What I’ve taken away from Lloyd Bitzers essay is that he defines the rhetorical situation as basically the most important part of writing and every piece of writing contains a rhetorical situation. How I understood his essay and his definition was that the rhetorical situation is like, the base for any piece of writing. He uses a lot of key terms throughout his essay to help define the rhetorical situation like rhetorical discourse, exigence, constraints and fitting response. 

In my own words, the rhetorical situation is what provokes interest in a piece of writing or a speech. It’s what intrigues the reader/crowd and a response to something going on in the world. I did find on pressbooks.com their definition for rhetorical situation as “circumstances that bring texts into existence.” Pressbooks.com also states “the concept emphasizes that writing is a social activity, produced by people in particular situations for particular goals.” I don’t know how I really feel that those statements relate exactly the key terms Bitzer listed, but I do feel like it’s similar to what Bitzer said as far as its a social activity. 

Rhetorical situation and genre go hand-in-hand in my opinion. They both are giving an idea of what the writing content is going to be. You have to have a rhetorical situation that relates to the genre or have the genre kind of represent the rhetorical situation. Rhetorical situation does give that feeling of the writing being under a specific category, and the rhetorical situation emphasizes whatever the genre is and what specifically under that genre will be discussed.

 https://openenglishatslcc.pressbooks.com/chapter/the-rhetorical-situation/