Roberts-Miller/Bitzer

The first piece of literature, written by Patricia Roberts-Miller is directed towards fellow faculty members. Patricia says that she understands that other rhetorical scholars have different views on rhetoric than she does, and she wants to get her views across. Patricia describes rhetoric as “a verbal way of as approaching problems we face as members of communities”. Patricia does not view rhetoric as a means to get your message, or argument, across to an audience, but instead she views rhetoric as an analytical tool. The main argument of this text is to show the audience that their are countless beliefs as to what rhetoric really is. Patricia gets this message across by discussing and analyzing various different views of what rhetoric is. The text’s primary purpose is to portray to the audience that there is such a wide range of different rhetorical beliefs and that each different belief has various strength and weaknesses.

The second piece of literature, written by Lloyd F. Bitzer. Bitzer presented this text at a public lecture at Cornell University and the University of Washington, so it is directed towards rhetoric students and fellow colleagues. Bitzer does not really give a concrete definition to what rhetoric is, but instead says that it is situational, meaning it has a different meaning in each situation in which it is used. Bitzer also describes rhetoric as a “response to a situation”. Bitzer argues that all of the accepted beliefs of what rhetoric is are wrong because they are all far too specific. This goes back to Bitzer’s idea that there can not be one stand alone definition of rhetoric because if there were just one definition, there is no way that if could be applied to every individual instance that rhetoric is used. Similar to Patricia’s argument, Bitzer’s main argument is that there are so many different ideas and beliefs regarding the definition of rhetoric, but none of them are exactly correct. The purpose of this text is to get this message across to the audience.