On The Rhetorical Situation Of Crisis Discourse

The theory of rhetorical situation is an important part of western rhetoric. Inrecent years, both at home and abroad, researches in this area gradually show a warmingtrend. Rhetorical situation, as the name suggests, refers to the situation in which arhetorical process occurred. Rhetoric in crisis discourse aims to better accomplish therhetorical motivation, to achieve identification with the target audiences, and to realizethe effective elimination of emergencies in crisis situation through creating appropriatediscourses that adapt to these situations. Crisis situations are usually featured withurgency, destruction, and unpredictability, which function as obstacles in the interactivecommunication and bring great pressures to both sides of a rhetorical process indiscourse creation and understanding and increase the possibility of misunderstanding.These features complicate the situation and make the discourse processing difficult topredict, hence hinder the settlement of crisis situation. Rhetorical situation is anessential reference to a successful rhetorical process in that it restricts the generationand the comprehension of crisis discourse as well as the evaluation of rhetorical effect.Therefore, researches on rhetorical situation in crisis discourse have become verycritical.Meanwhile, another research field--Crisis Communication--is also developedrapidly in recent years. Many domestic and foreign scholars make contributions to thisarea from different perspectives. Crisis communication is a process in which thegovernment, the media, and the public, as the main rhetors, apply its theories, theviewpoints and methods to the area of crisis management in order to exchangeinformation in the whole society. In the crisis communication of our country, there havealways been problems like: lack of the consideration of audience, the imbalance ofinternal and external reports, and one-way communication tradition etc. These problemsnot only violate the public right to be informed, but also damage the image of credibilityof the government and media, and so not conducive to the smooth settlement of crisisevents, often resulting in greater losses to the society. This study suggests that the above problems are resulted from the absence ofrhetorical situational research in crisis discourse which may lead to the unmatchedsituation and discourse. Therefore, we take western new rhetoric as the theoreticalfoundation to build a situational theory which is specially designed to solve problems incrisis situation. The research focuses to depict the essence of the rhetorical situation incrisis discourse, and then explore the core elements of the rhetorical situation and theirstructural relations. Further, we summarize and generate the rhetorical strategies. Theresearch data are all natural discourses from various real crisis cases. This study aims toexplore the nature of rhetorical situation of crisis discourse and its interaction with crisisdiscourse, with the dual attributes of crisis–“danger” and “opportunity”, focuses on therole that situational factors played on discourse in crisis situation, and put the emphasison how the rhetors realize their motivation through subjectively employing and creatingcrisis situation to identify with the audience and to accomplish the following threeidentifications between rhetors and the audiences; rhetorical motives and discoursepurposes; situations and discourses. This paper is based on the rhetorical situationaltheories from Western Rhetoric tradition and New Rhetoric, combined with the relevantachievements of crisis communication. Through this research, we analyzed therhetorical process of crisis discourse and its dynamic model, so as to build a referentialsystem for the creation of crisis discourse under crisis state, which serves as a guidancefor the rhetors to make better performances in crisis information dissemination, crisismobilization, crisis reflections etc.The dissertation consists of seven chapters. The first chapter describes thepurpose, data, methods, and the structure of this research. The second chapter brieflyreviews the previous achievements in crisis communication and rhetorical situation, andon this basis to define the main concepts involved. In the third chapter, we mainlyintroduce the theoretical basis of this research on the rhetorical situation in crisisdiscourse, which focuses on the related theories of rhetorical situation in westernrhetoric, including Kairos in classical rhetorical tradition, Bitzer’s theory of rhetoricalsituation and its development, Burke’s view on rhetorical situation etc. The fourthchapter describes the rhetorical situation in crisis discourse. With the reference of the study of context in communication, we put forward two ways of static and dynamicdescriptions, and illustrated respectively with two dynamic models of crisis situation:Linear model and Balance model, with which we outlined the interaction of eachfactors and crisis discourse, and finally summed up the main characteristics of rhetoricalsituation. The fifth chapter focuses on the study of the core elements of rhetoricalsituation in crisis discourse, and tries to explore the interrelations among the coreelements. According to the elements’ effect on the creation of crisis discourse, wedivided them into two general categories of subjective and objective factors, and madedetailed analysis respectively. This classification provides reference for the followingstudy in next chapter on the function of discourse rhetoric in crisis situation. The sixthchapter studies the mechanism of rhetorical situation in crisis discourse. We take therealization of the rhetorical motivation and the discourse purpose as the primaryobjective. This section is carried on from two aspects: one is the restriction of situationon discourse; the other is the rhetor’s initiative on the situation. Then, we proposedsome rhetorical strategies based on it. The last chapter is a brief summary to the paper,which puts forward the significance of research as well as the limitations of this study,and points out the future direction of further study. This study, through the analysis anddescription of the rhetorical situation in crisis discourse, aims to dig out the role ofdiscourse in human society, and then to explain the relationship among discourse,human, and rhetoric. The significance lies not only in providing a reference for crisisdiscourse, but also in helping people understand how they apply symbols to createknowledge and manifest motivations, and further, from the deeper meaning, inunderstanding human itself.