Context 

Or, as Jay and the ancients call it, The Occasion.

Every journalist reporting a story knows to include the Who, What, When, Where, and Why. Very few journalists know that the person who came up with that checklist was one of the greatest rhetoricians—ancient Rome’s Marcus Tullius Cicero. 

The Who in rhetoric is the speaker or writer, also known as the rhetor. You can find a section on the rhetor here.

The What comprises the Message.

The Why has to do with the Purpose and the Exigence.

Which leaves us When and Where. That’s where we get into the occasion. The ancients made a big deal out of this—such a big deal that they named gods after it. The Romans called him Occasio, the god in charge of the right time and place. The Greeks called him Kairos, and they described him as a beautiful young man with fashionably curly hair in front, and entirely bald in back. Why? An occasion passes quickly. You have to grab it by the forelock. Imagine you want to talk your schoolboard into installing exercise pods in the gym. You get two minutes to make your case, standing in front of a microphone in the aisle of the school auditorium. That’s your occasion. Act now, don’t delay.

Modern rhetoricians, who aren’t so much into cool, good-looking gods, tend to use the more boring term “context.” For our purposes, you can use the two terms interchangeably. (But Jay, who’s writing a book on Kairos, thinks the Greek god has a lot more interesting things to say.)

The context can cover a historical period, a season, or a particular place—along with the events leading up to that period. Take, for example, President Kennedy’s speech at Vanderbilt University on May 18, 1963. Kennedy spends some time talking up the value of an educated citizen and the pursuit of learning. In order to analyze his rhetoric, it helps to know the context: 

The Where: Vanderbilt is an elite school filled with intelligent students. 

The When: 1963 happened to be the height of the Cold War, when America and the Soviet Union were in a struggle to prove to the rest of the world which had the superior system.

 In the AP exam, you may be given the When and Where—dates, venues, or events surrounding the rhetorical piece. These are important clues, and you’ll get a better score for using them well. Glean as much as you can from the opening information provided to you. Sometimes a lot of context is given. Other times not so much. Students who know history get a head start on these clues. When Tania graded the 2020 AP Lang exam, which covered George W. Bush’s nomination speech at the Republican convention, students who understood that occasion generally did better. They knew that Bush was playing to his base, and they knew what the base wanted to hear. 

In other words, they knew the When and Where. The god Kairos was smiling.

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