Blog 2: Roberts-Miller and Bitzer

Roberts-Miller:

The author of the piece “Rhetoric is Synonymous with Empty Speech” is Patricia Roberts-Miller, who is a rhetoric/writing professor. In the introduction to the book Bad Ideas about Writing, it says the book was “written by experts for the educated public” (Ball and Loewe, 2). This piece was written for a general audience, it is intentionally written accessibly to inform people about rhetoric even if they aren’t extensively familiar with what it is and how it’s used. The text says that rhetoric is the ideas and thinking that go into a piece of writing, not just the figurative language and eloquent delivery added to an idea. “Rhetoric is a way of thinking. It is not just something added to a thought derived by other means” (Roberts-Miller, 10). The main argument of the text is that rhetoric is not inherently deceptive, it’s not just a fancy way of saying the same idea, and it is closely tied to how we think. Roberts-Miller is trying to debunk the belief in the title that rhetoric is empty speech. The primary rhetorical purpose is to inform; Roberts-Miller is writing this to clear up misconceptions people have about rhetoric and to tell them what rhetoric actually is.

Bitzer:

The author of “The Rhetorical Situation” is Lloyd Bitzer, an associate professor of speech. The primary audience is mainly people who are studying rhetoric, since it was originally presented as a lecture at Cornell University (Bitzer, 1) and the way it is written is mostly too complicated for a general audience. The text implies that rhetoric is persuasive and usually spoken, as Bitzer explains how the rhetorical situation has to have an exigence (a problem to be solved with the rhetoric) and an audience capable of affecting the change. He discusses how rhetoric is called for by a situation and is used to respond to this situation with a solution or call to action. Bitzer says that poetry and scientific information are not rhetoric and that fictional writing is not entirely rhetorical. The main message of the text is that rhetorical situation should be discussed more during analyses of rhetoric. “This essay, therefore, should be understood as an attempt to revive the notion of rhetorical situation, to provide at least the outline of an adequate conception of it, and to establish it as a controlling and fundamental concern of rhetorical theory, “(Bitzer, 3). The rhetorical purpose of the piece is to inform people of what the rhetorical situation is and what factors are a part of it and to convince them to focus more on questioning the rhetorical situation when they discuss works of rhetoric.