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Chapter 19: Dramatism
West, Introducing Communication Theory, 6e
Chapter 19
Dramatism
Chapter Outline
I. Introduction
• Some rhetoricians might analyze Alan Spector’s problems and Karl’s responses to them
using Dramatism, a theoretical position seeking to understand the actions of human life as
drama.
• Kenneth Burke is known as the originator of Dramatism, although he did not initially use
that term himself.
o Burke never earned an undergraduate degree, much less a Ph.D. He was self-taught
in the areas of literary criticism, philosophy, communication, sociology, economics,
theology, and linguistics.
o His breadth of interests and perhaps his lack of formal training in any one discipline
made him one of the most interdisciplinary theorists people will study.
o No doubt one reason Burke is so widely read and applied has to do with his focus on
symbol systems.
• Dramatism, as its name implies, conceptualizes life as a drama, placing a critical focus on
the acts performed by various players. Just as in a play, the acts in life are central to
revealing human motives.
• Dramatism provides people with a method that is well suited to address the act of
communication between a text, and the audience for that text, as well as the inner action of
the text.
• Drama is a useful metaphor for Burke’s ideas for the following three reasons:
o Drama indicates a grand sweep, and Burke did not make limited claims; his goal is to
theorize about the whole range of human experience.
o Drama tends to follow recognizable type of genres: comedy, musical, melodrama,
and so forth. Burke feels that the very way people structure and use language may be
related to the way these human dramas are played out.
o Drama is always addressed to an audience. In this sense, drama is rhetorical.
o In this way, Dramatism studies the ways in which language and its usage relate to
audiences (French & Brown, 2011).
II. Assumptions of Dramatism
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Chapter 19: Dramatism
• Researchers such as Brummett (1993) have called Burke’s assumptions a symbolic
o Language and symbols form a critically important system for humans.
o Humans are choice makers.
• The first assumption speaks to Burke’s realization that some of what people do is
motivated by their animal nature and some of what people do is motivated by symbols.
o Of all the symbols that humans use, language is the most important for Burke.
• In the second assumption (the critical importance of language), Burke’s position is
somewhat similar to the concept of linguistic relativity known as the Sapir-Whorf
hypothesis (Sapir, 1921; Whorf, 1956).
o Edward Sapir and Benjamin Whorf noted that it is difficult to think about concepts or
objects without words for them.
o Thus, people are restricted (to an extent) in what they can conceive by the limits of
their language.
o When a culture’s language does not have symbols for a given motive, then speakers
of that language are unlikely to have that motive.
• Burke asserts that words, thoughts, and actions have extremely close connections with one
another.
o Burke’s expression for this is that words act as “terministic screens” leading to
“trained incapacities,” meaning that people cannot see beyond what their words lead
them to believe (Burke, 1965).
o For example, despite educational efforts, U.S. public health officials still have
difficulty persuading people to think of alcohol and tranquilizers when they hear the
words drug abuse.
• The second assumption suggests that language exerts a determining influence over people,
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Chapter 19: Dramatism
West, Introducing Communication Theory, 6e
• Burke proposes a new rhetoric (Nichols, 1952) that focuses on several key issues, chief
among them being the notion of identification.
• In 1952, Marie Nichols said the following about the difference between Burke’s approach
and this may include partially ‘unconscious’ factors in its appeal” (p. 323; emphasis in
original).
A. Identification and Substance
• Burke asserts that all things have substance, which he defines as the general nature of
something.
o Substance can be described in a person by listing demographic characteristics as
well as background information and facts about the present situation, such as
talents and occupation.
• Burke argues that when there is overlap between two people in terms of their substance,
they have identification.
o The more overlap that exists, the greater the identification.
o The opposite is also true, so the less overlap between individuals, the greater the
20–21).
o Burke indicates that rhetoric is needed to bridge divisions and establish unity.
o Rukhsana Ahmed (2009) demonstrated in a rhetorical analysis of a political
speech made by Begum Zia in Bangladesh, that the Burkean concept of
identification has applications in non-Western discourse.
o Burke refers to this process as consubstantiation, or increasing their
identification with each other.
B. The Process of Guilt and Redemption
West, Introducing Communication Theory, 6e
• Consubstantiality, or issues of identification and substance, are related to the
guilt/redemption cycle because guilt can be assuaged as a result of identification and
divisions.
• For Burke, the process of guilt and redemption undergirds the entire concept of
symbolizing.
o Guilt is the central motive for all symbolic activities, and Burke defines guilt
o This process of feeling guilt and attempting to reduce it finds its expression in
Burke’s cycle, which follows a predictable pattern: order (or hierarchy), the
negative, victimage (scapegoat or mortification), and redemption.
o Burke suggests that society exists in the form of an order, or hierarchy, which is
created through ability of people to use language.
▪ Language enables people to create categories like richer and more
powerful—the haves and the have-nots.
▪ These categories form social hierarchies. Often one feels guilt as a result of
his or her place in the hierarchy.
o The negative comes into play when people see their place in the social order and
▪ The final step in the process is redemption, which involves a rejection of
the unclean and a return to a new order after guilt has been temporarily
purged.
▪ Inherent in the term redemption is the notion of a redeemer. The redeemer in
▪ A key in the redemption phase is the fact that guilt is only temporarily
relieved, through the redeemer or any other method.
West, Introducing Communication Theory, 6e
Copyright © 2018 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved. No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of McGraw-Hill
Education.
▪ As any order or hierarchy becomes reestablished, guilt returns to plague the
human condition.
C. The Pentad
• Burke (1945) created a method for applying his theory toward an understanding of
symbolic activities.
• He called his method the pentad because it consists of five points for analyzing a
symbolic text like a speech or a series of articles about a particular topic.
• The pentad may help determine why a speaker selects a particular rhetorical strategy for
o Burke considered the act to be what is done by a person.
o The scene provides the context surrounding the act.
o The agent is the person or persons performing the act.
o Agency refers to the means used by the agent to accomplish the act.
o The purpose refers to the goal that the agent had in mind for the act—that is, why
the act was done.
o Attitude refers to the manner in which an actor positions himself or herself
relative to others.
• When using the pentad to analyze a symbolic interaction, the analyst first determines all
the elements of the pentad and identifies what occurred in a particular act.
• After labeling the points of the pentad and fully explicating each, the analyst then
examines the pentadic or dramatistic ratios, or the proportions of one element relative
to another.
o By isolating any two parts of the pentad and examining their relationship to each
other, a ratio is determined.
IV. Integration, Critique, and Closing
• There is no question that Kenneth Burke has made an immeasurable contribution to the
field of communication with his theory of Dramatism.
• Burke’s work is widely praised and frequently cited.
A. Scope
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Chapter 19: Dramatism
• Burke’s goal is no less than to explain the whole of human experience with symbolic
interaction.
• This is an extremely broad and ambitious goal, and some critics believe it renders the
concluding that some of the difficulty arises from “the compactness of his writing,
the uniqueness of his organizational patterns, the penetration of his thought, and
the breadth of his endeavor” (p. 330).
C. Utility
• Some researchers (Condit, 1992; Murray, 2003) observe that Dramatism falls short on
the criterion of utility.
o This critique is lodged mainly because of what Burke leaves out of the theory. For
example, Celeste Condit (1992) argues that the theory would be more useful if it
addressed gender and culture more expansively.
▪ Condit’s argument is that Burke’s approach needs to be broadened both to
States.
❖ People need to change both their language and their thinking about
women, men, gender, and inclusivity for significant progress to occur.
▪ Condit also suggests that Burke emphasizes universality among cultures at
the expense of particularity.
❖ For Condit, this is especially the case in the matter of Burke’s
contention that victimage is a transcultural experience—a method for
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Chapter 19: Dramatism
West, Introducing Communication Theory, 6e
continues to be widely used, it is necessary to expand it to include the voices of
those who have been marginalized.
D. Heurism
• Dramatism was originally used in rhetorical analyses of speeches, but now the focus has
widened to other discourse in the public sphere including “editorials, pamphlets and
the Internet” (Hunt, 2003, p. 378).
1. Communication and Guilt
Objective: To assist students in understanding the process of guilt and redemption as it
1. Divide the class into four groups, and assign each group one of the following
identifiers of the guilt/redemption cycle: order or hierarchy, the negative, victimage,
and redemption.
2. Show the movie or television program, and have each group analyze the drama,
considering its assigned identifier.
3. Have a class discussion focusing on the following questions:
• What is the order or hierarchy in the drama?
• How and when does (do) the character(s) reject the hierarchy?
• Does (do) the character(s) engage in mortification, scapegoating, or both?
• Who serves as the redeemer in the drama? How and when is order or hierarchy
reestablished?
2. Where Is the Pentad?
Objective: To encourage students to apply the pentad to a speech to uncover the rhetorical
Copyright © 2018 McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved. No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of McGraw-Hill
Education.
Directions:
1. Have students watch or read the speech and analyze it utilizing the pentad.
2. Have a class discussion focusing on these questions:
• What was done, or what is the act?
• What is the context for the act or the scene?
• What are the forms of agency used by the speaker?
• What is the manner in which the speaker positions himself or herself relative to
others?
• What are the dramatistic ratios employed in the speech? How do the ratios
assist in understanding the strategies employed by the speaker?
3. “Free-Choice” Discussion
Objective: To have students examine the nature of ontology and its relationship to
1. In small groups, have students discuss Burke’s notion that humans are choice
makers.
3. Have a class discussion focusing on the following questions:
• Have we studied other theories that draw on this assumption?
• If humans are indeed choice makers, how does this assumption relate to
Burke’s notion that language exerts a deterministic influence over people?
