A Plea for Climate Justice: The Rhetorical Situation in “Fallen Fruit”

In her song “Fallen Fruit”, from her 2021 album Solar Power, pop artist Lorde brings to light the heartbreaking realities of how climate change has permanently altered life for this and all future generations. She uses the song to express sentiments of frustration concerning the lack of meaningful action taken by older generations. This song effectively catches the attention of her predominantly young fanbase through unique lyrical choices as well as a deeply personal approach to the subject. Lorde’s intentional use of her music to both address climate change and criticize the actions that contributed to it is a clear example of an artistic response to a “rhetorical situation”.

As explained by Lloyd F. Bitzer, a rhetorical situation is one that holds a certain sense of urgency but also a set of limitations (5). This urgent element, also referred to as “exigence”, is often a time-sensitive issue that must somehow be addressed in an effective way by the audience as a result of the author’s rhetoric. Additionally, limitations or “constraints” in a rhetorical situation can exist in the audience’s preconceived ideas about the topic at hand or in the challenges presented by the medium through which the author delivers the rhetoric. These constraints pose unique challenges that can limit the rhetoric’s impact and the audience’s willingness to take action in regards to the exigence. The audience themselves also play a crucial role within a rhetorical situation, as they can impact the author’s choice of tone, style, or format as they bring awareness to the exigence. Each rhetorical situation presents a unique set of challenges through the countless intricacies created by the unique combination of the audience, exigence, and constraints. These three components present themselves in a unique but vivid way in the song “Fallen Fruit”.

In the rhetorical situation of this piece, the exigence can be classified as the immediate need to fully acknowledge the damage caused by climate change and redirect our actions before it progresses further. If all generations are aware of climate change and prompted to research how they can make a difference, these efforts could create a ripple effect to more sustainable practices and policies in our world. This may seem like a lofty goal, but awareness and passion for change are the crucial first steps towards action. The general population’s emotions concerning the crisis and perception of their own influence on the environment greatly affect their willingness to push for meaningful change (Hoggett 154). Once citizens realize the power their collective actions hold, the exigence can be addressed and further progress can be achieved. Lorde realizes the power of this unity among all people and attempts to heal the rift between generations that would otherwise make progress impossible. With lyrics stating, “And we will walk together… But how can I love what I know I am gonna lose?” the singer reconciles the generational gap that created a point of contentment in the song’s earlier lyrics. She ultimately extends a hand of solidarity to the older generations, implying that the only way to address this threatening exigence is through our collective effort. This approach successfully acknowledges the nuanced exigence that exists in the climate crisis.

Contrary to the song’s conclusion, which offers a feeling of unity, the earlier verses seemingly put the blame on older generations for allowing climate change to reach the irreversible level that it has. Because Lorde’s audience widely consists of the young people within her fanbase, the lyrics “To the ones who came before us… We had no idea the dreams we had were far too big” serve as an unexpected blast aimed at older generations for their lack of action on this issue. This accusation restricts her already limited audience even further by ostracizing the older listeners and creating in them a feeling of reluctance to receive its message. This limiting idea is also continually re-established in the main hook of the song which states, “You’ll leave us dancing on the fallen fruit”. However, Lorde approaches the exigence not from an activist’s perspective, but from an artist’s, letting personal sentiments take precedence over factual data. This overtly emotional plea, in a way, draws the remaining audience in nearer to the cause, which is arguably more effective in inciting change. The inescapability of climate change effects have had a significant impact on the mental wellbeing of the world’s population, which has, in turn, created a psychological barrier that prevents many from acknowledging it any further (Clayton). This continued expression of fear found in lyrics such as “We’ll disappear in the cover of the rain” creates a sense of relatability and drives listeners to dig deeper into the situation as a whole. The audience, while difficult to clearly define, is connected by the personal impact of this song and the desire to make a difference as a result.

A musical format poses many unique constraints within the deliverance of this rhetorical situation. While more people than ever have access to new music through today’s technology, this factor creates a wider platform for the constant stream of new content online through sites such as Spotify, Pandora, and YouTube, to name only a few. With the innumerable outlets available for new media, certain works inevitably get lost in the overwhelming shuffle. Additionally, while Lorde is a relatively popular artist, this song especially would likely not be heard on a radio station, which reduces its potential audience significantly. As far as preconceived notions within the audience, many citizens today are confident that climate change caused by human activity does not exist at all. On the flip side, many people acknowledge that climate change exists, but simply refuse to believe that the actions and habits of humans influence the condition of the environment  (Hoggett 196). With these skeptical attitudes being so common within our communities, Lorde’s audience is therefore limited only to people who are truly willing to listen and understand all aspects of the climate crisis. Progress is continually being made in this area, however, as “surveys show that awareness and self-reported knowledge about climate change have been rising over the last three decades” (Clayton). As the conversation surrounding environmental issues continues to progress, the potential audience for this song and this issue will grow as well. These various constraints, nonetheless, certainly restrict the song’s ability to raise meaningful awareness of the exigence. 

Although a somewhat unconventional approach to environmental activism, Lorde’s method is arguably effective, both in its format and its accessibility to the available audience. Historically speaking, music’s expressive capabilities have allowed artists to capture the emotions of their audience and direct their attention to the exigence. More specifically, the use of music to address environmental issues can even be traced back to 1963, when indigenous songwriter Peter La Farge alerted listeners to the disasters the natural world would face in his album As Long as the Grass Shall Grow (Currin). A pattern then emerged when Depeche Mode addressed environmental justice in their 1983 song  “The Landscape Is Changing”, and Dave Matthews took a similar approach in 1993 with “One Sweet World” (Currin). Clearly, there is value in the unique ability musicians have to guide the public’s consciousness towards an issue by creating works that express their own ideas or anxieties surrounding it. The personal connections created by these artists stir up a greater sense of shared responsibility within the global audience, especially in regards to environmental issues. Because of the emotional resonance that can be achieved through music, Lorde’s song offers a deep emotional appeal that could be very effective in encouraging the audience to participate in addressing the exigence. 

The constraints created by the varying beliefs people have regarding climate change, however, greatly limit the impact of this work as a response to a rhetorical situation. Oftentimes, though, when music carries a political message that could be viewed as polarizing, it is useful in creating an emotional connection and a sense of community between the artist and their listeners (Grant). These shared ideas about the world have the ability to unite people from many different communities through their shared passion towards a specific cause. The presence of such strong messages in music may be off-putting to those with different viewpoints, but it brings those willing to take action closer to the cause by creating a personal connection and sense of community. While the song may not reach the widest audience possible, that does not diminish the potential impact the available audience can have on the situation at hand within their own communities.

Lorde’s own perspective as an artist adds potential constraints and further nuance to her delivery of this song. The singer is from New Zealand, where climate change is widely taken much more seriously than in the United States and the countless other countries in which her fans reside. New Zealand even recently became the first nation in the world to require by law that its financial institutions make official reports on their environmental impacts (“NZ to launch”). Lorde’s own perspective on the climate crisis was likely impacted by the ongoing dialogue surrounding it in her home country, which likely motivated her to address this situation in her own work. Although she likely expected pushback from people who disagree with the sentiments she expresses in “Fallen Fruit”, Lorde’s fanbase primarily consists of young people who generally share her more liberal views on issues such as climate change. With this in mind, the singer likely expected she would be met with support from young fans who likely share a similar perspective on the way older generations have contributed to this crisis over time. Because of this shared ideology, the available audience is more willing to connect with and fully absorb the song’s message. By sharing her personal ideas surrounding the subject, including the negative feelings surrounding it, Lorde has carved out a niche for an audience whose beliefs more or less align with her own.

Lorde’s stylistic choices within “Fallen Fruit” also greatly shape the overall impact of the song on its audience. Prior to the album Solar Power, Lorde’s musical style could be described as a polished, electronic sound. With “Fallen Fruit” and the other songs on the album, however, she took on an entirely different creative approach. Acoustic instruments and drums have a much larger presence in these songs, creating a more natural and grounded musical atmosphere. This earthy quality found within the instrumental backing lends itself to the overall theme surrounding the natural world’s majesty, which ties into the exigence of the climate crisis. This use of auditory tools and cues help establish a more clear purpose for the rhetoric as a whole. These uncharacteristic creative choices help the situation stand out in a more authentic way and allow Lorde to deliver the exigence more effectively.

Through the use of powerful lyrical choices and unapologetic emotional honesty, Lorde effectively brings to light the rhetorical situation surrounding climate change in “Fallen Fruit”. As its effects continue to worsen each year, the exigence brought on by this situation calls for immediate action from people across all generations. Certain constraints limit the audience’s ability to wholeheartedly accept the song’s message, but nonetheless, a dedicated audience exists, ready to fully acknowledge the exigence. This song serves as a clear example of one of the countless ways in which a rhetorical situation may be addressed, both creatively and effectively. 

Word Count: 1915

Works Cited

Bitzer, LLoyd F. “The Rhetorical Situation.” Philosophy & Rhetoric, Vol. 25, 1992, pp. 1-14.

Clayton, Susan, and Christie Manning. Psychology and Climate Change: Human Perceptions,

Impacts, and Responses. Elsevier Science & Technology, 2018.

Currin, Grayson Haven. “Music For Our Emergency.” NPR. 5 Dec. 2019. 

www.npr.org/2019/12/05/784818349/songs-our-emergency-how-music-

approaching-climate-change-crisis. Accessed 8 Oct. 2021.

Grant, Kristin Westcott. “Political Activism and Music in 2019.” Forbes. 16 Jan. 2020. 

www.forbes.com/sites/kristinwestcottgrant/2020/01/16/political-activism-and-music-in-

2019. Accessed 9 Oct. 2021.

Hoggett, Paul. Climate Psychology : on Indifference to Disaster. Palgrave Macmillan, 2019.

“NZ to launch world-first climate change rules”. BBC. 14 Apr. 2021.

www.bbc.com/news/business-56728381. Accessed 9 Oct. 2021.

Enough is Enough: TIME Magazine’s Response to a Rhetorical Situation

On Valentine’s Day of 2018, a shooter entered Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida and took the lives of seventeen people. The nation reacted in horror as yet another instance of gun violence in schools was stamped in the history books of America. But as the community of Parkland and the rest of the country mourned the loss of life, a sense of urgency and responsibility to prevent another devastating school shooting began to gain traction. This was felt most strongly among the witnesses of the shooting: Parkland’s own students. These students spear-headed a nation-wide (and arguably world-wide) movement known as March for Our Lives in an effort to halt gun violence in the United States and did so with immense bravery and passion. TIME Magazine best captured this movement when it featured five leaders of March for Our Lives on its cover of March 2018, with “ENOUGH.” plastered in bold lettering across the foreground. With this simple yet profound cover, TIME Magazine utilizes various aspects of rhetoric, including visual and textual elements, to effectively address the issue of gun violence in schools across the country. More specifically, TIME Magazine appropriately responds to the “rhetorical situation.”

As best put by American rhetorician Lloyd F. Bitzer, a rhetorical situation is defined as a “natural context of persons, events, objects, relations, and an exigence which strongly invites utterance” (4). In short, a rhetorical situation is a specific occasion that requires an appropriate rhetorical response. It should be noted that a rhetorical situation consists of three elements: exigence, audience, and constraint. Firstly, Bitzer explains that exigence is the issue that prompts the rhetorical response (6). Secondly, in terms of a rhetorical situation, Bitzer defines audience as people who are “capable of being influenced” by the rhetoric and then can act as “mediators of change” (7). Lastly, the constraints of a situation include anything that has the “power to constrain decision and action” that would be necessary to mediate the exigence (8). Constraint can exist in a rhetorical situation in various forms, from a reader’s personal beliefs to the medium in which a text is presented. Additionally, constraints can also stem from the rhetor themself. To fully comprehend the rhetorical situation presented by TIME Magazine, it is essential to understand the three fundamentals of exigence, audience, and constraint. 

In TIME Magazine’s rhetorical situation, the exigence is the need to address the issue of gun violence in the wake of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting. It is also important to acknowledge the backdrop of this situation, as the United States has been afflicted by a history of deaths as a result of gun violence. According to the book When Students Protest: Secondary and High Schools, more than thirty thousand cases of gun-related deaths occur in the United States annually (Bessant and Lohmeyer 39). With this context in mind, the TIME Magazine cover brings attention to the mounting calls of young students, particularly those of the Parkland students of the March for Our Lives organization, to restrict the usage of assault weapons in the United States. As best explained by the March for Our Lives website, the intention is to put a complete end to the unnecessary deaths of students due to gun violence and to create a world in which the country is “free from gun violence in all of its forms” (“How We Save Lives”). The exigence in this situation is rhetorical because if enough people demanded stricter gun reform across the country, politicians and lawmakers would be potentially more inclined to deliver policies that would ensure gun safety. In turn, this would create less occurrences of shootings, particularly in school settings. The fact that the exigence is capable of being modified is fitting of Bitzer’s description of exigence, as well. 

The rhetorical audience in this circumstance is the many readers of TIME Magazine across America who consume this text in either a digital or print form. The audience can also be classified as rhetorical because the readers are capable of being influenced and being mediators of change in the push for gun control. It is important to note the demographics when considering the audience, as well. According to a media bias evaluation by website All Sides, TIME Magazine is a left-leaning publication (“Time Magazine”). Therefore, one can assume that the primary base of TIME’s audience holds more democratic beliefs. Furthermore, TIME magazine traditionally has a generally older audience. According to a study conducted in 2016, the average age of a reader of this publication was fifty years old (Gaille). However, with the popularization of digital media in recent years, the magazine has become accessible to those of younger generations. A 2017 survey found that TIME was the second-most read or subscribed magazine among readers aged thirteen to thirty-five (“What Magazines Are Millennials & Gen Z Actually Reading?”). These demographics are crucial in understanding the audience because it impacts how receptive an audience member will be to receiving the message that TIME Magazine is attempting to communicate. 

The constraints of this situation include the audience demographics, the medium of the text, and the knowledge that is required to fully comprehend the text. Firstly, the audience can be considered a constraint because of its previously mentioned age and political demographics. Because TIME readers are more likely to be liberal, the magazine is able to publish content that a more conservative audience would be less accepting of. In this case, stricter gun control is a polarizing issue that conservatives are typically not in favor of. In contrast, liberals tend to support the passing of more restrictive gun laws. Consequently, TIME Magazine has the ability to comfortably print a cover with such a strong statement against gun use because they are aware that their message will most likely register with its left-leaning audience and that their rhetoric will not fall upon deaf ears. Furthermore, it is important to observe the ages of TIME Magazine’s audience as a constraint. As stated beforehand, the ages of TIME’s readers vary, with most of its print readers being older and its digital readers being younger. In this situation, it can be said that a younger audience will most likely connect with the rhetoric of the magazine cover because it is centered around the issue of gun violence in schools. With this in mind, an older audience may not be as understanding of the goals of the younger population in regard to curbing gun accessibility. 

The medium of the text can be considered a constraint, as it is in the form of a magazine cover. Due to the expansion of digital media, one could argue that print magazines are in decline and are not as widespread. As a result, this potentially constrains the accessibility of this text, especially in print form, among its target audience. However, with the popularization of digital publications comes greater availability to media across online platforms. TIME Magazine happens to fall into this category, as the magazine has an online website featuring its articles and cover stories. In turn, the audience is able to more easily access its content, including the March 2018 cover. 

In addition to the audience demographics and the text’s medium, the knowledge necessary to understand the text could be considered a constraint because the text is responding to an incredibly layered, multifaceted situation that requires contextual information. While this cover is addressing the shooting that occurred at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, it is also taking into account the preceding cases of gun violence that have plagued the country. According to the Sandy Hook Promise, there have been 1,316 school shootings in the United States since the year of 1970 (“16 Facts About Gun Violence and School Shootings”). Without understanding the context of school shootings in the history of the United States, one cannot not understand the urgency of the text’s message. Moreover, it is essential to be aware of who the figures featured on the cover of the magazine are: Emma González, David Hogg, Cameron Kasky, Alex Wind, and Jaclyn Corin. The audience simply cannot interpret the significance of this TIME Magazine cover without having the previous knowledge that these five students were witnesses to the Parkland shooting. It is also vital for the audience to know that the students are leaders of the March for Our Lives movement and are strong supporters of gun control and reform. With these pieces of information, the audience can entirely register the text’s rhetoric and the gravity of the single word emboldened on the magazine’s cover: “ENOUGH.”  

With all the exigence, audience, and constraints taken into account, one is able to more adequately evaluate the text’s overall effectiveness in its endeavor to respond to the rhetorical situation. This text can be considered appropriate for the situation because it tactfully utilizes numerous rhetorical elements and strategies to respond to the exigence, appeal to its audience, and utilizes its constraints. For instance, TIME Magazine applies multiple modes of communication in its text that enhance its efficacy. Explained by literary scholars at the New London Group, modes of communication are deliberate aspects of a text that exist to skillfully convey a message to an audience (Ball, et al. 14). Of the five modes of communication (visual, spatial, aural, gestural, linguistic), TIME’s 2018 cover best utilizes the visual and gestural modes of communication. Visually, the magazine cover is simple in its composition. It features the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School student-activists, the iconic TIME lettering in the background, and “ENOUGH.” in bold print in the foreground. However, this uncomplicated design is incredibly impactful because it is direct and blunt; the reader can immediately grasp the intended response of the magazine cover. The fact that the word “ENOUGH” is in bold across the front of the cover also adds to its unambiguous nature because it clearly communicates the text’s message. Finally, the famous TIME Magazine logo is a visual aid in this situation because it adds a layer of credibility, since TIME is a publication known across the globe for its reporting and dialogue on current events. As for the gestural mode of communication (gestures, expressions, etc.), the cover expresses its message primarily through the body language and facial expressions of the Parkland activists. All five of the students in the photograph have a serious, somber look about them as they stare directly into the lens of the camera. In particular, the body language of Emma Gonzáles (front) is also incredibly telling, as her arms are crossed in front of her body to convey a no-nonsense attitude. These gestural elements are an integral part in the overall function of the rhetorical response because they evoke feelings in the audience and appeal to pathos, which in turn creates an investment in the response that TIME is attempting to impart regarding the issue of gun control. On the whole, TIME Magazine’s cover is a fitting response to the situation because it incorporates powerful rhetorical elements that directly address the exigence and the audience while utilizing constraints.

Though gun violence in schools is a heavy, multilayered topic, TIME Magazine’s cover expertly brings the issue to the forefront with a call to action. Using the three components of the rhetorical situation (exigence, audience, and constraints), TIME is able to directly respond to the national matter regarding gun violence and gun control and to appeal to its more liberal audience. Though limited by certain factors, such as the convoluted context required to understand the situation, the magazine also makes use of its constraints. Additionally, the visual and gestural modes of communication featured on the magazine cover reinforces the overall strength of the rhetorical response through layout, composition, and human expression. The TIME Magazine cover of March 2018 is incredibly impactful not only in the rhetorical sense, but in its greater significance in the context of the United States’ history. The cover powerfully communicated the urgent need for substantial change in the gun laws of the country with a single word: enough.

Works Cited

Ball, Cheryl E., and Kristin L. Arola. “What Are Multimodal Projects?” Writer/Designer, edited by Jennifer Sheppard, Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2018, p. 14. Accessed 7 Oct. 2021.

Bessant, Judith, and Ben A. Lohmeyer. When Students Protest: Secondary and High Schools, Rowman & Littlefield, 2021, p. 39, books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=zi89EAAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PA145&dq=goals+of+the+march+for+our+lives&ots=IhfNmeiETr&sig=fu1KoRTbVRc_EqVrpRaeLd3D1V4#v=onepage&q=goals%20of%20the%20march%20for%20our%20lives&f=false. Accessed 6 Oct. 2021.

Bitzer, Lloyd F. “The Rhetorical Situation.” Philosophy & Rhetoric, vol. 25, 1992, pp. 4, 6-8. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/40237697. Accessed 5 October 2021.

Gaille, Brandon. “43 Distressing Time Magazine Demographics.” BrandonGaille.com, 14 Jan. 2017, brandongaille.com/43-distressing-time-magazine-demographics/. Accessed 6 Oct. 2021.

“How We Save Lives.” March For Our Lives, March Four Our Lives, 19 Aug. 2021, marchforourlives.com/policy/. Accessed 6 Oct. 2021.

“What Magazines Are Millennials & Gen Z Actually Reading?” YPulse, YPulse, 16 Oct. 2017, www.ypulse.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/What_Magazines_Are_Millennials_Gen_Z_Actually_Reading_10.16.2017.pdf. Accessed 14 Oct. 2021.

“Time Magazine.” AllSides, AllSides.com, 1 Mar. 2021, www.allsides.com/news-source/time-magazine-news-media-bias. Accessed 6 Oct. 2021. 

“16 Facts About Gun Violence and School Shootings.” Sandy Hook Promise, Sandy Hook Promise, 9 Sept. 2021, www.sandyhookpromise.org/gun-violence/16-facts-about-gun-violence-and-school-shootings/. Accessed 14 Oct. 2021.

As the Civil Rights movement of the 1950’s and 1960’s unfolded, Martin Luther King Jr. had, perhaps, the most encompassing and personal rhetorical situation to face in American history. In Letter From Birmingham Jail, Martin Luther King responds to the subjectivity of law and the issue he paramounts by using precise and impactful rhetoric from inside of his jail cell. While this fight had been raging for nearly 10 years, the release in 1963 was shortly followed  by the Civil Rights Act in 1964.              

Martin Luther leading peaceful Birmingham protest, AP News

Lloyd Bitzer describes rhetorical situation as, “a complex of persons, events, objects, and relations presenting an actual or potential exigence which can be  completely or partially removed if discourse, introduced into the situation, can so constrain human decision or action to bring about the significant modification of the exigence” (6). In sum, all rhetoric has an external situation in which it is responding to. Analysing a rhetorical situation clarifies why a text was created, the purpose in which it was written, and why the author made specific choices while writing it. There are three main considerations to make while analysing a rhetorical situation: the constraints, the exigence, and the audience. Constraints bring light to the obstacles this rhetoric may face, whether it be social, political, economical, etc. and may encompass the audience, as seen while analysing Letter From Birmingham Jail. The audience of a rhetorical piece will shape the rhetoric the author uses in order to appeal, brazen, or educate whoever is exposed. Lastly, the exigence of a rhetorical piece is the external issue, situation, or event in which the rhetoric is responding to. All of these factors influence each other to shape rhetoric, which Bitzer describes as, “pragmatic; it comes into existence for the sake of something beyond itself” (3), with Martin Luther King’s Letter From Birmingham Jail being a shining example. 

In Letter From Birmingham Jail, the exigence is the continued condemnation, segregation, and prejudice afflicted against African Americans since the emancipation of the slaves in 1863. However, the racial divide was legislated in 1877 with the implementation of Jim Crow laws, which lasted until 1950. While the Civil Rights movement superseded the dismantling of Jim Crow, the social ideologies and lackadaisical legislature behind anti-black prejudice continued to rack the country far into the 1960’s. King was the figurehead of the Civil Rights movement, infamous for his “I Have a Dream” speech and substantially impactful rhetoric promoting social and political change, peaceful indignation, and calls to awareness. Martin Luther found himself arrested on the twelfth of April 1963 after leading a peaceful protest throughout Birmingham, Alabama “after he defied a state court’s injunction and led a march of black protesters without a permit, urging an Easter boycott of white-owned stores” (Jr., Martin Luther King). The eight clergymen in Birmingham released a public statement of caution regarding the protesters actions as “unwise and untimely” (King 1), to which Martin’s letter is a direct response. This protest, his subsequent arrest, and the clergymen’s public statement ostensibly make up the rhetorical exigence, but it truly stems from a much larger and dangerous situation at hand: the overwhelming state of anti-black prejudice spread socially, systematically, and legislatively in America since the country’s implementation of slavery in Jamestown, 1619. This exigence is rhetorical because it can be improved if enough people are socially cognizant, whether that be in legislature or the streets of Birmingham, through creation and enforcement of equitable laws and social attitudes. These circumstances lead us to our next rhetorical focus: audience. Who was he truly writing for?

The audience of Letter From Birmingham Jail was initially the eight clergymen of Birmingham, all white and in positions of religious leadership. However, in the months that followed, King’s powerful words were distributed to the public through civil right’s committees, the press, and was even read in testimony before Congress (‘Letter from Birmingham Jail’), taking the country by storm. While his letter was only addressed to the clergymen, it is safe to assume that King had intent on the public eventually reading his letter, considering his position within the Civil Rights movement, use of persuasive rhetorical language, and hard-hitting debates on the justification of law. With this addressed, his audience was truly the population of the United States, especially Birmingham, with a focus on those who withheld and complied with the oppression of African American citizens, even if not intentionally. This audience is rhetorical as the social and political ideologies of the American people fuel democracy and are able to change the system around them through collective effort. His writing is respectful and educated, if not naturally, to invalidate the use of his race against him by the largely prejudiced audience. It’s important to note that his initial readers/supporters greatly impacted the scope of his audience, spreading the letter through handouts, flyers, and press, in the hopes that others would be impacted for the better by the weight of the exigence at hand. His audience ranged between those who his message empowered, a radical positive force, and those who disagreed, made up of southern states, extremist groups, and the majority of American citizens stuck in their racial prejudices. Despite his support, Martin Luther’s audience is one of the largest constraints in his rhetorical situation. 

The constraints surrounding Martin Luther King’s rhetorical situation include the audience, the rhetorical exigence of the situation he is responding to, Dr. King himself, and the medium, all of which are deeply connected. Firstly, and most daunting, is the constraint of the letter’s audience. Initially, the eight Birmingham clergymen are the audience and while they were not overtly racist, King uses rhetoric meant to have them understand his urgency. As mentioned before, the social and political ideologies in America surrounding racial equity at this time, specifically in Birmingham, were extremely poor. While his supporters nation-wide were avid, determined, and hopeful, they were challenged by the opposing, vastly white population, comfortable in their segregated establishments and racist ideologies who would certainly weaponize his viewpoints. Not only was this a social division, but those who opposed King were reinforced by the respective legislature that sought to burden him. Despite his opposition, however, the letter is truly addressed to those who were not against King, but did not understand the urgency of his movement. The letter goes on to explain his choice to act directly and nonviolently, stating, “For years now I have heard the word ‘wait.’ It rings in the ear of every Negro with a piercing familiarity. This ‘wait’ has almost always meant ‘never’ (King 2). King chose to write this for a reason; to resonate with those who were not his enemies but who held back the movement through compliance. It was important for King to address this audience as their support would ultimately make the largest difference in the movement. The biases of the audience go hand in hand with the rhetorical exigence of this letter, another large constraint in the effectiveness of his message. The continuous mistreatment of African Americans for over a century was, at last, deeply questioned and challenged nationwide with the growing popularity of the Civil Rights movement, and the topic of equality for all had divided the country. All of this accumulates into an unwavering social constraint placed on Martin Luther King’s rhetorical text. To minimize the possibility of being deemed invalid due to his race, he must choose what he states and how he states it very precisely which correlates to the constraints Martin Luther himself has on his rhetorical situation. 

As a black man and pacifist-forward figurehead of the Civil Rights movement, the way Martin Luther is perceived is mostly dictated by preconceived biases and is rampant, widespread, and polarized. 

                Martin Luther in Birmingham Jail, The Atlantic

Furthermore, exterior events regarding the movement could ultimately reflect on his influence and polarize the audience further. Greater importance is placed on his tone, choice of words, choice of argument, and credibility, for better or for worse, and he must carefully make rhetorical decisions, not only because of his race. At this time, he is representative of the Black American population and the Civil Rights Movement as a whole– he is Martin Luther King Jr., and while this is a powerful position to occupy, the constraints imposed are just as dominant. Ultimately, he effectively tackles societal constraints, whether it be audience bias, historical racism, or how he is viewed by using the power of his rhetoric to his advantage. King spins the constraining pressure to properly represent the movement on its head, using his rhetoric to uplift the underprivileged and leave no room in his language for criticism, proven by the continuous adoption of his messages by the public. 

Lastly, King is constrained by his medium. A letter, as a medium, is constraining as there is one definitive original copy, it is addressed to a small specific group, and since it cannot be directly broadcasted widely, opposed to television or radio, it must be printed or passed along analogically. Whether this be by newspaper, flyers, or restated by another in speech, the spread of information is slower and potentially more controllable. The letter was written April third, 1963, it was published for the public in June of the same year, a slower spread than a nationwide address on television or radio. Additionally, personable elements such as tone, inflection, and overall vindication behind the letter are left to be determined by the rhetorical language. There may have been advantages to broadcasting this message similarly to his “I Have a Dream” speech, which touched America deeply, due potentially to the accessible, instantaneous, and widespread coverage in American media. He was able to further interact with the audience; they were able to hear his voice, listen to the intended tone behind his words, see his face, and study his demeanor in the face of adversary. However, this constraint did not ultimately halt the spread of King’s message nation-wide, as it became a persuasive landmark of the civil rights movement, likely due to both his impactful position and persuasive use of rhetoric. 

To truly understand the effectiveness of this letter, one must rhetorically analyse the contents. Martin Luther utilizes powerful rhetoric to define his exigence. He begins strongly by explaining why he is in Birmingham in the first place, stating, “So I am here…because we were invited here. I am here because I have basic organizational ties here” (King 1), after describing his involvement in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference as president. He goes on to add; “I am in Birmingham because injustice is here” (King 1). At the time, Birmingham was one of the harshest places to live in America for African Americans; white supremacy groups would set off bombs to instill fear in the black community and withhold racial integration, and peaceful protests and sit-ins were met with unjustifiable police violence, in addition to the suffocating social qualms surrounding the black community (Eskew). Consequently, Birmingham became the core of the Civil Rights movement, pumping the life-blood of social change into the rest of the country. Being nearly symbolic, King being held prisoner in Birmingham, the most polar racial arena of the United States, made his rhetoric more effective. It elucidated the exigence behind his letter as his presented rationale behind his arrest only made unjust laws appear more asinine and questionable by relation. Martin Luther King then goes on to make an analogy to the Bible, portraying Apostle Paul’s proliferation of the gospel of Jesus Christ in parallel to his own efforts, stating, “I too am compelled to carry the gospel of freedom beyond my particular hometown” (1). These encompass his exigence, at its most simple and precise, and validify the importance behind transforming the country in a positive way. 

The rhetorical choices referenced above are riddled with pathos, also known as language utilized to persuade the audience emotionally. Not only does he use pathos to humanize himself, but he also uses it to humanize his immediate audience, the eight clergymen. He opens with an explanation to his response, stating, “Seldom, if ever, do I pause to answer criticism of my work and ideas…But since I feel that you are men of genuine good will and your criticisms are sincerely set forth, I would like to answer your statement in what I hope will be patient and reasonable terms”(King 1). By addressing his respect for the clergymen, feigned or not, he is acknowledging the effectiveness of respect to those in power, whether they may or may not deserve it. King’s decision to compare his efforts to those of biblical figures with shared intent was a deliberate attempt to find common ground with his initial readers, the eight religious Birmingham clergymen, through the faith of a shared religion. His mention of involvement and leadership within a Christian civil rights organization, strength of religious analogy, and general politeness are effective rhetorical choices used to shape how he is perceived despite his critical response, racial setbacks, and arrest: a relatable man of faith, rationale, and initiative. 

Martin Luther King’s Letter From Birmingham Jail is undeniably effective at responding to the rhetorical situation at hand. While there were consistent and impactful efforts made by various groups for equality throughout the civil rights era, the proximity between the public release of the letter, found nation-wide by late 1963, and the passing of the Civil Rights Act in early July 1964 shows the direct impact the letter had on social attitudes following its publicization. The law was written in 1962, but the powerful response pushed the courts to finalize their decision. This period of quiet speculation over the law illuminates the national divide in opinion over the matter, one which King helped persuade positively. To summarize, Martin Luther King’s rhetoric is effective and ultimately changed the course of the Civil Rights movement for the better.                 

Works Cited

Bitzer, Lloyd F. “The Rhetorical Situation.” Philosophy & Rhetoric, vol. 1, no. 1, Penn State University Press, 1968, pp. 1–14, http://www.jstor.org/stable/40236733.

Glenn Eskew, “Bombingham: Black Protest in Postwar Birmingham, Alabama”, 1997

Jr., Martin Luther King. “Martin Luther King Jr.’s ‘Letter from Birmingham Jail’.” The Atlantic, Atlantic Media Company, 29 Jan. 2021, https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/02/letter-from-a-birmingham-jail/552461/. 

“‘Letter from Birmingham Jail.’” The Martin Luther King, Jr., Research and Education Institute, 29 May 2019, https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/letter-birmingham-jail. 

This hard-hitting Covid-19 vaccine advertisement caught the attention of many Charlotteans as well as an expansive online audience. Sunday, September 19th a truck displaying the words “Don’t get vaccinated” drove around Charlotte, NC during the Carolina Panthers football game. Upon seeing this abnormal slogan, the audience was drawn to the advertiser, a faux company by the name of Wilmore funeral home. A rhetorical situation such as this appeals to the audience’s emotions in attempts to persuade them to get vaccinated.

The faux funeral home website: www.wilmorefuneralhome.com consists of eleven words and one link in the center with the words “Get vaccinated now. If not, see you soon” painted in white across the black screen. Upon clicking the text in the center, the viewer is directed to the StarMed website, an urgent care facility in Charlotte that administers the Covid-19 vaccine. Many well known websites including People magazine, the Washington Post, and USA Today, wrote about this ad campaign using a shock factor and a bit of dark humor to grab the attention of their audience.  The ad campaign director, David Oakley feels that “conventional advertising is not working [and] regular messages … just kind of blend in” (Ebrahimji). So Oakley decided to use “a different perspective [one that] kind of shocks people into thinking, ‘Holy moly, man.’” (Ebrahimji).

Lloyd F. Bitzer describes a rhetorical situation as “a natural context of persons, events, objects, relations, and an exigence which strongly invites utterance” (4). Rhetorical situations are ones that expect a reaction or change from their audience. This audience, according to Bitzer, “consists only of those persons who are capable of being influenced by discourse and of being mediators of change” (7). The audience only includes those who can be influenced by the rhetoric. Bitzer declares exigence as “any imperfection marked by urgency” and specifies that rhetorical exigence must be modifiable (6). And according to Bitzer, the constraints on this rhetoric are “made up of persons, events, objects, and relations which are part of the situation” (8). These constraints could consist of beliefs, traditions, cultures, documents, or motives, and “have the power to constrain decision and action needed to modify the exigence” (8). Constraints serve as influences on the way the audience reacts to the exigence. 

The audience for this campaign is both the vaccinated and unvaccinated people of Charlotte. However, both parts of this audience can react in different ways. The unvaccinated people can be impacted by this harsh reality, and choose to get vaccinated or not. The vaccinated people, like many did, can repost an image of this truck on social media. This would spread awareness in unvaccinated Covid-19 death statistics, in an attempt to get those unvaccinated to consider vaccinating themselves or their children.

One form of exigence in this rhetorical situation is the vaccination status of the audience. This aligns with Bitzer’s definition of exigence because it is modifiable. If one member of the audience decides to get vaccinated, this exigence has changed. David Oakley expressed that the whole campaign will be worthwhile even if just one person decides to get vaccinated as a result (Ebrahimji). 

Another form of exigence in this situation is the rate at which people are dying of Covid-19. And despite the efforts being put to end this virus, the “current epidemic trends still remain relatively high levels in the morbidity and mortality of COVID-19” (Wang). This statistic, and more specifically the rate at which unvaccinated people are dying, are forms of exigence because the rhetorical situation is ultimately trying to change this. As of September, 2021 “Unvaccinated people are 11 times more likely to die from COVID-19 than those who are fully vaccinated” (Romo). This suits the exigence definition as put by Bitzer because if unvaccinated people understand their odds against Covid they may reconsider getting the vaccine. Some people refuse to get the vaccine because they think that they are healthy enough to survive even if they got Covid. But maybe this bold attempt for attention will at least make some who are weary of vaccination, look into it a bit further. In addition to decreased mortality rates, fully vaccinated people are also five times less likely to get infected with Covid (Romo).

The vaccination status in Charlotte is also an example of exigence. This can affect whether people choose to get vaccinated. If everyone they know has been vaccinated, it may make them more inclined to get vaccinated themselves. However, if the people around them haven’t gotten vaccinated, they may be less inclined to get vaccinated. This advertisement was created in an attempt to convince the people of Charlotte to get vaccinated, because the vaccination numbers in North Carolina are lower than the country’s average with “roughly 48.8% of residents … fully vaccinated” (Ebrahimji). 

A constraint of this situation is past experiences with both Covid-19 and with vaccinations. Usually when someone has been severely impacted by Covid, their friends and family are more likely to get vaccinated because they see the first hand impacts. This makes an advertisement about Covid mortality rates more effective for people in that category. If someone has had a bad experience with a past vaccination, they may be less likely to get the Covid vaccine, even despite the statistics. These are constraints because they have the power to constrain the audiences’ decisions.

Another constraint is the audiences’ trust in the government and in science. The audience’s trust in the government constrains their decision in whether or not to get the vaccine. If some people fully trust the government, they may be less hesitant to get vaccinated. And people who don’t like the president or the government may not have faith in the vaccine or trust the statistics that are being advertised. Same goes for science. Even despite the CDC guidelines, Covid protocols, and case statistics, if the audience has a lack of trust in the government, they might either not trust the vaccine content or the numbers of either Covid cases/deaths. 

Another constraint is the Covid-based laws in each area and the longing for normalcy. More businesses opening up and life “returning to normal” is a very common goal regardless of personal beliefs on vaccinations. If events like concerts for example, require vaccination prior to entry, people may be more likely to vaccinate. This applies for other businesses as well. If your favorite restaurant cuts capacity in half and now you can’t even get a reservation, or the football games you love going to now can’t have an audience, this may make you rethink your vaccination decision for no other reason than to get life back to normal. This longing for normalcy is something that is very common and can constrain someone’s decision to get vaccinated.

Another constraint is the awareness of the influx of people to funeral homes. This constraint is a motive of vaccination. This campaign allows people to recognize something they may not have thought about before. Funeral homes across the country have had to deal with the repercussions of the unvaccinated’s choice. They have to truck away corpses from hospitals and cremate or bury them. Funeral Director Patrick Kearns says that death rate is just too high and that “there’s no way [they] can bury or cremate them fast enough” (Fueler). This harsh reality, one that is shocking and terrifying, has not often been shared. Using a funeral home as the method of communicating this message is a powerful and unique way to reach their audience. People working in funeral homes are aware of this increase as well as people who have lost someone during this time. But this campaign seeks out those who have yet to think about this possible “side effect” of vaccination or lack thereof. This awareness can impact someone’s decision to get vaccinated by offering this perspective shift.

This rhetorical situation in the form of a harsh vaccination campaign in Charlotte, NC has people double-taking. In an attempt to avoid blending in with typical vaccine campaigns, ad campaign director David Oakley put together this faux funeral home advertisement telling people not to get vaccinated, this implying that doing so would lead to death, which would be good for their business. This dark humor is effective because it makes people think more deeply about the repercussions of not getting vaccinated. And although inevitably some will find this as an offensive or cheap attempt at promoting vaccination, I think this will challenge the ideas of the unvaccinated and make them think at least a bit more about their choice. This risky Covid-19 campaign is one Bitzer would define as a rhetorical situation because it attempts to convince the audience to get vaccinated by appealing to their emotions.

In her speech at the UN Climate Action Summit in 2019, Greta Thunberg masterfully critiques the actions or lack thereof of world leaders regarding climate change. In this rhetorical situation Greta exclaims, “This is all wrong. I shouldn’t be up here. I should be back in school on the other side of the ocean. Yet you all come to us young people for hope. How dare you!” (NPR 2). In the four and a half minutes she is speaking, Greta Thunberg makes a persuasive argument to her intended audience. 

In order to discuss Greta’s 2019 UN Climate Action Summit Speech as a rhetorical situation and to fully analyze it, what a rhetorical situation consists of must be outlined. According to Bitzer’s “The Rhetorical Situation”, “the presence of rhetorical discourse obviously indicates the presence of a rhetorical situation” (Bitzer 1). Following Bitzer’s definition of a rhetorical situation, the situation must have an exigence, an audience, and constraints. The exigence is the issue or catalyst prompting the author of the text to utilize rhetoric to solve the said exigence. The audience in the rhetorical situation must be a group of people able to be persuaded by the rhetoric used in order to take some kind of action regarding the exigence of the rhetorical situation. The constraints in a rhetorical situation can be defined as anything that hinders either the author of the text of the rhetorical situation or anything that hinders the audience from having the desired effect of the text in the rhetorical situation. Some examples of constraints could be beliefs, religion, disabilities, socioeconomic status, or anything else that could impact the audience’s receptiveness to the text of the rhetorical situation. 

In relation to Greta Thunberg’s speech at the UN Climate Action Summit in 2019, the exigence is the lack of action and responsibility taken by world leaders to combat climate change. Thunberg specifies that “for more than 30 years, the science has been crystal clear” (NPR 8) and in an accusatory statement claims “if you really understood the situation and still kept on failing to act, then you would be evil” (NPR 13). This exigence leads back to the growing and impending issue of climate change, inaction on the part of world leaders, governments, and large corporations, the fear of the future, and the young people who must bear the consequences. When discussing climate issues and the inaction or lack of accountability, it is vital to consider that “[m]easurement is a first step toward accountability, and measurement needs constant improvement. But measurement in the absence of accountability is meaningless, especially in situations where many people are skeptical of cause and effect” (Kamarck). The younger generation’s fear of the future of their home planet can be summarized by Greta’s stinging section of her speech where she says, “You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words. And yet I’m one of the lucky ones. People are suffering. People are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction, and all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth. How dare you!” (NPR 4). 

The rhetorical audience in the text of Greta Thunberg’s Speech at the UN Climate Action Summit in 2019 would be the members of the UN and different representatives of world governments and world leaders who can implement the changes to combat climate change that she feels are necessary. They are her rhetorical situation’s audience because they have the potential to be persuaded by her speech and to implement change. She points out the fact that “This is all wrong. I shouldn’t be up here. I should be back in school on the other side of the ocean. Yet you all come to us young people for hope. How dare you!” (NPR 2). Her claim here is that she should not be lecturing the group who is supposed to be making the world a better place for her generation. They should be making the changes on their own and the fact that a young girl has to leave school to lecture government officials so that they will value the planet they live on more than economic growth is embarrassing for them. 

There are many constraints involved in this specific rhetorical situation. First, Greta Thunberg herself must be examined for constraints that could impact her speech. Her disability must be taken into account and how that can be both a negative and a positive constraint. “Inspiring what has become a worldwide movement no doubt requires a degree of “thinking outside the box,” a common attribute among folks with Aspie (a more feel-good way of saying Asperger’s) profiles.” (Hou). Her age is also a constraint that should be considered. While some of Greta’s audience may look upon her condescendingly due to the fact that she is a member of a much younger generation than their own, others may find it inspiring and it might prompt them to listen to her more intently. 

Additionally, the constraints of Greta’s rhetorical audience must be considered. Since the majority of the UN and government officials, world leaders, and politicians attending the Climate Action Summit are considerably older than Greta, there is a generational disconnect in ideas, beliefs, feelings toward religion, and priorities. While Greta is aware that she and many others will populate the planet for the next several decades, many of the members of her audience will not live to see the impacts of climate change in the next thirty to fifty years. The priorities of her audience members may involve economic growth, stock market growth, innovation, and what they think will benefit their nation or group they are representing most. 

Greta Thunberg utilizes many different forms of rhetoric to propose a fitting response to the situation. Her repetition of the phrase “How dare you!” (NPR) emphasizes the rage and frustration she has towards the exigence of the rhetorical situation. Not only does she appeal to the emotions of her audience members through charged language and accusatory statements like “How dare you!” (NPR), but she also utilizes logic and science to appeal to the opposing side of her rhetorical audience. She mentions the science behind the exigence and why action must be taken. 

The way in which Thunberg gives her speech orally due to her autism adds to her rhetoric. She is very unapologetic and angsty in the way she speaks to these world leaders, which is shocking. To watch a very young, petite girl speaking to world leaders using phrases such as “How dare you” (NPR) and gives her audience of powerful world leaders grief. Her clear and almost angry speaking voice adds to the language she chooses to use and acts as a certain kind of rhetoric in itself. 

In conclusion, Greta Thunberg masterfully critiques the actions or lack thereof of world leaders regarding climate change. In this rhetorical situation Greta’s exigence is the growing fear of the future young generations are experiencing due to the inaction of world leaders to combat climate change. Her rhetorical audience are the world leaders, politicians, and government officials at the UN Climate Action Summit in 2019 because she would like them to respond to her plea for help. Finally, her constraints include her autism, her age, her audience’s biases, beliefs, socioeconomic status, and the generational gap between them.

Works Cited

Bitzer, Lloyd F. “The Rhetorical Situation.” Philosophy & Rhetoric, vol. 25, 1992, pp. 1–14. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/40237697. 

Hou, Chia-Yi. “How Greta Thunberg’s Autism Helped Make Her the World’s Most Important Person for 2020.” TheHill, 21 Jan. 2020, https://thehill.com/changing-america/well-being/468091-opinion-activist-greta-thunbergs-autism-doesnt-hold-her-back. 

Kamarck, Elaine. “The Challenging Politics of Climate Change.” Brookings, Brookings, 23 Sept. 2019, https://www.brookings.edu/research/the-challenging-politics-of-climate-change/. 

Staff, NPR. “Transcript: Greta Thunberg’s Speech at the U.N. Climate Action Summit.” NPR, NPR, 23 Sept. 2019, https://www.npr.org/2019/09/23/763452863/transcript-greta-thunbergs-speech-at-the-u-n-climate-action-summit. 

Infamous writer Virginia Woolf lived and responded to one of the most socially contentious eras to date. Women’s rights and feminism were at the center of attention in Britain throughout the early 20th century. Female universities and higher education institutes were beginning to gain more traction and influence, largely due to the guidance of figures such as Woolf who traveled to these universities to further ignite women’s movements. Her essay “A Room of One’s Own” is based on various lectures she gave at Newnham and Girton College. Throughout the piece she uses language to persuade her audience of the feminnist agenda. This style, according to those such as Lloyd F. Bitzer, constitutes a response to a rhetorical situation. 

More precisely, Bitzer determines a rhetorical situation to be a syndicate of factors including individuals, locations, occurrences, and connections that can be manipulated to alter human decision (Bitzer 6). Many factors contribute to adequate rhetoric, namely “there are three constituents of any rhetorical situation” (Bitzer 6). Exigence represents the set of events, coincidence, or circumstance that is responsible for the rhetorical situation in question. However, factors such as death, winter, or natural disasters cannot be considered exigence according to Bitzer because they cannot be changed with any amount of rhetoric, limiting exigence to variable factors (Bitzer 6). 

In addition to exigence, the factor audience is also considered by Bitzen to be a key component of rhetorical situations (Bitzen 6). He argues that there can be no rhetoric without an audience to hear or be influenced by the discourse (Bitzen 7). Poetry and scientific writing for example, lack the qualifications of rhetoric because they do not require an audience to impact to serve their intended purpose (Bitzen 7). 

Thirdly, constraints make up the final constituent of Bitzer’s rhetorical situation. This category includes “persons, events, objects, and relations to which are parts of the situation because they have the power to constrain decision and action needed to modify the exigence” (Bitzen 8). Any means of logic such as “beliefs, attitudes, documents, facts, traditions, images, interests, motives, and the like” (Bitzen 8) have the tendency to enact changes on rhetoric. 

Exigence, audience, and constraints can be found throughout Virginia Woolf’s essay “A Room of One’s Own”. She uses rhetoric to inspire women to participate in feminist movements and take action towards sexist standards. The exigence present in this piece is the discriminatory and patriarchal views held in 19th century Britain. It was rare for a woman to escape a painfully youthful marriage and life of domestic servitude even in the off chance that they had access to a fundamental education. In Woolf’s time, women lacked the right to vote, divorce, have possessions, or custody of their children (Murray).This constitutes as exigence because sexism is considered to be “changeable by discourse” (Bitzen 8) as Woolf showed via her work against these beliefs. Despite her fortune of being born into both a privileged and free-thinking family, these laws and social norms limited Woolf’s abilities to participate and contribute to society as well as to act on her own volition (“A Room of One’s Own.”). These oppressive philosophies that women were subjected to regarding equality of the sexes provided the exigence for the author to construct and share her rhetoric with the goal of furthering the feminist movement. 

This objective of heightening femimist morale required the proper audience. Woolf’s audience at the time of “The Room of One’s Own” construction was largely wealthier and more educated women that had the liberty to participate in the women’s rights movements (Bimberg). University education was not accessible to the general public, especially to most women (“Women’s Rights .”). Woolf utilized this fact to deliver lectures and introduce her philosophy to a demographic that had a more substantial chance to make the societal changes that she wished to see. Apart from the initiative of inspiring action within her audience, the author also chose an audience that would listen to what she had to say. Men, particularly in powerful positions, were not apt to accept or take the feminist movement seriously and certainly not at face value (Stetson). Therefore, had Woolf not directed her attention towards a female audience, the influence of her work would have been limited. 

Limitations in the form of constraints are of abundance within this Virginia Woolf essay as they are throughout many feminist works. The era in which this piece came to fruition is itself a constraint. The audience, the polarizing themes, the media, motives, and widely held societal beliefs and norms all curtail Woolf’s rhetoric. As a result of the common thought regarding gender roles in this time, the audience that Woolf could successfully appeal to was fairly minimal. She tended to acknowledge this and even preface her work with the admittance that “[a]t any rate, when a subject is highly controversial–and any question about sex is that–one cannot hope to tell the truth.  One can only show how one came to hold whatever opinion one does hold. One can only give one’s audience the chance of drawing their own conclusions as they observe the limitations, the prejudices, the idiosyncrasies of the speaker. “ (Woolf, A Room of One’s Own). The medial representation of Woolf’s ideas in the format of lectures at female colleges, books, poems, and other means of literature also offer a constraint on her rhetoric. People, namely male British politicians, would have to voluntarily expose themselves to Woolf’s femimist ideology which is not an action that was taken often. Yet, those who tried to avoid her influence ultimately had the most power regarding women’s liberation. 

Constraints exist in an alternate form than just limitations within this essay. The analogy “two sides to every coin” can easily be applied to the factor of audience as well as polarizing themes utilized by Woolf. The predominantly female audience that the author appealed to may have not have always encompassed influential male figures, however, Woolf was able to inspire great actions of change amongst the women lectured. The media of lecture enabled women to be exposed to her ideals, regardless of whether they had adequate access to her literature. There were certainly motives against her, but she was able to fuel the flames of extreme feminist sentiment and determination throughout Britain which ultimately motivated her work. Women across Britain who idolized Woolf and her beliefs provided a constraint by initiating her agenda, thereby heightening the impact of her work. The same exigence that infringed upon women’s lives were the same ones that sparked outrage and resulted in movements of change. Woolf’s ability to resonate with this attitude was one of her greatest rhetorical constraints. 

Analysis of constraints, exigence and audience provides an effective way to access the success of Virginia Woolf’s rhetoric within “A Room of One’s Own”. She often mentions elaborate but relatable situations such as when she discusses a rather poor dinner at an older woman’s house and then juxtaposes the situation with an alternative given that women lacked suppression. The reasoning behind the poor dinner is the woman’s lack of a way to provide for herself and the lack of opportunities in her youth. Woolf argues that “[n]ow if she had gone into business; had become a manufacturer of artificial silk or a magnate on the Stock Exchange; if she had left two or three hundred thousand pounds to Fernham, we could have been sitting at our ease to-night and the subject of our talk might have been archaeology, botany, anthropology, physics, the nature of the atom, mathematics, astronomy, relativity, geography. If only Mrs Seton and her mother and her mother before her had learnt the great art of making money and had left their money, like their fathers and their grandfathers before them, to found fellowships and lectureships and prizes and scholarships appropriated to the use of their own sex, we might have dined very tolerably up here alone off a bird and a bottle of wine; we might have looked forward without undue confidence to a pleasant and honourable lifetime spent in the shelter of one of the liberally endowed professions” (Woolf). Rhetoric of this kind is especially impactful to Woolf’s largely female audience  of “A Room of One’s Own” who have found themselves in or are seemingly destined to live out the first scenario. This then allows Woolf to insert a far better situation given that changes to the exigence are fought for and made. The image above of a suffragette group at Newnham College which is where one of the lectures that inspired “A Room of One’s Own” was given. Woolf’s rhetoric was remarkably effective regarding the suffrage movement, in fact women were granted equal right to the ballet a year after this lecture was given (“Women’s Rights .”). 

The rhetoric in a “Room of One’s Own” was able to outlive the suffrage movement and its influence provided a continuity from 20th century to present day. As shown, she was granted a TIMES cover in 1937. This edition actually portrayed Woolf in a negative light. Disdain was expressed upon her lack of children, “careless” dress, and weathered appearance (“Time Magazine Cover: Virginia Woolf – Apr. 12, 1937.” ). Although she was portrayed poorly, this was a result of her successful rhetoric and influence concerning women’s equality to which male editors of Time were providing commentary on. Woolf often called out highly regarded men on their sexist statements. In “A Room of One’s Own” she mentions how the Pope stated that “most women have no character at all” (Woolf) and how Napoleon “thought them to be incapable” (Woolf). She occasionally went further such as in the case of Professor von X who wrote the “work entitled THE MENTAL, MORAL, AND PHYSICAL INFERIORITY OF THE FEMALE SEX” (Woolf). Woolf’s response within “A Room of One’s Own” was an inquisition as to what made him regard women so lowly. She considered that maybe it was because he was unattractive, or maybe his wife was cheating, or maybe because he was bullied as a child for his unsightly appearance (Woolf). While this rhetoric successfully appealed to the suffragette and feminist portion of her audience, men in power felt threatened by women’s rights advances and this language resulting in pieces such as this magazine. Fast forward to almost a century later where Woolf was granted another Time cover. This time as one of 2020s one-hundred women of the year. This time luxurious descriptions of her work and importance to women’s equality accompanied a youthful image of the writer. Now recognized as a “political visionary” and “one of the boldest novelists of the 20th century” (Wittman), her quotes and ideas act as constraints and often make their way into contemporary feminist movements. She has places in the works of characters from Toni Morrison to Samuel Beckett. Morrison in particular has metamorphosed Woolf’s rhetoric and continued to apply them to women’s struggles (Le Guin). Virginia Woolf’s formal legacy lives on as a result of her incredibly successful rhetoric within “A Room of One’s Own” and critical influence on what she believed in. 

Time articles and existing in the veins of some of the most prolific writers to date are clearly monumental displays of successful rhetoric. However, Woolf’s rhetorical success is probably more commonly found and utilized by the average citizen. Although her original audience and aim of influence was white, wealthy, and educated women, her message now lacks many of the constraints that accompanied older literature. People no longer need to attend her lectures or be able to afford books to be exposed to her message. Academic resources have largely publicly published her works. The result has been an expansion of her rhetoric throughout continents, sexes, races, ages, and economic classes. Pictured is a protester in a contemporary women’s march in response to the inauguration of ex-President Donald Trump. Powerful women, including Virginia Woolf are present on the poster. Although women in America now have the right to vote, the exigence sexism persists. As does Woolf’s rhetoric. Her messages of untapped potential that are so often referenced in discussions pertaining to immigrants, under-education, and poverty can be seen as derivatives from this particular essay. Woolf presents the character of Shakespeare’s sister who surpassed his own brilliance but was unable to pursue her potential and ultimately killed herself, depriving the world of her contributions (Woolf). Parallel logic such as this example, reference to her rhetoric, and evolution of the three rhetorical constituents reinforce the efficacy of Woolf. 

“A Room of One’s Own” has its own place in both history and the contemporary. The piece as analyzed with rhetorical situation constituents in mind has demonstrated compelling influence upon feminist mindsets and movements. Virginia Woolf’s utilization of her audience, understanding of her exigence, and manipulation of her constraints have resulted in consistency of her image and legacy in regards to literature and women’s rights movements. From inspiring the suffragettes to the women protesting restrictive healthcare, the women advocating for racial equality, the women going to bat against powerful men and corrupt systems, Virginia Woolf’s rhetoric has stayed strong for a century and promises another. 

Works Cited 

Bimberg, Christiane. “The Poetics of Conversation in Virginia Woolf’s a Room of One’s Own.” Connotations, 23 Sept. 2019, https://www.connotations.de/article/christiane-bimberg-the-poetics-of-conversation-in-virginia-woolfs-a-room-of-ones-own/.

Bitzer , Lloyd F. “The Rhetorical Situation.” Philosophy and Rhetoric , vol. 25, 1992, pp. 1–14. 

Le Guin , Ursula K. “On Virginia Woolf’s Enduring Influence.” Medium, The Paris Review , 3 Nov. 2020, https://thebookquarium.medium.com/on-virginia-woolfs-enduring-influence-e5ef41bb5399.

Murray, Jenni. “History – British History in Depth: 20th Century Britain: The Woman’s Hour.” BBC, BBC, 3 Mar. 2011, https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/modern/jmurray_01.shtml.

“A Room of One’s Own.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., https://www.britannica.com/topic/A-Room-of-Ones-Own.

Schneir, Miriam. “Feminism: the Essential Historical Writings .” Pascal, 1972, https://pascal-cofc.library.cofc.edu/discovery/fulldisplay?docid=alma991002521729705613&context=L&vid=01PASCAL_COFC%3ACOFC&lang=en&search_scope=Books_Articles_and_More&adaptor=Local+Search+Engine&tab=Books_Articles_and_More&query=any%2Ccontains%2CA+room+of+ones+own&mode=basic.

Stetson, Dorothy. “The Limits of Movement in Politics: The Case of British Feminism .” ProQuest, Sept. 1977, https://www.proquest.com/docview/63827131/DCC772F5C10744ECPQ/1.

“Time Magazine Cover: Virginia Woolf – Apr. 12, 1937.” Time, Time Inc., http://content.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,19370412,00.html.

“Virginia Woolf.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., https://www.britannica.com/biography/Virginia-Woolf.

Wittman, Lucas. “Virginia Woolf: 100 Women of the Year.” Time, Time, 5 Mar. 2020, https://time.com/5792713/virginia-woolf-100-women-of-the-year/.

“Women’s Rights .” The National Archives, https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/pathways/citizenship/brave_new_world/women.htm.

Woolf, Virginia. A Room of One’s Own. First ed., Hogarth Press , 1929.

Through building an intimate relationship, one’s significant other often becomes a part of one’s everyday routine and overtime, the center of one’s world. When love relationships reach this level of intimacy, the partners become physically and emotionally essential to one another. However, as a result of such deep love and attachment, this makes the mere thought of losing one’s partner unfathomable; the reality, on the other hand, encompasses the most unbearable grief, more than one could have ever previously imagined. Vanessa Bryant’s connection to her beloved husband and one of the NBA’s most idolized basketball players in history, Kobe Bryant, and her dear daughter, Gigi Bryant, had a pull like gravity on her; her relationships with them kept her grounded. Vanessa’s life fell into the orbit of Kobe and Gigi’s life making her world go round. On Sunday, January 26th, 2020, Vanessa’s universe came to a crashing halt as she faced the news that the lives of Kobe and Gigi were taken in a fatal helicopter crash. In response to this devastating news, Vanessa categorizes her reaction as the uttermost feeling of shock and grief that she has ever experienced. 

The path of healing after loss can be one of the most challenging recoveries among humanity. Within this healing process, calls for comfort and closure among all affected by the loss at hand become essential to achieve feelings of peace. On February, 24th, 2020, about a month after the crash, Vanessa was invited with open arms to speak at the memorial service in dedication to Kobe and Gigi at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, California. The location of the memorial holds great significance in the sense that Kobe played the majority of his seasons as a Los Angeles Laker there, further being named “the House that built Kobe.” In the arena filled to max capacity with 20,000 mourners, Vanessa managed to deliver powerful and emotional words in aims to achieve closure for herself and for those struggling to find peace after experiencing the tragic loss. 

In this context, Lloyd F. Bitzer’s analytical piece, “The Rhetorical Situation”, can be directly applied to explain Bryant’s pursuit of providing the mourning community with her heartfelt speech. According to Bitzer,  “rhetoric is a mode of altering reality, not by the direct application of energy to objects, but by the creation of discourse which changes reality through the mediation of thought and action” as a result of a circumstance that prompts a rhetorical action or response (4). In other words, a rhetorical situation arises from a certain context or situation that prompts necessary corresponding action. As noted by Bitzer, the rhetorical situation is composed of three essential parts: exigence, audience, and constraints. Exigence is an urgent calling of action as a result to a given situation that can be altered by discourse. In order to be considered rhetorical, Bitzer emphasizes that exigence must be able to be changed by discourse (6). The second constituent of rhetoric, audience, refers to the individuals who are being manipulated by the rhetorical situation with the potential of being altered by discourse (7). To cap off the components of exigence and audience, the third component, constraints, refers to the limitations of achieving success through the rhetorical technique which can root from the rhetor and/or the audience (Bitzer 8). When analyzing Bryant’s speech as rhetoric, this situation mirrors Bitzer’s theory and includes components that align with exigence, audience, and constraints.

Bryant holds a very complex position as the speaker of her emotionally heavy text; from one angle, Vanessa is facing and managing her own grief of losing her beloved husband and daughter. At the same time, Vanessa is providing positive words of comfort to those experiencing the same loss. In aims to achieve closure for herself and for others, Vanessa sets forth to deliver her speech. With that being said, the exigence of this situation stands as the calling for closure among the people affected by Kobe and Gigi’s death as a result of the tragic helicopter crash that cost their lives. The purpose of Vanessa’s speech is to achieve a sense of peace within herself and to console others. According to a clinical psychologist who specializes in traumatic loss and worked with the Bryant family to overcome this tragedy in their lives, the “memorial service to honor Kobe Bryant and Gianna Bryant could help Vanessa Bryant deal with her grief” (Scribner). In addition, LaDonna McMurray Gaddes shines light on Vanessa Bryant’s decision to speak at the Staples Center in Los Angeles in front of thousands of people mourning the same loss as her. Through illustrating change reactions in terms of loss, Gaddes provides insight as to how Bryant’s delivery of speech was emotionally necessary as it stood as “a need to complete the grief process [for herself and for the mourning audience] so that closure takes place” among all parties (Gaddes). Regardless of how emotionally challenging it was to speak about this raw wound, Vanessa knew giving her speech would be a monumental stepping stone in the healing process for herself and for the mourning community. Jane Greener, Ph. D., contributes to this point as she describes how, “relying on others and having the chance to talk and process what has happened helps the bereaved begin to face the finality of death and deal with the loss.” Coming to terms with the reality of such a big loss was one of Vanessa’s hardest challenges in the process, so being able to speak about her lost loved ones while being surrounded by immense love and support greatly aided her during the healing process.

Kobe Bryant was not the average NBA player. In history, Kobe is deemed as one of the best basketball players of all time which made the emotions rooting from his death very widespread among not only the close people in his personal life, but the entire basketball community as a whole. In correspondence with this circumstance, this only made Vanessa’s speech even more essential to those seeking consolation which are deemed as the audience of this situation. Not only did the audience consist of the people filling the stands of the Staples Center, but it also includes the many viewers watching and listening to the memorial service on television. As the rhetorical audience, the people viewing and listening to Vanessa’s speech are the intended recipients of Vanessa’s message as they are seeking closure for the deaths of Kobe and Gigi. In response to Vanessa’s heartfelt words, the audience is able to respond to the exigence of her speech and find settlement within their emotions after experiencing the given losses.

In this particular situation, the constraints encompass a very complex nature as these restrictions of effective rhetoric stem from the speaker as well as the audience. The constraints include Vanessa’s ability to effectively deliver the speech in face of her emotions and to achieve a sense of warm welcome from the audience in order to do so. Certainly, the audience welcomed Vanessa with an overload of applause and did not fail to make Vanessa feel supported as she stepped up to the podium. It is important to note that the memorial took place only a month after the helicopter crash that cost Kobe and Gigi’s lives meaning this was still a very sensitive topic for Vanessa to speak about; a wound so fresh makes one’s emotions very vulnerable. Furthermore, the constraints of Vanessa’s speech lie in the words of the speech itself; the content and approach of the speech determines whether closure was achieved by the audience or not. When it comes to loss, each individual person requires different elements to achieve closure. Depending on if the audience harmonized with Vanessa’s speech determines whether closure was achieved or not.

Vanessa approached her speech in a very personal manner in the sense that she mainly shared the details about her close knit relationships and fond memories with both Kobe and Gigi. Beyond her personal life with her husband and daughter, Vanessa could not disregard the fact that Kobe was one of the most famous basketball icons of all time, so she certainly acknowledged his superior status of his basketball career within her speech as well. To detour the audience’s sadness, Vanessa emphasized how important it is, “to know and remember the amazing person, husband and father [Kobe] was. [He was] the kind of man that wanted to teach future generations to be better and keep them from making his own mistakes”, and in saying this, Vanessa cast a positive light of comfort over her audience (Scottie). Vanessa’s main goals of delivering the speech were to achieve closure for herself and the mourning community, so by illustrating the honorable figures that Kobe and Gigi were, comfort was sensed among all.

Through other forms of rhetorical modes, especially linguistic and gestural modes, Vanessa’s speech can be considered as successful. The linguistic mode “refers to written or spoken words [which] includes word choice, the delivery of written or spoken text, the organization of words into sentences, and paragraphs, and the development and coherence of words and ideas” (Ball). In this scenario, the rhetoric can be understood through the linguistic mode as Vanessa presents her speech in a sincere and conversational tone to make her audience feel in tune with her words. In terms of the gestural mode, this mode of rhetoric refers to the “​​facial expressions, hand gestures, body language, and interaction between people” which is effectively exploited by Vanessa (Ball). By maintaining a collected composure for the duration of the speech, Vanessa utilizes the gestural mode. Ultimately, these supplemental techniques greatly contribute to the success of Vanessa’s use of rhetoric.

When looking at this situation as a whole, one of the most important aspects to consider  are the shoes Vanessa has no other choice but to walk in. While navigating through her own grief, Vanessa has to simultaneously keep up with her role as a mother to her daughters, Natalia, Capri, and Bianka. Additionally, given Vanessa was the closest to Kobe as his wife, she was placed in the position of providing the surrounding community with comfort due to her significant role in Kobe’s life.

From analyzing Vanessa’s speech through Bitzer’s rhetorical lens, Vanessa’s speech can be deemed as effective usage of rhetoric as it directly mirrors all elements of this literary device. While satisfying all components of rhetoric, Vanessa positively advances her own grief process and the grief process for the people mourning the same loss as her. Concluding Vanessa’s speech, this moment marked a huge stepping stone for herself and for all people facing Kobe and Gigi’s death. Thanks to Bitzer, the viewers of Vanessa’s speech have a deeper understanding of how effective rhetoric can be especially in the face of serious matters.

Works Cited

Andrew, Scottie. “Read Vanessa Bryant’s Speech at the Memorial for Kobe and Gigi Bryant.” CNN, 24 Feb. 2020, www.cnn.com/2020/02/24/us/kobe-bryant-memorial-vanessa-bryant-statement-trnd/index.html. 

Ball, Cheryl E., et al. Writer/designer : a Guide to Making Multimodal Projects. Second edition., Bedford/St. Martins, 2018.

Bitzer, Lloyd F. “The Rhetorical Situation.”Philosophy& Rhetoric, vol. 25, 1992, pp. 1–14.JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/40237697. Accessed 26 Feb. 2021.

Business Insider. “NBA Legends And Celebrities Came Out In Droves To Pay Their Respects At Kobe And Gianna Bryant’s Memorial. Here’s Who Attended.” Business Insider, Times Internet, 15 Oct. 2021, www.businessinsider.in/nba-legends-and-celebrities-came-out-in-droves-to-pay-their-respects-at-kobe-and-gianna-bryants-memorial-heres-who-attended-/Vanessa-Bryant-gave-a-heartbreaking-speech-about-Kobe-and-Giannas-lives-away-from-basketball-/slideshow/74292345.cms. 

Deb, Sopan. “Kobe Bryant Memorial: Full Coverage of the Tributes at Staples Center.” New York Times, 24 Feb. 2020, www.nytimes.com/live/2020/kobe-bryant-memorial-02-24. 

Geddes, LaDonna McMurray. “Change, Loss, Grief and Communication.” EBSCOhost, Oct. 1992,search-ebscohost-com.nuncio.cofc.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eric&AN=ED355602&site=ehost-live&scope=site

Greer, Jane. “Life After Loss: The Case of Vanessa Bryant.” Psychology Today, Sussex Today, 24 Mar. 2020, www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/shrink-wrap/202003/life-after-loss-the-case-vanessa-bryant. 

Nash, Rocky. “UPDATE: Los Angeles Honors Kobe, Gianna Bryant with Public Memorial.” 8 News Now, Nexstar, 25 Feb. 2020, www.8newsnow.com/news/local-news/live-updates-los-angeles-honors-kobe-gianna-brynt-with-public-memorial/.  

Scribner, Herb. “How the Celebration of Life Could Help Vanessa Bryant.” Deseret News, 24 Feb. 2020, www.deseret.com/entertainment/2020/2/24/21150562/vanessa-bryant-celebration-of-life-kobe-bryant-memorial. 

What would you do if I told you that every movement you make is being recorded? I am not talking about being recorded by your computer or your phone but by someone who you would never suspect. It could be someone that you welcomed into your home with open arms; someone who is now a critical part of your family. Or, perhaps, it is someone who wakes you everyday with their sweet melodies. However it is that you encounter them, they are a part of your day to day life and cannot be escaped no matter what you do. These creations are government surveillance drones that are used to keep watch over the country, however, you may know them by their common name: bird. Others think, however, that this “movement” is an enormously elaborate form of satire that is used to ease political tension. This essay will be dissecting a protest video posted by the “Birds Aren’t Real” youtube page and discussing how it is an effective example of a rhetorical situation.

Brought to popularity in 2017 by Peter McIndoe, the “Birds Aren’t Real” movement commits to informing the public of the bird genocide and their replacement by government surviellance drones (Alfonso; McIndoe, “Who Are We?”). McIndoe claims, however, that he is not the founder and that the campaign has been around since 1973; despite this assertion, McIndoe created the website “birdsarentreal.com” with the purpose to inform people about the history and the future of the movement. In the history section of the website, McIndoe recounts that Allen Dulles, the Director of the C.I.A. from 1953 to 1961, first proposed the idea of flying surveillance systems to President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1956. It is mentioned that Dulles decided to replace all birds with drones after becoming increasingly infuriated by the immense amount of pigeon feces found on his car. Allen Dulles, supposedly, assassinated hundreds of millions of birds through the use of a specially crafted poison that only affected avians. The poison was dropped from the sky through the use of specially designed planes, and when the poison touched the birds they would be infected and spread the disease to other avian species. It is reported that the creatures would completely decompose, within 24 hours of coming into contact with the poison. The deceased birds were then replaced with identical drones; some of the drones had the purpose to kill real birds so the government could speed up the efforts in replacing all the avians in America. McIndoe then continues to inform the reader on how the first whistleblower, whose name is not mentioned, of the bird genocide spread the word with the help of a young man named Clark Griffin. Together they informed the public of the operation and held rallies every year from 1974 to 1993 in Washington D.C. It is said, however, that all footage from the rallies were destroyed by government officials. Coming to the end of the movement, in 1991 Clark Griffin disappeared in the middle of a protest never to be seen again. After this event, the movement slowly tapered out and was brought to an end by the lack of leadership and the growing threat of the government (McIndoe, “The History”).

With the background of the movement established, it is time to break down the video in question that was posted on the “Birds Aren’t Real” youtube channel in 2018 and establish why it can be defined as satire. Declercq defines satire “…as a genre with the purpose to critique and entertain (with the qualification that these purposes necessarily interact, although neither is wholly instrumental to the other).” The video starts with Peter McIndoe sitting under a bridge claiming that he was relaxing at home “…when the sound of cars from [his] roof brought [him] to [the] disturbing realization [that] not everyone has access to social media…” (00:00-00:07) like he does. He then goes on to claim that he is “privileged” while holding an Etch A Sketch with the picture of the “Birds Aren’t Real” instagram page layered on top and acting as if it were an ipad or iphone (00:07-00:09). These first nine seconds immediately establish a comedic aspect to video. This is evident by the fact that McIndoe is clearly well groomed and therefore, likely, lives in a real home somewhere and not under a bridge. He also could have used real technology rather than a kids toy to show that he is fortunate. Continuing with  the video, McIndoe decides that he must present “…the sheeple with the truth where they can’t avoid it, rush hour traffic” (00:20-00:24). This statement is key because he calls the civilians sheeple; this is defined as a derogatory term that is typically used to refer to people who are foolish (“Sheeple”). This is the first indication that there is a larger purpose behind the video than just entertainment. McIndoe proceeds to yell at civilians assertions such as “the birds know your social security number,” “you have no excuse now,” and “pigeons are liars” (00:25-00:32), while carrying around protest signs that are painted with similar messages. This begins to cultivate the idea that the video is critiquing people’s intensity in relation to politics. He continues to roam around yelling at people when he is approached by a police officer. McIndoe claims, in the voiceover, that the government is attempting to silence them. During the interaction, he asks the officer if she was sent by Hillary Clinton, and when she hesitates, he states that he understands that she can not speak of it. He then ends the video by yelling “freedom of speech” (McIndoe 00:45-01:00). McIndoe’s actions and interactions act as a direct parody of real life protests that can be seen on the news today. All of the aspects mentioned above solidify the idea that the object of satire in the video is how people get so worked up and emotionally involved in politics. After watching the video,  it could be theorized that McIndoe hopes people will calm down and become less intense in regards to politics.

It is important to form a clear background of the movement’s history, and the video being analyzed, so that the reader can gain a better understanding of how complex this rhetorical situation is. Bitzer defines rhetorical situations as something that “…alters reality by bringing into existence a discourse of such a character that the audience… is so engaged that it becomes the mediator of change” (4). What makes situational rhetoric different from normal rhetoric is that the “…discourse comes into existence because of some specific condition or situation which invites utterance” (Bitzer 4). Bitzer also continues to claim that there are three key elements that a rhetorical situation must have: “exigence”, “audience”, and “constraints” (6). These three elements, and the definition of rhetorical situations, can all be seen in the video “STREET PREACHING” by Peter McIndoe. What is particularly unique about this video, though, is that, unlike other rhetorical situations, there are two exigences and two audiences. This is because of the complex nature of the movement and how some people see it as a legit conspiracy theory and how others see it as a form of satire. It is important to establish that, based on the evidence provided from the video, this essay will be focusing on satire being the real purpose behind the movement with conspiracy theories being a consequence of it. With that said, both play important roles in the video, and as such each will be discussed in a viewpoint as a rhetorical situation of their own. 

As previously stated, “STREET PREACHING” by Peter McIndoe has two exigences. The first one, which will be called the fake exigence, is that birds are government surveillance systems that are being used to spy on the people of America. In order to battle this issue, McIndoe takes to the streets to inform the public of the exigence. This is evident by the fact that in the video McIndoe is screaming at onlookers, and the camera, “you filming me doesn’t scare me. The birds do that to me everyday anyway” (00:33-00:36). Also, when asked what he is doing, by a pedestrian, he replies with “spreading the feathered gospel, ma’am” (McIndoe 00:39-00:41). These two statements make it clear that he is trying to spread the word about how the government is spying on people with birds. This was not always the purpose of the campaign, though. In the “Who are we?” section of the movement’s official website birdsarentreal.com, Peter McIndoe claims that their “…initial goal was to stop the genocide of real birds,” but when all the birds were eliminated, they changed their purpose to informing the public of how these creatures that looked eerily similar to birds were actually surveillance robots for the government (McIndoe, “Who Are We?”). The second, and true, exigence of the video is based on reversing and correcting the stress and hostility caused by the intense 2018 midterm elections. McIndoe decides to do this in the form of laughter that is produced from a satirical video. It has already been explained, in a previous paragraph, how the video is satirical with the object of satire being how people get worked up and emotionally involved in politics. It is also common knowledge that satire is meant to be comedic in nature which, also as mentioned in a previous paragraph, is evident in McIndoes work. But why mention the 2018 midterm elections? Why not just say politics in general? Well, the first video ever posted on the “Birds Aren’t Real” youtube channel was of McIndoe preaching to people on the street during a women’s rights march. This demonstrates that he finds inspiration for his content from recent political events. The largest and most recent political event, in the case of the video in question, was the 2018 midterm elections. What made the election so influential was that the House of Representatives was taken back by the Democrats; this, as a result, caused a panic among Republicans as their power, and President Donald Trump’s power, decreased substantially (Collinson). One month afterwards, McIndoe posted the video being analyzed in today’s essay on the “Birds Aren’t Real” youtube channel. The fake and true exigences, when put together, act almost as a summary of the video and of the movement as a whole.

The audience of a rhetorical situation must be able to, and willing, to take action based off of the exigence (Bitzer 7). In the case of the fake exigence, the fake audience would be conspiracy theorists. This is the case because studies show that people who believe in at least one conspiracy theory are more likely to believe in other theories (Goertzel 731). Conspiracy theorists would also act on the false exigence by spreading the word on social media with websites like Reddit being places where they converse and share their opinions on theories. The true audience would be anyone with a taste for satire. In this case acting on the exigence would be done by laughing which is why the audience for the true exigence is so broad. However, the audience could be narrowed down a little as it can be theorized that the audience is mostly made up of people who had a well-rounded education or who went to postsecondary school. The reasoning behind this is that those with thorough schooling have a deeper understanding of satire and what it is compared to people who never learned about it. With all of that said, both conspiracy theorists and those with a taste for satire play a key role in the formation of the “Birds Aren’t Real” community.

Similar to the exigence and audience, the constraints of the rhetorical situation can be grouped into general constraints and constraints that relate to the true exigence. Most of the general constraints can be summarized as a lack of accessibility of the video. The video is not made with the deaf and hard of hearing community in mind. This is evident as the audio quality of the video is not very good; this is a result of McIndoe being filmed on the side of the road without a microphone to solely pick up on his voice. Another example is that McIndoe did not create his own captions for the video; this results in youtube using auto generated captions which are not very accurate and will, occasionally, completely miss words. These two small, but important, details result in creating confusion or full exclusion of the deaf and hard of hearing community. Another way that there is a lack of accessibility is that the video can only be found on the internet. This creates a problem with people who do not have access to the internet or people who have trouble navigating it. This is especially an issue because it can cause confusion for onlookers of the stunt, with aforementioned limits, on whether McIndoe was being serious about birds not being real. Constraints that relate to the true exigence can be summarized as the ignorance of others. For example, people who take everything at face value will miss the satire of the video and therefore miss the true message. This is what leads to conspiracy theories which confuse the public of the intentions of the video. Although in many ways this acts as a constraint, it also acts as an affordance. This is because with the rise of conspiracy theories comes an increase in clout through news channels and articles that report the story. With the increase in coverage, the video will be able to reach more people and gain a larger audience. A similar affordance that also relates to the spread of the video is the share button on youtube. This button makes it convenient and quick to share the video with others and, again, create a larger audience. Between the constraints and affordances, each plays an important role in rhetorical situations.

Is the “Birds Aren’t Real” movement a real conspiracy theory or all an elaborate form of satire? Perhaps we will never get an answer. However, what can be confirmed is that the video “STREET PREACHING” by Peter McIndoe is, although not entirely effective, an excellent and humorous example of a rhetorical situation. The reasoning that the video is not effective has nothing to do with the production quality or the content but with the lack of viewership. With all of the popularity that surrounded the movement in 2018 and 2019, the video that was analyzed in this essay got a mere 6,589 views with only 404 of those viewers actually giving the video a thumbs-up (McIndoe, STREET PREACHING). Despite not being entirely effective, the short film still presents an excellently produced, comedic video with the intent of making its viewers self reflect on their actions in the past, present, and future.