Richard Vatz's Theory of The Rhetorical Situation

Vatz's "The Myth of the Rhetorical Situation"

In 1973, Vatz's essay "The Myth of The Rhetorical Situation" was published by the Journal of Philosophy and Rhetoric, the same journal that had originally published Bitzer's 1968 "The Rhetorical Situation ." Vatz refutes Bitzer's claim about the primacy of exigence as a cause of rhetoric [1].

The Bitzer/Vatz discussion has prompted people in diverse fields including rhetoric, composition, linguistics, political science, psychology, philosophy, journalism, technical communications, and creative writing to engage in a lively dialogue about the rhetor's role and the nature of communication itself [2].

In 2009, Vatz published a follow-up essay, "The Mythical Status of Situational Rhetoric: Implications for Rhetorical Critics' Relevance in the Public Arena," in The Review of Communication. In this essay, Vatz reaffirms his claim that the rhetor does not react to an objectively recognizable exigence but instead creates the perception of an urgent problem in the audience by framing an issue and creating rhetoric about it [1].