What is a rhetorical situation?

One could answer this by saying "It's any situation that creates a need for a rhetorical response". This question is a rather broad and could be approached in several ways. There are political, forensic, and ceremonial forms of oratory according to Aristotle (Getting sick of this guy yet?). To me any form of communication is a rhetorical situation. If you have to display an idea or pose a question to someone you are constantly thinking about how you can communicate effectively. You wonder about your vocabulary, your sentence structure, and word order. If you can't clearly get your point across then might as well have just been sucking your thumb the entire time rather than talking.