Bitzer defined 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 as to bring about the significant modification of the exigence.”
My own definition of rhetorical situation are caused by an event that has actions to bring significant modifications to the situation. An example of this would be the town mayor can focus on a traffic policy, that is a big problem, thus causing the mayor to respond with rhetorical discourse concerning this problem.
There is so many different genres out there, they each achieve their purpose and reach each of their own audience. In genres writers use rhetorical situation to convey a message, find audience and get their text into a genre, they use rhetorical appeals to help shape the text to be fit into the chosen genre.
Khalid Daraghmeh Portfolio 