or problem
atic. Second, she expressed a proposition or truth statement that means something
about what she wants to do, but again, in this case, it is hardly worth mentioning
because it is so obvious. Third, your friend’s message is an illocutionary act because
it makes what you interpret to be an offer or invitation—asking you to go out with
her. Fourth, she is trying to get you to do something, and if you accept her invita
tion, she has completed a successful perlocutionary act.
These distinctions are more important than they sound. Let’s begin with the
difference between illocution and perlocution. An illocution is an act in which the