Exigence is a term used in rhetoric to refer to the issue, problem, or situation that prompts someone to write or speak. It is part of the rhetorical situation, which includes exigence, rhetor, audience, purpose, context, time, genre, and medium. Exigence is typically the moment or event that motivates someone to write or speak about a specific issue, problem, or situation. It is like a switch that turns the conversation "on" and starts an information cycle. Exigence can be "big" like a major tragedy or discovery, or "small" and more localized, like a controversy on campus, or an offensive online post. To determine the exigence, one can ask questions such as what has moved the writer to create the text, what is the writer responding to, and what was the perceived need for the text. Exigence is emotionally and intellectually visceral, and it arises from discourse, from a conversation about a specific aspect of a problem. It is what makes people ask the hard questions, such as what is it, what caused it, what good is it, what are we going to do, what happened, and what is going to happen.