After speaker and purpose, the next two parts of rhetorical situation I teach are audience and context. For audience, I make sure students understand it’s not just who the speaker is addressing, it’s what about them the speaker is trying to connect with: their beliefs, their needs, their backgrounds, or maybe some preconceived idea the speaker is trying to challenge. I push students to define an audience specifically. It’s rarely accurate to say a speaker is addressing “everyone”; the real audience is almost always a more specific group.
For context, I teach this as everything that surrounds a text, separate from exigence, which is the immediate, momentary spark. This split comes from the 2019 course and exam description, which divides what used to be called “occasion” in SOAPSTone into context and exigence. Context can include emotionally charged circumstances surrounding a text, and when a text feels clueless or callous, it’s often because the writer didn’t pay attention to that context.
Before we get into the main activity, I like students to share their notebook writing in small groups. One student reads their response out loud, and their partner tries to guess the speaker and purpose behind it (concepts I cover in how I introduce speaker and purpose in AP Language). If I hear a strong example while I’m walking around, I’ll ask that student to read it for the whole class, or I’ll read it myself. On these first few writing assignments, if a student realizes partway through sharing that they got the assignment wrong, not just that they want to add something, but that they missed the actual concept, I let them redo it. Rhetorical situation is the foundation for everything we build on, so I’d rather give grace early and make sure students have it solid.
My main activity for audience and context is built around movie trailers, since I like a multimedia connection when I can get one. I use the trailer for Yesterday, the Danny Boyle film where a kid wakes up in a world that has forgotten the Beatles ever existed, which is a great example of an audience missing context that the character has. Then, mostly to catch my students off guard, I show the trailer for Cats. Kids who know it as an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical are usually delighted; everyone else is just confused, especially by why Taylor Swift is playing a cat.
The homework notebook writing assignment has students pick a trailer and analyze its audience and context. I update the options every year. Right now, I’m using Oppenheimer, Barbie, Superman, and Wicked for Good, since each one relies on the audience bringing some outside knowledge to fully get it: knowing about atomic weapons and World War II for Oppenheimer, knowing Barbie is a doll, knowing the Superman universe, or knowing there’s a first part to the Wicked story. Students write about what context is necessary to appreciate the trailer and then assess whether they personally are part of its intended audience. Teenagers have strong opinions about media, so this one usually gets some genuinely funny responses.