AP® English Language and Composition review sheet from Aim for Five (aimforfive.com/lang/units/1/1-1)
Unit 1 · Topic 1.1
1.1 Identifying the rhetorical situation
The rhetorical situation is the set of circumstances behind a text: who wrote it, who it's for, what prompted it, what it's trying to do, when and where it appeared, and what it says. Every choice a writer makes answers that situation, so naming its parts is the first step in reading any argument well.
Key terms
- rhetorical situation
- writer (speaker)
- audience
- purpose
- context
- exigence
The six parts
Any speech, letter, essay or ad comes out of a particular moment. AP Lang calls that moment the rhetorical situation and breaks it into six parts. You don't need to recite them in order, but you should be able to find each one quickly.
Here they are, using Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address as the example.
| Part | Question to ask | Gettysburg Address |
|---|---|---|
| Writer | Who is speaking, and what about them matters here? | Abraham Lincoln, president of the Union during the Civil War |
| Audience | Who is this for? | The crowd at the new soldiers' cemetery, plus newspaper readers across the North |
| Exigence | What made this text necessary right now? | Thousands of soldiers had died in the battle that July, and the cemetery was being dedicated |
| Purpose | What does the writer want the text to do? | Honor the dead and push listeners to keep fighting until the war is won |
| Context | When, where and under what circumstances? | November 19, 1863, in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, with the war's outcome still uncertain |
| Message | What's the main point? | The living owe it to the dead to finish the war so the nation and its ideals survive |
Why the situation matters: it explains the choices
Naming the parts is only the start. The real skill is explaining how the situation shaped what the writer did. Lincoln wasn't the main speaker that day. Edward Everett, a famous orator, had just spoken for about two hours. Lincoln's speech was about 270 words long. Because the crowd had already heard a long, detailed account of the battle, Lincoln could skip the details and go straight to what the deaths meant.
That's the kind of thinking the exam rewards: the writer did X because of Y in the situation. A list of six labels with nothing connecting them earns nothing on an essay.
Finding each part fast
- Read the introduction above the passage first. On the exam, a short paragraph in italics usually gives you the writer, the date, the place and sometimes the audience.
- Look for pronouns. "You" and "your" point to the audience; "we" and "our" show who the writer is lining up with.
- Look for verbs of intention, such as urge, warn, ask, defend or propose. They often reveal purpose.
- Ask what changed just before the text was written. That change is usually the exigence.
- Ask what the text keeps coming back to. That's usually the message.
Writer and audience are more than names
"Abraham Lincoln" by itself doesn't help you. What helps is the part of his identity that matters here: as president, he spoke for the whole Union, so he couldn't sound like he was celebrating one side's victory. He had to give meaning to a terrible loss.
Audiences can also have layers. Lincoln's immediate audience was the crowd, including grieving families. His wider audience was everyone who would read the speech in the papers. A good analysis notices when a writer is speaking to more than one group at once.
Worked examples
Try each one yourself first, then open the solution.
- Example 1
Linking one choice to the situation
Read the opening sentence of Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address (November 19, 1863), as it appears in the Bliss copy, the final version Lincoln wrote out by hand: "Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal." Identify the writer, audience, exigence and purpose, then write two or three sentences explaining how this opening fits the rhetorical situation.
Show the solutionHide the solution
- Step 1: Start with the situation. Writer: Lincoln, the Union's president. Audience: the crowd at the cemetery and Northern readers. Exigence: the dedication of a cemetery for soldiers killed at Gettysburg. Purpose: honor them and renew the country's commitment to the war.
- Step 2: Now look at the choice. "Four score and seven years ago" means 87 years, which counts back from 1863 to 1776, the year of the Declaration of Independence. The wording sounds formal and old-fashioned, a bit like scripture.
- Step 3: Connect the choice to the situation. At a ceremony for the dead, a solemn style fits the moment. Pointing back to 1776 instead of to the Constitution ties the war to the Declaration's idea that "all men are created equal."
- Step 4: Write the analysis as cause and effect: because of the situation, Lincoln chose X, which does Y for this audience.
Answer: Model paragraph: Speaking at a cemetery for soldiers who had died only months earlier, Lincoln opens with "Four score and seven years ago," a solemn, almost biblical phrase that suits a ceremony of mourning. By counting back to 1776, he reminds his Northern listeners that the nation began with the promise that "all men are created equal." That move turns a list of casualties into a cause: the soldiers died defending the country's founding idea, and the audience is quietly asked to keep defending it too.
Common mistakes
- Listing the six parts and stopping. On the exam, each part only matters when you use it to explain why a writer made a choice.
- Writing that the audience is "the reader" or "everyone." Name the specific group and what they believed, knew or felt at the time.
- Mixing up exigence and purpose. Exigence is what prompted the text (a battle, a law, an insult); purpose is what the writer wants the text to do about it.
- Skipping the italic introduction above a passage. It often hands you the writer, date, place and audience for free.
On the exam
- Multiple-choice reading questions often ask about the writer's purpose or audience. Pick the answer that fits the whole passage, not just one paragraph.
- In the rhetorical analysis essay (Question 2), the prompt describes the situation for you. Reuse those facts in your commentary: "Because his audience had just..." is the start of a strong sentence.
Connected topics
Videos
Check yourself
3 questions on 1.1 Identifying the rhetorical situation. Pick an answer to see if you got it, and why.
Frederick Douglass, a formerly enslaved abolitionist and newspaper editor, speech at an Independence Day gathering in Rochester, New York, July 5, 1852, to which he had been invited as the speaker. From the extract printed in Douglass, My Bondage and My Freedom (1855). Some text is omitted between paragraphs 1 and 2 and between paragraphs 2 and 3.
In paragraph 1, Douglass's series of questions primarily serves to
Written for this practice set: a student's draft of a short speech for the public-comment period of a city council meeting.
In sentence 2, the writer introduces herself as a junior at Ridgeview High School. This choice most likely helps her to
Written for this practice set: a student's draft of a letter to the editor of a town newspaper. Fairview and its officials are invented.
Which of the following best describes the exigence for the writer's letter?
0 of 3 answered