These definitions are excerpted from the glossary in Downs & Wardle's WAW text.
discourse/Discourse: At its most basic, discourse is language in action, or languge being used to accomplish something. Discourse can describe either an instance of language, or a collection of instances that all demonstrate some quality. Because groups of people united by some activity tend to develop a characteristic discourse, we can talk about communities that are identified by their discourse - thus, discourse community.
James Gee uses Discourse with an uppercase D to differentiate a meaning of the term which includes ways of thinking, being, doing and performing in addition to the "language" parts.
rhetorical: Rhetorical describes an undersanding of or approach to human interaction and communication as situated, motivated, interactie, epistemic, and contingent. . . .Rhetorical reading involves reading a text as situate, motivated, etc. Rhetorical analysis is a way of analyzing texts to find what choices their rhetor (speaker or writer) made based on their purpose and motivation, their situatedness and context, and how they interact with and make new knowledge for their audience.
rhetorical situation: Rhetorical situation is the particular circumstance of a given instance of communication or discourse. The rhetorical situation includes exigence (the need or reason for the communication), context (the circumstances that give rise to the exigence, including location in time/history and space/place/position), rhetor (the originator of the communication -its speaker or writer), and the audience (the auditor, listener, or reader of the rhetor's discourse).
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