welcome today's lesson is an introduction to rhetoric and the rhetorical situation i'm don knight an english teacher from westfield indiana so what will we learn today we have two focuses today the first is to learn what rhetoric is and the second is to fill familiarize you with the rhetorical situation so first let's look at a brief illustration of rhetoric after the assassination of martin luther king jr there was rioting in over a hundred cities in the u.s two major cities were not among them one was memphis tennessee where martin luther king jr had spoken one day before his assassination on april 3rd 1968. the other was indianapolis indiana where robert kennedy spoke on april 4th 1968 upon hearing the news of king's assassination writer tim wendell said to this day many people believe that was due to the words spoken when so many were listening this is an illustration of the power of words or rhetoric so what is rhetoric it's the study of effective persuasive language use in other words it's the power of words so we do this because it's really about empowering students understanding rhetoric enables you to understand and participate better in conversations about important issues in the world it gives you a voice and the skills transfer to college and well beyond so the first step to understanding rhetoric and using it ourselves is to analyze how other writers use it in ap language and composition there are three essays on the end of course exam that will assess you on the skills you learn in ap language and composition one of those is the rhetorical analysis in other words you'll be analyzing how effectively a writer used language today's lesson will apply directly to the rhetorical analysis essay it will also help you with the multiple choice exam and as i said the skills transfer well beyond so one of the ways that we begin to analyze rhetoric is to look at the rhetorical situation that's the components you see on the screen here so one is exigence it's what prompted the message to be spoken or written in the first place one is purpose why the speaker is conveying a message audience who the speaker is speaking to the context or circumstances surrounding the situation the writer is who is doing the writing and then the message is what the writer wants the audience to think or to know so there are other ways to think about the rhetorical situation that you can also use or that your teacher may have gone over with you one of those is the rhetorical triangle the speaker audience and purpose so when we think about the rhetorical triangle we think about who is doing the speaking what is their persona are they an expert are they a comedian are they a scholar we want to know about the audience who are they what do they already know about the subject what is their attitude about it are they excited about it are they angry about it the purpose why are they writing and it's the answers to these questions and the interaction among these components that help determine the structure of the argument and the language and choices that a writer makes so this also gets at the rhetorical situation we also have soapstone which is the acronym you see here and your teacher might use this or something else the whole idea here is that you use what works for you to analyze the rhetorical situation of a piece they all accomplish the same goal of delving deeper into the rhetorical situation it's important to understand that writers make choices about how they're going to convey their message based on the rhetorical situation for example a politician speaking to supporters at a rally is going to have a different tone than someone trying to persuade voters of another political party to vote for them so depending on the writer's purpose the tone could be formal or inspirational sarcastic these are all choices made based on the rhetorical situation let's look at an example so this is the robert kennedy speech in indianapolis that we referred to earlier when we talked about the power of words and rhetoric and there's you can find this speech online we're not actually going to listen to it but the exigence of the speech was the assassination of martin luther king jr the purpose was to inform the crowd that martin luther king jr had been assassinated and to eulogize him and honor his memory the audience was residents of indianapolis who were attending a political rally the context was april 4th 1968 right after the assassination of dr king and it was in indianapolis indiana the writer was democratic presidential candidate robert kennedy the brother of john f kennedy who had also been assassinated and the message was a reminder of king's message of peace and non-violence okay so what should we take away from this lesson the rhetorical situation is an important first step in analyzing texts writers make specific choices depending on the interaction of these elements the most effective writers understand how to use rhetoric in a powerful way these are people like martin luther king jr and robert kennedy who understood the power of words all right thank you so much for joining me today i hope you will join me again for the next lesson there's a lot going on in the world so before we go i just want to remind you to be kind to yourself and to others have a great day