AP® English Language and Composition · Big Idea 1
1.A The Six Components of the Rhetorical Situation (RHS-1.A)
Watch it explained
- How it worksHow do exigence, purpose, audience, writer, context and message lock together into one situation?
- How it worksWalk me through turning one dial of a rhetorical situation and watching the other five have to move.
- Common mistakeWhy isn't the rhetorical situation just a fancy name for the topic a writer happened to pick?
- Worked exampleWalk me through naming all six components for a nurse petitioning a hospital board for night staff.
- Going furtherWhat changes when a private letter gets published in a newspaper a year after it was sent?
Check yourself
Your turneasy1 of 3
Adapted from a letter read aloud at a school board meeting. 'For 17 years I have been the only nurse in this building, and for 17 years that was workable. Last month you voted to merge the two campuses, and on Monday I become responsible for 1419 students spread across a mile of pavement. I am not asking you to reverse the merger. I am asking you to fund a second nurse before September, because the first child who needs an inhaler while I am in the other building will not care how the vote went.' The merger vote is best understood as which component of the rhetorical situation?End of topic.