CAS100C Lesson 1 Assignment Lu Jia 1. a. According to Dr. Zarefsky, a rhetorical situation refers to a situation in which people’s understanding can be changed through messages. It has four basic components: the audience, the speaker, the occasion and the speech. A hypothetical example of a rhetorical situation is when a student (let’s call her Alice T) is running for Student Union president and is making a speech to emphasize her strengths and try to influence her fellow classmates to vote for her. b. Exigence in a rhetorical situation refers to an urgent problem that needs to be solved and an effective speech will address the problem and try to deliver a solution or at least bring awareness to the problem. In the above example, the exigence is that the decision about the next Student Union president has to be made by the deadline. c. Audience in a rhetorical situation refers to the people who can be influenced or persuaded by the speech. Sometimes the audience can be all citizens who have access to information through newspapers or TV such as during the ongoing US presidential election campaign. In our example the audience is Alice T’s fellow classmates who she is trying to persuade to vote for her. d. Constraints of a rhetorical situation are imposed by the context of the speech – the diversity and background of the audience, the emotional needs of the audience, the problem that needs to be addressed or solved through messages, the occasion of the speech and so on. Dr.