Public speaking occurs in a specific situation. Unlike great dramatic or literary
works, which “speak to the ages,” the principal test of a good speech is
whether it responds most effectively to the needs of the situation in which it is
presented.5
The situation is the specific context in which a speech is given. Compared with
poems and stories, which are read long after they were written, most speeches
have a short life span. For example, student Jeremy Johnson’s first speech to his
classmates concerned an important and timely issue:
Almost every week, there are new reports of genocidal violence in the Darfur region of
Sudan. Innocent civilians, women and children among them, are killed or raped every day
by marauding bands of Janjaweed militia whose goal is ethnic cleansing of the non-Arab
peoples in their region. The crisis of Darfur is one of the greatest human catastrophes of
our time—worse than Bosnia, Kosovo, Rwanda, or even Iraq. But our government and our
attention have been so preoccupied with other wars and conflicts around the world that
we have forgotten the people of Darfur and have abandoned our international human
rights ideals.
Although Jeremy’s speech probably could be appreciated long after the violence
in Sudan subsides, it was created in response to a particular event and was designed
primarily to be heard by a particular audience.
The study of how messages affect people has long been called rhetoric. This
ancient discipline is concerned with the role that messages play in:
• Shaping, reaffirming, and modifying people’s values
• Binding people closer together or moving them farther apart
• Celebrating significant events
• Creating a sense of identity among people
• Conveying information and helping people to learn
• Nurturing, strengthening, or changing people’s beliefs
• Leading people to take (or not to take) action
A rhetorical situation, then, is a situation in which people’s understanding can
be changed through messages.6 The following example shows how student Katie