6. "Rhetorical Situations, and their Constituents"

In Grant-Davie's article "Rhetorical Situations, and Their Constituents" he frames for us a construct by which we may approach rhetorical discourse.  Integral to his system is the notion of exigence.  Exigence is anything which motivates rhetors to engage in discourse.  This includes a prospective rhetor's ethical principles and the interactions those have with current events in the perspective rhetor's perceived sphere of interest, any desire to "better" said sphere of interest, or any idea for which the prospective rhetor is emotionally charged.  Exigence even includes things that a rhetor is assigned or payed to care about.  As long as a thing triggers someone to become a rhetor, that thing is a sort of exigence.

There is another party involved in rhetorical situations according to Grant-Davies.  This is the audience.  The audience includes anyone who's actions the rhetor intends to change after their interaction with the rhetorical situation.  The audience, as the rhetor perceives them, puts the rhetor under a whole slew of constraints because the rhetor is writing with the intention of speaking to the perceived audience.  These constraints as the rhetor sees them shape the way the rhetor approaches the exigence.  There can be constraints in the environment outside of the audience such as censorship laws and events in the rhetor's own upbringing, but a thing is a constraint as long as it has an influence over how the rhetor approaches the exigence.  While this imagined audience plays a strong role in way the rhetorical discourse appears in written form, it is only once a real audience reads this writing and behaves in some actual way that the true nature of the rhetorical situation can be seen.  Sometimes audience members themselves will become rhetors after engaging in the discourse.  They might agree or disagree with the nature of the previous discourse.  It is important to keep in mind that an audience member's decision to disagree with a piece of discourse is just as much a result of that discourse as their hypothetically agreeing with it.