The rhetorical situation composes the circumstances under which a rhetor writes or speaks. The elements of the rhetorical situation are audience, exigence, genre, medium, purpose, and stance.

Audience consists of the people that will read or hear your work, and your work should be composed with who you are writing to in mind. You should always have your audience decided on before you start writing so that you understand how you should target them in your work.

Exigence is the issue or situation that lead to your writing being demanded. What compelled you to write this? This is different from purpose in that purpose is the reason behind writing the assignment, whereas exigence is the personal demand you felt when doing your work.

Genre is the kind of writing you are doing. In this class, we engaged with several genres of writing. We interacted with memos, technical descriptions, lab reports, PSAs, technical proposals, etc.

The medium is the delivery method or vehicle being used to convey your message to your audience. The media we used in this class are print, digital, and news. Examples include our memo being in print, our PSAs being part of the news category, and our presentations being presented on a screen.

Purpose is the reason you write. Specifically within engineering, purpose is the goal you want to accomplish with your work. It can include you wanting to explain something to your audience, or asking for funding for your work. Identifying purpose often leads to determining the other rhetorical elements.

Finally, stance is the attitude toward your topic. Specifically, this is the attitude toward your topic that you convey within your work. For example, I can write about a topic I disagree with but my stance within my work will not reflect this conflicting opinion. Rather, my work will display a supportive stance towards my topic. Stance is displayed in many ways throughout your work, such as tone.