Defi nition

Some might say that the rhetorical situation, an expression coined by Lloyd Bitzer, is the most important concept in writing.

According to Bitzer, all writing occurs within a rhetorical situation, and every rhe-torical situation has three components.

First, a rhetorical situation includes what he calls an “exigence,” or occasion for writing. More specifi cally, such an occasion carries with it both a sense of urgency and a promise that through writing, a composer can make a change to that situation.

Second (and while it may seem obvi-ous), a rhetorical situation includes an audi-ence that can be infl uenced by or react to the writing.

Rhetorical Situation

Third, a rhetorical situation by defi ni-tion has constraints, and they come in two forms. An author may bring certain con-straints to the writing, for example certain beliefs that infl uence how the author under-stands a given issue. Likewise, there are con-straints associated with the situation itself, for instance the frame of mind of the audi-ence or the environment in which they hear or read a text. Both of these constraints are part of the rhetorical situation because they can infl uence audience response and the po-tential of the writer to make change.

Importance in the Field

Although scholars disagree on which comes fi rst—the writing or the rhetorical situation—they agree that effective writers use the con-cept of the rhetorical situation throughout their composing processes. They use it as a way to frame a writing task, for example. And they use it as they compose, to be sure that their writing keeps its intended focus.

In sum, the rhetorical situation is the situation in which we all write—be it a text message; a resume; or a research project and poster.

Resources

Enos, Richard Leo. “The History of Rhetoric.” Coming of Age: The Advanced Writing Cur-riculum. Ed. Linda K. Shamoon, Rebecca Moore Howard, Sandra Jamieson, and Robert Schwegler. Portsmouth: Boynton/Cook, 2000. 81–86. Print.

Lowe, Kelly. “Against the Writing Major.” Com-position Studies 35.1 (2007): 97–98. Print.

Lunsford, Andrea A. “The Future of Writing Programs—and WPAs.” Plenary Address. Conference of the Council of WPA. Grand Hyatt, Denver. 10 July 2008. Address.

Subject

Composer Audience

Context

Text, Genre, Medium

College Composition and Communication

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Revision

Definition

Significance

Resources

Revision, a part of the composing process, is the practice of making changes in a draft, often to do a better job of achieving a pur-pose or of engaging an audience. Composers revise at many levels of a given draft, some-times to craft just the right expression, other times to help sentences work together, and still other times to make large-scale changes involving connections across ideas and rearrangements of major “chunks” of text. In addition, texts that are multimodal in character—involving images, for example, or audio files—require a multimodal revision process in which composers, for example, might increase the clarity of an image, resize it, place it differently in the text, or create a more specific caption that links the image to the words in the text. Moreover, research shows that one of the practices that new

Revision is both a practice and an art, one that experienced writers benefit from and continue to craft. In addition, experienced writers understand that different kinds of writing tasks may call for different kinds of revision strategies. One way to see what in a text needs to be revised, of course, is by sharing writing with others who can suggest areas that need clarification, development, and/or an artful expression.

Beach, Richard, et al. “Factors Influencing Self-As-sessing and Revising by College Freshmen.” New Directions in Composition Research. Ed. Richard Beach and Lillian S. Bridwell. New York: Guilford, 1984. 149–70. Print.

Beason, Larry. “Feedback and Revision in Writing across the Curriculum Classes.” Research in the Teaching of English 27.4 (1993): 395–422. Print.

Faigley, Lester, and Stephen Witte. “Analyzing Revi-sion.” College Composition and Communication 32.4 (1981): 400–14. Print.

Harris, Joseph. “Revision as a Critical Practice.” Col-lege English 65.6 ( 2003): 577–92. Print.

Harris, Muriel. “Composing Behaviors of One- and Multi-Draft Writers.” College English 51.2 (1989): 174–91. Print.

Myhill, Debra, and Susan Jones. “More Than Just Error Correction: Students’ Perspectives on Their Revision Processes during Writing.” Written Com-munication 24.4 (2007): 323–43. Print.

Sommers, Nancy. “Revision Strategies of Student Writers and Experienced Adult Writers.” College Composition and Communication 31.4 (1980): 378–88. Print.

college writers find most helpful is revi-sion; as students write their way across the college years, they continue to revise texts they compose for classes and out-of-school writing tasks.

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