3.3 Identifying Exigence

Identifying Exigence

In the previous chapter, you were challenged to write on a chosen location on campus. When we assign students to write on location, they often end up with relevant and timely public issues. There is something about being physically present in a public space that helps writers begin to form a reaction. One of Ashley Holmes’ former students, for example, chose to write on location at a historic cemetery near her apartment. She was distressed to see the dilapidated conditions at the cemetery, which contained many broken and cracked tombstones. This eventually led to her composing a public blog about how local residents could (and should) get involved with the efforts of a cemetery preservation and restoration society. Another student wrote on location at the university’s library late in the evening and became frustrated when the library began closing. She used some of the notes from her freewrite to help develop a public letter to the library’s dean requesting an extension of the library’s hours.

Invention activities like writing on location can be especially helpful at the start of your process. However, invention can happen “at any stage of the writing process” (Trim and Isaac 108). You shouldn’t hesitate to go back to the generative, brainstorming work of invention if you become stuck, even if you have already started writing or revising a draft. Writing on location may not work for all of your interests, but you should still give it a try to see if it helps you identify a public issue for your writing. For suggestions regarding other invention activities and practices, read Trim and Isaac’s “Reinventing Invention [Website].”

As you discover new ideas through invention, we encourage you to consider possible exigencies related to your issue. Doing so will help ensure your issue and public response are timely and relevant for your target audience. Rhetorician Lloyd F. Bitzer argued that any rhetorical situation has three constituent parts: an exigence, an audience, and a set of constraints (6). The exigence is the sense of urgency that demands or invites a rhetorical response. This could be an academic assignment, a piece of art, or a situation that affects you or a community you are part of. In the context of an academic assignment, the exigence comes from your desire to succeed academically while developing useful skills and knowledge. Even though our audience or exigence may provide our initial push to write, “the force which drives composing is the writer’s own set of goals, purposes, or intentions” (Flower and Hayes 69). The exigencies for your writing are often a combination of personal intentions and school-initiated assignments.

When you write for a public rhetorical situation (even if it is pulling double duty as a class assignment), it is important to establish a public exigence for your issue. Exigencies can work in your favor if you can frame your issue and stance in a way that shows the urgency of the matter for your audience. To help situate your issue within an exigence, you might put yourself in the shoes of a skeptical reader and ask questions like “Why does this issue matter?” or “Why now?” For example, a student in one of the civic writing courses Ashley Holmes taught chose to research and write about a bill that would allow local governments to relocate monuments. He was able to situate that issue and frame it using current events related to the removal of Confederate monuments. This helped him build urgency and establish timeliness for the issue, even though the bill did not explicitly mention Confederate monuments. Establishing an exigence can hook your readers and keep them reading. Speaking of readers, who are your readers? In the next section, we will explore options for engaging a realistic public audience for your writing.

First, let’s pause to apply this notion of exigence to a sample text to better understand what this term means and how it shows up in the texts we encounter.

In the next section, we return to Ashley Holmes for instruction on how to conduct preliminary research and planning for your own public writing.