Although few of you have any formal training in rhetoric, most of you want only enough to successfully complete this course and your college education. These factors helped me determine the scope of my presentation of the subject and the depth of my treatment of it. Finally, I possess a moderately superior amount of knowledge of the subject matter, and I hold a position of power over you and your future. This configuration of the elements of rhetorical situations may provide you with an alternative perspective on people, what they do, how they do it, and why they behave as they do. To gain some of these perspectives, as they related to rhetorical situation, each point of the pentad should be considered independently and in combination with other points.
Actor is most often the person or people involved in the action, usually the one who acts.
However, sometimes the actor is a force at work within an individual. At other times, the actor may be a force at work in the world. Action is the thing that happens or happened or will happen or could happen. But setting may also refer to the historical background of an act. Method is a description of the way an act is carried out or the technique used by an actor to accomplish the action.