Rhetorical Situations and Their Constituents

In the article Rhetorical Situations and Their Constituents, Davie defines a rhetorical situation as, "a set of related factors whose interaction creates and controls discourse."  I take this to mean that basically one or more people get together to communicate/discuss to modify another persons written work or speech. There are three constituents of a rhetorical situation and they are exigence, audience, and constraints of the situation.  Exigence is the problem that needs to be solved. Audience is the person or persons trying to resolve that problem and the constraints are the things that affect the ability for the audience to solve the problem.  Davie defined a compound rhetorical situation to be " the discussion of a single subject by multiple rhetors and audiences."  In other words a compound rhetorical situation is where more than one person is trying to modify the work.
As a college student it is important for us to be aware of rhetorical situations and the constraints it creates because being able to identify rhetorical situations will make us better writers.  By being able to recognize rhetorical situations it makes me better able to present my argument clearly and concisely to the audience that it is intended for.