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What's going on y'all welcome to right like you mean it. Exclamation mark. Welcome back, that is to another episode about rhetorical analysis how to rhetorically analyze a written text. Last time, we left off with the introduction of all of the elements, following a general overview of the oral oral situation, which we've called the most basic form of rhetorical situations. In an oral oral situation, you have someone orally saying something to someone who orally with their ears, a you are a ll y, listens to that thing that's being said. In a nutshell, that is the oral RL situation. And of course, this basic understanding is important to have. It's a good starting point. But now we need to go into more elaborative detail on the elements that it's comprised of. And in order of presentation that you'll find them here, occasion exigence issue or the exigence. As an issue, really, the three basic kinds of discourse that classical rhetoric recognizes these are judicial deliberative, apodictic. And then from there, we'll talk about genre, not going to go into too much detail about genre yet, because that is a big area. But for our purposes here, the angle of approach I'll take is to think of genre as a forum, a forum of presentation. And then we'll talk about historical and cultural context, bringing home back to presuppositions, which is kind of where I left off in the previous episode, and move from there into the next major aspect of the rhetorical situation, which is the texture alized situation. For now, though, we're still in the oral oral situation arena. So let's begin with the occasion. We all know this word occasion. But here we're thinking about it as some event or circumstance that calls for speech. The occasion by which we mean typically some event or circumstance that calls for speech, we let a lot of things pass by without comment or remark, others seem to require some talk, some require a lot of talk, and some require formal public discourse. The speaker and audience then are brought together because they recognize the need for discourse. This is a rhetorical occasion, when the speaker and audience are brought together because of some recognition of a need for discourse. This recognition is really important, because it motivates the speaker to speak and the audience to listen in motivates that process that line of production and may even motivate the circumstances of the event in which the discourse is produced. Not always though, but sometimes it can. In any case, in general, the occasion again, some event or circumstance, they cause for speech, the speaker and audience brought together mutually through the shared recognition of a need for the production of discourse. But if the speaker's intended audience does not share this recognition, the audience may feel no reason to listen, other than maybe a dutiful politeness. In a case like that, then the speaker has got some more work to do, they may have to persuade the audience to recognize the occasion draw their attention to the occasion for the speech. So notice what that might mean for Kairos. So another way of saying that skilled rhetoric not only responds to Kairos, but can also create and manage it. Pretty cool, huh? I mean, you can draw a crowd through skilled rhetoric, skilled rhetoric, not only responding to Kairos, but also possessing the ability to create Kairos and to then even manage it. Yeah, you know, cause and effect not always linear, not always linear. So that's occasion. Now let's talk about exigence. And this is something I've talked about in previous videos, not videos, but episodes anyway. It's important, though, to remind ourselves of it here since the material that we're talking about sort of demands that it be reviewed. So exigence, what is exigence? Within a genuine rhetorical occasion, there is an exigence which is something that the speaker and the audience want to discuss.
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That's exigence but construed in a very generic sense write something that the speaker and the audience want to discuss. We're going to call that exigence for now. So let's kind of keep that floating there for now. And think about how classical rhetoric would typically present the exigence. They would typically or it would typically present the exigence as an issue as an issue or a question about which people may reasonably disagree, or a debatable proposition, and issue as a question or a proposition, that together issue as a question or proposition that's like the outermost layer, as we're talking about it here related to exigence. But what about the next layer? What kinds of issues are we talking about? What kinds of issues are there? What kinds of issues are there? That's the next layer? We've really got to think about here. The first one is a practical issue. And then the next one is a theoretical or general issue. So that first one, the practical issue, this is something that requires an immediate decision, like in a trial in a court, or a congressional debate over a proposed piece of legislation, legislation, excuse me. So that's a practical issue, practical, requiring immediate decision. Then on the other hand, we have a theoretical or general issue, which requires more philosophical debates. It's not nearly as controlled or bound, if at all, by the deadline, that that can be kind of problematic sometimes. Because if we think of the following question, as a theoretical issue, you could very easily imagine scenarios where the theoretical or general coincides or really collides with practical instances of it or which require it. So an example of a theoretical or general issue might be at what point does an embryo become a human being endowed with human rights. And of course, this connects with the sort of commonplace discussion or debate about abortion. But a general issue isn't necessarily connected to an immediate practical decision or action. However, practical and theoretical slash general issues, they frequently are difficult to separate in practice, and sometimes they do collide, or overlap. For example, think of this think of the situation a congressional debate about funding embryonic stem cell research. That is a practical issue in itself. But it may have to confront deeper philosophical issues regarding the question of whether human embryos have human rights. The takeaway here is that there's an interplay or at least a potential interplay between practical issues and theoretical or general issues. The practical can draw upon or use as a point of substantiation, the theoretical or general, the practical can employ the theoretical or general, and the converse is true as well. The theoretical or general can incorporate instances of practical issues that are relevant, of course, to the debate, in order to bring the debate to some kind of conclusion, some kind of proven substantiated state of affairs. So all of that when we think of it as exigence, as something that the speaker and the audience want to discuss. It's like the binding force that brings them together until it's removed or becomes unbound. That kind of force of inflection that is exigence. That's exigence.
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Now, if you'll allow for a quick point of departure here, I'd like to bring to your attention, one of my favorite quotes, or something that I've thought about for a long time, that's, I guess, had a lot of impact on me. This comes from the introduction to John Steinbeck's the acts of King Arthur and his noble knights. And I guess it's worth saying that John Steinbeck is the one who wrote this introduction. This has to do with the word kleve CLE a V cleave. Here's the quote. I loved the old spelling of the words, and capstans Mort Arthur Thomas Mallory. I love the spelling of the words and the words no longer used, perhaps a passionate love for the English language open to me from this one book. I was delighted To find out paradoxes, paradoxes that cleave means both to stick together and to cut apart. That host means both an enemy and a welcoming friend. The King and gents are people stem from the same route, and quote, it's really the first one that he talks about cleave, that cleave means both to stick together and to cut apart. The unified nature of its two meanings are sort of in opposition to each other, like antithetical to paradox paradox. I can't help but think of exigence as the kind of paradoxical phenomenon, something that functions like the word cleave functions to stick together and cut apart to solidify and dissolve, to bind, but also to unbind. To assemble, and to disassemble. Maybe I'm just positing here, but maybe this is why issues are so difficult, because they are by their nature, paradoxical. Alright, there's my, there's my sidebar. Thank you for joining me with that.
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Now, let's get back to the main path here. And take a quick look at the three basic kinds of discourse that classical rhetoric recognizes. Again, these are judicial, deliberative and apodictic discourse. First up, we have judicial discourse. What does it do? What is it? Well, it judges the legality or justice of an action in the past. In the past, judicial discourse judges the legality or justice of an action in the past, judicial discourse might occur in a court of law, a college disciplinary hearing for a student accused of plagiarism, who knows, or other contexts where authorities would judge and punish. So that's legality and justice, about past actions. That's judicial discourse. What about the next one, deliberative discourse deliberative discourse. This addresses future actions or policies, future actions or policies. Deliberative discourse might occur in a legislature or Parliament's these might be the occasional settings for it, or maybe a corporate boardroom, or even a family kitchen table meeting, or other contexts where decisions will result in actions such as going to war, raising taxes, launching a product line, or even deciding which college to attend. The point is that it's aligned with the temporal direction of the future, right? It addresses future actions or policies. And that brings us to the third basic kind of discourse that classical rhetoric recognizes, which is apodictic EP IDIC t i c apodictic. This kind of discourse apodictic is concerned with praise or blame and you guessed that the presence is concerned with praise or blame in the present. What this means is that it does not lead immediately to actions it does not lead immediately to actions, such as conviction or punishment or raising taxes. Instead, it does something different, something very interesting, it forms attitudes and affirms or critiques values and beliefs. Let me say that again. apodictic discourse is concerned with praise or blame in the present, which means it does not lead immediately to actions, but instead it forms attitudes and affirms or critiques values and beliefs. What about some examples of this? Examples would include things like funeral eulogy, a popular song, a Facebook page, any discourse that aims at praise or blame and attitude formation aims at praise or blame and attitude formation. In classical rhetoric, the category of apodictic ultimately includes not only ceremonial alterations, but also history writing, philosophical treatises and dialogues, poetry, fiction, drama, movies, documentaries and music. It's very different Verse. Alright, so just like with issues and exigence, the three basic kinds of discourse, they're not completely separate from one another, they can play into each other. And there's all kinds of incorporated interchanges that can take place. For example, particular discourse may include elements of two or more, right? A movie apodictic may include a courtroom scene, which is prevented sick, or judicial. And that same movie may also include a political speech, which is deliberative. So we have an example of an EPA didactic form of discourse, including both judicial and deliberative. You see this all the time, you know, you've probably watched an episode on Netflix very recently that you can maybe even call to mind and think, okay, yeah, I was watching that episode of New Girl, new girl. And if I watch New Girl, what comes to mind is that episode where Jess gets called to do jury duty, and we see her there in the courtroom. And she's even kind of deliberating about what Jury Duty is and the importance of it. So there's this sort of political speech aspect, right. And these are all in concert with one another. And the episode, I would like to add briefly, that apodictic isn't always going to be the ground or the house of forensic or deliberative discourse. Sometimes deliberative discourse, like a political speech may include passages of apodictic praise, it may be useful to think about potential interrelations of these three kinds of discourse, by considering them from their angles of time, how they handle time. So the past, remember, that's judicial, deliberative, this is future, and apodictic, this is with the present. So the past may include elements of the future may overlap with the present, the present, of course, will include lots of the past, or maybe sort of subsumed by the president it's in there's all kinds of possibilities there.
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So that's the three basic kinds of discourse and overview of those as they're conceived by classical rhetoric. This brings us to a brief discussion about forum, forum, fo r u. M. The forum, and aspects of the occasion and is Kairos is the forum and or the genre, the forum and or genre where speaker and audience meet, where speaker and audience meet. So we're talking about the where here, where speaker and audience meet and aspect of the occasion. And it's Kairos is the forum and or genre, the where, by forum, we mean places where people talk, such as a court of law, a legislature, a place of worship, a school, a concert hall, a TV talk show, even the dining room table in the dining room, these are places that are supposed to have a certain situatedness about them a recognizable situatedness. But forum doesn't have to be a physical place of discussions of what kinds of forums and genres there are not always about what kinds of places these can be. They they take place, certainly sometimes, but they can also be understood more broadly as the the mediums, a court of law is a medium, it just so happens to be a place though, but it's a medium where certain kinds of discourse are likely to occur. A place of worship is like a church or a temple. These are real places in the sense of being immediately tangible physical structures that you can put yourself inside of with other people, right. But perhaps more important than the place itself is the intended functionality of it, how it's meant to mediate, to serve right to serve as functional medium for occasion and Kairos. And so, when we think about it, like that forum can be understood more broadly, such as the various mediums of the technological or the virtual, you know, like, right now, this is coming to you these words this, this audio recording is coming to you through a medium. So briefly, I do want to talk about genre, mostly to divert the gravity of your attention away from tending to think of genres as categories. We're going to look at the deeper structure of genres. categories are important, but they're the end results. They're sort of the, the surface level of what's happening for the category to become recognizable to be given substance, or formation. recognizability. Really. So by genre, we mean the recognizable and recurring types of speech that occur in any given forum. Let me say that again, by genre. When we talk about genre, we mean the recognizable and recurring types of speech that occur in any given forum. For example, in a legislative forum, typical genres would include speeches for and against pieces of legislation, debates on policy, proposals, ceremonial speeches, you know, like for the Fourth of July, Memorial Day, things like that. Committee hearings, forensic discussions and coatroom conversations. These are all genres occurring within are typically occurring within a specific forum. In a legislative forum, typical genres, you might see our speeches for, or against pieces of legislation, policy, proposal debates, ceremonial speeches, committee hearings. In a sense, these are kinds of species of rhetoric that are typical to are commonly found within this environment, the legislative forum, the legislative environment. Alright, cool. So in the next episode, we'll pick up where we left off here and begin to consider the larger historical cultural context. As always, thank you for listening. It honestly does mean a lot to me. So, this is me your host Chase, Fraley sending a whole lot of love right back to you.