Itsy Bitsy Bitzer

The "Rhetorical" Situation... get it? Stupid.

Lloyd F. Bitzer's The Rhetorical Situation focuses on the reasons he believes the rhetoric of a situation is just as important as the situation itself, I think...

Situations of all kinds surround us and make up every aspect of our lives. Bitzer argues that the situation calls the rhetorical discourse into existence, not the other way around. By this he means to say that without the situation (context, etc) what causes something? How does this happen?
He writes, "A work is rhetorical because it is a response to a situation of a certain kind."
He also writes that the audience of a discourse has the opportunity and power to change reality if they want to because they are "the mediators of change." Reality can be changed by the mediation of thought and action.
Again, I think what he is getting at here is that the rhetoric of a situation is just as important as the situation itself.