| The rhetorical situation is one of controversial concepts in the contemporary western rhetoric.In 1968,Lloyd Bitzer published The Rhetorical Situation.In this article,he systematically expounds the essence,the constituents and the functions of the rhetorical situation for the first time,which offers a new field for rhetoric.Kenneth Burke is the founder of new rhetoric.In 1973,he expanded rhetoric into the human living environment.During the process of the in-depth study on the rhetorical situation,he puts forward Identification.This is a great leap forward in the study of rhetoric,which provides an important perspective for the modern rhetorical criticism.Audiences of the American State of the Union Address are no longer limited to the domestic audiences in America,including members of the Congress and the common American people.They also contain the people from other countries around the world.The president of the United States prepares for the Address beforehand.Through identification with the audience by the rhetorical discourse,the president achieves rhetorical effects as he expects.It has the great significance to study the Address from the rhetorical angle.This thesis discusses the Rhetorical Situation and points out the limitations of Bitzer’s Rhetorical Situation.And then it introduces Kenneth Burke’s Identification.This study will combine these two theories together to form a Bitzer-Burke’s Rhetorical Situation model as the theoretical framework.This paper adopts qualitative methodology.Obama’s 2016 State of the Union Address in this study is from the government website--http://www.whitehouse.gov/.The study first analyzes the three constituents of the rhetorical situation in the State of the Union Address.Then from the perspective of content and form,it analyzes how identification is achieved between the speaker and the audience for the speech purpose.The result shows that political speeches depend on specific political situations.President Obama is good at analyzing the three major factors in the rhetorical situation.He can identify the exigence,grasp the audience and use rhetorical discourses to achieve corresponding rhetorical effects.In order to identify with audiences,President Obama employs a lot of rhetorical strategies.In content,he adopts three identification strategies--Identification by Sympathy,Identification by Antithesis and Identification by Inaccuracy.In form,he adopts four strategies--conventional form,repetitive form,progressive form and minor or incidental forms.These rhetorical strategies make Obama’s State of the Union Address more persuasive so as to reach identification with the audience.Thus good rhetorical effects are achieved.This study offers the evidence that President Obama is really an outstanding speaker.It also lets people get more understanding of the Rhetorical Situation and Identification and at the same time enlarges their application areas.People are provided another perspective to appreciate speeches.Besides,the rhetorical situation has been employed to help students learn how to conduct rhetorical criticism.Therefore,this study has some enlightenment in English teaching. |
