I remember reading this same article by Bitzter last year in my professor's class..."The Rhetorical Situation," it was called. One of the author's claims about the rhetorical situation was that all rhetoric is persuasive.
After one year, I still disagree. I disagree that all rhetoric is persuasive, in the sense that there is rhetoric out there that exists solely to inform, to harm, or to heal. These three aspects are not persuasive aspects, per say, but simple, inevitable physical reactions of the human condition. What would be the persuasive intent of insulting someone, for instance? Calling someone a horrible name is often used simply to hurt them, or to make you feel better about yourself...neither of these things are persuasive. Hurting someone is not persuasive--while it can lead them to do things in response, those things are not necessarily the intended outcome of your action---in order for it (or anything else to qualify as persuasion, for that matter), I still believe that persuasion must be the underlying intent in order for the rhetoric to be persuasive. Does that make insulting or verbally hurting someone any less a rhetorical situation? Of course not! By Bitzer's standards, a rhetorical situation changes a reality, which is still accomplished by insulting someone...so it still follows Bitzer's standards.
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