Bitzer's model reconstructed

As we move through the postmodern era, rhetorical critics face the difficult task of organizing and integrating various critical methods as well as assessing more and more fragmented texts. This essay reconstructs Lloyd Bitzer's situational model to serve as a guide for the generation of multiperspectival critical assessments of rhetorical discourse. Two of President Bush's speeches on the drug crisis illustrate how the reconstructed model can account for such modern problems as multiple audiences, perceptions and exigences.

Key concepts:

• Theory
• criticism
• Bitzer
• Bush
• situation