Speech Chapter 23 Dramatism Outline Introduction For Kenneth Burke Words Are First And Foremost

CHAPTER 23

DRAMATISM

Outline

I. Introduction.

A. For Kenneth Burke, words are first and foremost action—symbolic action.

B. For Burke and other rhetorical critics, a critic is one who carefully analyzes the

language that speakers and authors use.

C. They try to discern the motivations behind their messages—and often these

motivations aren’t obvious.

F. The transmission approach treats communication as just one part of the realm of

motion, where things move according to cause-and-effect laws without meaning or

purpose.

G. Unlike animals, humans possess the capacity to engage in intentional action.

H. This ability to plan and act arises from our ability to use symbols. Thus, when we

speak, we’re engaging in symbolic action—using words to give life to particular

motives and pursue particular goals.

II. Language as the genesis of guilt

A. Burke regarded our capacity for language as the source of our downfall. That’s

because language introduced the negative.

B. We couldn’t have laws without the negative.

C. Man-made language gives us the capacity to create rules and standards for behavior

that Burke called the “thou shalt nots” of life.

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G. The final phrase of Burke’s “Definition of Man,” which is “rotten with perfection,” is

an example of what Burke called perspective by incongruity, or the linking of two

dissonant ideas in order to provide shocking new insight.

H. Perspective by incongruity shocks our sensibilities but helps us see things from a

different angle.

III. The guilt-redemption cycle: A universal motive for rhetoric

A. The ultimate motivation of all public speaking is to purge ourselves of guilt.

B. Rhetoric is the public search for someone or something to blame, the quest for a

perfect scapegoat.

F. He regarded theology as a field that has fine-tuned its use of language, and he

urged the social critic to look for secular equivalents of the major religious themes

of guilt, purification, and redemption.

G. Burke said that the speaker or author has two possible ways of offloading guilt.

2. Described theologically as mortification, this route requires confession of sin

and a request for forgiveness.

4. Victimage is the process of designating an external enemy as the source of

all our ills.

IV. Identification: Without it, there is no persuasion.

A. Identification is the common ground that exists between speaker and audience.

1. Substance describes a person’s physical characteristics, talents, occupation,

friends, experiences, personality, beliefs, and attitudes.

3. Although social scientists use the term homophily to describe perceived

similarity between speaker and listener, Burke preferred religious language—

identification is consubstantiation.

B. One of the most common ways for speakers to identify with audiences is to lash out

at whatever or whomever people fear.

C. Audiences sense a joining of interests through style as much as through content.

D. He was more interested in examining rhetoric after the fact to discover what

motivates the speaker.

V. The dramatistic pentad: A lens for interpreting symbolic action.

A. Burke’s dramatistic pentad enables the critic to dig beneath surface impressions in

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2. The agent is the person or kind of person who performed the act.

3. The agency is the procedure, means, or instruments used to perform the act.

5. The purpose is the implied or stated motive of the act.

B. The five elements of the pentad usually refer to the act described within the speech

rather than the act of giving the speech.

C. If we identify with the drama, then we’re persuaded, and the symbolic action worked

VI. Ratio: The relative importance of each part of the pentad.

A. Burke associated each part of the pentad with a corresponding philosophy.

1. An emphasis on act demonstrates a commitment to realism.

3. An emphasis on agency springs from the mind-set of pragmatism.

5. An emphasis on purpose suggests the concerns of mysticism.

B. The ratio of importance between individual pairs of terms in the dramatistic pentad

indicates which element provides the best clue to the speaker’s motivation.

C. The critic can start by identifying the two elements of the pentad most heavily

emphasized in the speech. These two elements create the dominant ratio that

provides the most insight into the speaker’s motivations.

V. Critique: Evaluating the critic’s analysis.

A. Burke was perhaps the foremost twentieth-century rhetorician.

B. His ideas are tested through qualitative research from a strong community of

agreement.

C. He provided a creative and new understanding of people.

D. But some scholars don’t think he did enough to clarify values or reform society.

Key Names and Terms

Kenneth Burke

Perhaps the most important twentieth-century rhetorician, this critic is the founder of

dramatism.

Marie Hochmuth Nichols

Critic

Rhetorical scholar who carefully analyzes the language of speakers and authors.

Realm of motion

Things moving according to cause/effect laws without purpose.

Symbolic action

Words as intentional action, giving life to particular motives and goals.

Dramatism

A technique of analysis of language and thought as modes of action rather than as

means of conveying information.

Guilt

Perspective by incongruity

Providing shocking insight by linking two dissonant words.

Scapegoat

Someone or something blamed for guilt.

God term

Victimage

Naming an external enemy as the source of all personal or public ills.

Identification

The common ground between speaker and audience; consubstantiation.

Dramatistic pentad

A tool critics can use to discern the motives of a speaker by labeling five key elements

of the drama—act, scene, agent, agency, and purpose.

Act

The dramatistic term for what was done. Texts that emphasize act suggest realism.

Scene

The dramatistic term for the context for the act. Texts that emphasize scene downplay

free will and reflect an attitude of situational determinism.

Agent

Purpose

The dramatistic term for the stated or implied goal of an act. Texts that emphasize

purpose suggest the concerns of mysticism.

Ratio

The relative importance of any two terms of the pentad as determined by their

relationship.

Principal Changes

This chapter has been heavily reorganized and rewritten. The chapter now introduces

Burke’s general beliefs about human nature and communication before describing the pentad

Kick-off Questions & Interaction Starters

• When you tell a story, what element do you tend to emphasis most often?

• Must you identify with speakers for them to be effective or could someone’s differences

or particularities speak volumes?

• What types of common ground are most important to you when you speak with

Suggestions for Discussion

Burke’s influence

To help your students understand what a towering figure Burke has been in the

twentieth century, call attention to the remark in this chapter that there is an entire scholarly

organization, the Kenneth Burke Society, dedicated to researching and applying his ideas.

There is also an Internet Kenneth Burke discussion list dedicated to his ideas

(http://kbjournal.org/kbs).

Murder in the observatory: Comparisons to Clue

The boardgame “Clue” may provide a useful comparison for students new to Burke’s

pentad. The object of the game is to collect clues about a murder (act), including who

committed the crime (agent), where it was done (scene), and with what instrument (agency).

Burke in tragic days

While morose, you might follow up the analogy of the game (discussed above) with a

newspaper or magazine account of a murder or crime and discuss how a Burkean critic would

read the motive based on comparisons between two elements of the pentad. The shootings at

Pulse night club (2016) and in Las Vegas (2017) may provide an interesting contrast. While

the shooting in Las Vegas which killed 58 and injured 851 people. Students might find the first

account more understandable by comparison.

Thinking about the discussion and coverage of any tragedy, you might discuss with

students the kneejerk need to assign a purpose or to have reason. When the media covers

airplane disasters (such as the disappearance of Malaysian Flight 370 in 2014), nuclear

meltdowns (Fukushima disaster in 2011), corporate misdeeds (Volkswagen 2017), or even

social media leaks (Facebook/Cambridge Analytica 2015-18), think of how quickly the story

Burke’s goal of liberation

One of the most exciting (and frustrating) aspects about teaching Burke is that he did

not really see his work as theory per se, but as a method of motivating people to shake the

scales of intellectual lethargy and complacency from the mind’s eye. Ultimately, Burke’s goal

was not to systematize discourse with neat and tidy theoretical distinctions, but to liberate us

from limiting mind-sets and categories. All his life, Burke fought against orthodoxies—anyone

who claims that guilt motivates all public speaking can hardly be said to embrace the status

quo. Thus, it would be a disservice to his memory to teach his pentad as a static,

establishment device. As students struggle with the dramatistic pentad, they need to

understand that ultimately the concepts are simply tools for understanding, a way to begin

textual analyses that makes a difference in the world. If your students take only one lesson

“Rotten with perfection”

Burke’s notion that human beings are “rotten with perfection” is a particularly

perplexing component of a particularly perplexing body of theoretical material. As we strive for

perfection, we are destructive. In a sense, Burke is arguing that our rottenness comes

precisely because we attain perfection—or completion—of the linguistic and conceptual forms

we have created. Intellectually, industrially, bureaucratically, and spiritually, we have a

tendency to sow the seeds of our own destruction. We are, in effect, prisoners of our own

devices. For example, our culture is particularly fond of characterizing complex ethnic, social,

and psychological phenomena with simple binary oppositions such as Black/white,

victimize) one element of each pair, a tendency that surely contributes heavily to our

rottenness.

For example, historically to be called Black or Negro (rather than white) in the United

States was to be deemed second class. Those in power used the neat-and-tidy black/white

binary opposition to categorize anyone with African ancestry as less than fully human and

therefore exploitable. Whether a person was entirely of African ancestry or had one African

grandparent and three European grandparents, he or she was labeled Black or Negro, and

correspondingly, discriminated against. Such categorization allowed our society to perpetuate

slavery (even in the case of the children of male slave owners and female slaves), Jim Crow

connections between linguistic perfection and unsavory social realities are provocative.

Burke’s motive

In the current treatment of Burke, the exploration of motive is not explicitly highlighted

as different than identifying the purpose. The motive means uncovering the underlying

philosophical ideology advanced by highlighting a given element of the pentad. Focusing on

the act (realism), scene (determinism), agent (idealism), agency (pragmatism), or purpose

Identification as BIRGing, CORFing, and COFFing

At times, identification may be convenient; we readily want to associate with heroes or

victors. On the other hand, when things aren’t going so well, we might be less likely to want to

be associated with another. Cialdini, Borden, Thorne, Walker, Freeman, and Sloan (1976)

labelled these phenomena BIRGing (“Basking in Reflecting Glory”) and CORFing (“Cutting off

reflected failure”). How often do “we” win when referencing a victory but “they” (our own team)

Sample Application Log

Jill

Burke would say that the persuasion speech on eating disorders (which I gave as an example

for Aristotle’s Art of Rhetoric) was an attempt for me to purge my guilt, and that I gave that

speech because I felt guilty about my past actions in being involved in an eating disorder and

for having a sister who was also involved in one. Since I concentrated on the media and its

obsession with beauty and thinness, Burke would say I was concentrating on the scene or

Exercises and Activities

Aristotle and Burke

If you have already covered Chapter 22, then comparisons between Aristotle’s and

Burke’s approaches to public rhetoric may serve to strengthen your students’ grasp of these

vital theories. One way to facilitate the comparison is to reverse the featured examples: ask

points—and his delivery—strong, powerful, and impassioned—may both help and hurt his ethos.

Given the setting (a campaign stop), it’s harder to see it as inspired by goodwill and not

personal gain (votes). Students may sense that the persona Obama projects is more closely

aligned with a prophet or preacher than with Aristotle’s concept of the model Greek rhetor.

This jeremiadic tradition of speaking—which has been marshaled by public figures from the

ancient Hebrew prophets of the Old Testament to African-American feminists such as Audre

Lorde and Alice Walker—falls largely outside Aristotle’s theory.

A Burkean analysis of Obama’s Notre Dame speech is similarly instructive. One could

argue that his emphasis on looking past differences, finding common ground, and working in

collaboration indicates that the agency is his key concern—he isn’t advocating public policy

positions, but rather addressing the manner by which we debate and decide them. The

character of the speaker (Obama) is clearly under attack from the protesters. But, he is not the

agent here; within the speech itself, the listeners (Notre Dame’s graduating class) will be the

that Burke describes. He broadly applies “god terms” and “devil terms”—”fair-minded words”

and “faith” on the one hand and “prejudice” and “intolerance” on the other.

Suggestions of other texts

If you wish to move beyond the examples featured in the text, consider representative

speeches of Adolf Hitler, Franklin Roosevelt’s First Inaugural Address, John F. Kennedy’s

Inaugural Address, Edward Kennedy’s Address to the People of Massachusetts, Ronald

Reagan’s speech to the National Association of Evangelicals (the “Evil Empire” speech), Ann

Richards’ Keynote Address to the 1988 Democratic Convention, George W. Bush’s Iraq War

speeches and his “axis of evil” declaration, or Bill Clinton’s public apologies for the affair with

Monica Lewinsky. Also, we encourage you to consider using less discrete texts for analysis in

Burke on the football field, the baseball mound, or the basketball court

If your school has a competitive athletics program, your students might find a Burkean

analysis of a recent game interesting. After a close loss in an important conference game, I

asked a student athlete in my class to tell us what happened. As he explained the other

team’s quarterback and his heroics, it was clear the analysis was headed towards agent. But

with a bit of prodding, his story shifted to explaining the importance of this particular game to

both programs (scene), or the various plays they were unaccustomed to defending against

“Here’s what I’ve found out about: Whether it’s talking about people coming here with humidity

or us going to altitude or weather or cold or whatever, it is usually the teams that are losing

that are talking about it. The teams that are winning don’t.” (TCU Daily Skiff, 11/2/11, “Frogs

won’t be affected by cold weather,” p. 8). For the coach, a philosophy of situational

determinism wasn’t an option. Andrew emphasized the point that we should be skeptical of

appeals to scene because we often have more agency in our actions than perhaps we want to

admit. When the team does well, they’re unlikely to ascribe their good fortune to the weather.

Cecil the lion, Harambe the gorilla, and Fiona the hippo

Here’s an idea of animal lovers involving three fairly recent stories of animals and

humans. In June 2015, Walter Palmer, an American recreational big-game hunter, killed Cecil

the lion outside a wildlife refugee in Zimbabwe. As media accounts poured in, some would

focus on the act (the killing of a beloved, majestic creature), the scene (northern Zimbabwe

with a questionable history related to animal conservation and hunting tourism), the actor (the

Minnesota-based dentist had a long history of hunting endangered animals), agency (the

animal was killed with a box and arrow but it took more than 40 hours of suffering before Cecil

possible for the boy to fall in the gorilla enclosure), and the choice to kill rather than tranquilize

the animal. The need for a scapegoat was apparent in all accounts as the story went viral.

Given Burke’s attention to symbolic action, the story would lend itself well to a class

discussion.

If animal death seems too morose as an illustration, perhaps the feel-good story of

2017 would be a good substitute. In January 2017, Fiona the Nile hippo was born six weeks

premature at the Cincinnati zoo (the same zoo where Harambe was shot 6 months prior). At 29

pounds (hippos typically weigh between 55-125 pounds at birth), she would be unable to

survive without heroic intervention. The zoo made two decisions: to do everything possible on

the hippo’s behalf and, perhaps on the heels of very bad PR coverage after the gorilla’s death,

to be exceptionally transparent with the public through their media efforts. Both decisions paid

off! Fiona was bottle-fed by the zoo staff, survived health scares early in life, and eventually

was successfully reunited with her mom, Bibi. Based on their social media coverage, Fiona

Scapegoating in the Wild

Inspired by an article by Molly Hartzog (see reference below), you might try out some of

her ideas with your class. Hartzog highlights the stories of two men, both of which seem to

have resonated with my students: Aron Ralston, the hiker and outdoorsman who amputated

his own arm after 127 hours of being trapped from a fall while hiking alone in Utah, and Chris

“Alexander Supertramp” McCandless who died of starvation after trekking solo in the Alaskan

backcountry. Their stories are told in the films 127 Hours (2010) and Into the Wild (2007)

Media and feature film examples

In the narration monologue for Gone Girl (2014), Amy (played by Rosamund Pike)

describes “cool girl” as the ultimate god term that men use when they speak about women

they are interested in. She uses this monologue to dramatize the types of things women do to

impress men, describing the who, the what, and the purpose. It’s a painful yet poignant

example, especially in the post-#metoo era.

Rather than show segments of television shows or films, you can still utilize them as

texts or material for discussion if you have a number of students who watch the show, series,

or film. In these cases, my job is to provide some useful prompts and let the students explain

Further Resources

For a little inspiration and sensible advice about the nature of Burke’s theory (a theory which

can feel overwhelming to students), we suggest Arthur Quinn, “Teaching Burke: Kenneth Burke

and the Rhetoric of Ascent,” Rhetoric Society Quarterly, Vol. 25, 1995, pp. 231-36. Those with

an interest in intellectual history will appreciate Quinn’s effort to place Burke within the larger

tradition of Western thought.

Theoretical considerations

Floyd D. Anderson and Lawrence J. Prelli, “Kenneth Burke’s Agonistic Theory of Knowledge,”

Western Journal of Communication, Vol. 82, 2018, pp. 181-193.

Robert Prus, “Kenneth Burke’s Dramatistic Pragmatism: A Missing Link Between Classical

Greek Scholarship and the Interactionist Study of Human Knowing and Acting,”

Qualitative Sociological Review, Vol. 13, 2017, pp. 6-58.

Applications of Burke’s theory

Barry Brummett, “What Popular Films Teach Us About Values: Locked Inside with the Rage

Virus,” Journal of Popular Film and Television, Vol. 41, 2013, pp. 61-67.

Amanda Nell Edgar, “R&B Rhetoric and Victim-Blaming Discourses: Exploring the Popular

Press’s Revision of Rihanna’s Contextual Agency,” Women’s Studies In

Communication, Vol. 37, 2014, pp. 138-158.

Molly Hartzog, “Scapegoating in the Wild: A Burkean Analysis of Two Outdoor Adventures Gone

Wrong,” Environmental Communication, Vol. 9, 2015, pp. 520-538.

prior written consent of McGraw-Hill Education.

Mollie K. Murphy and Tina M. Harris, “White Innocence and Black Subservience: The Rhetoric

of White Heroism in The Help,” Howard Journal Of Communications, Vol. 29, 2018, pp.

49-62.

Andrea J. Terry, “The Church Made Me Do It: Identity and Apology in Marin Foundation Video

Confessionals,” Journal Of Communication Inquiry, Vol. 39, 2015, pp. 298-318.

Francesca Marie Smith and Thomas A. Hollihan, “‘Out of Chaos Breathes Creation’: Human

Agency, Mental Illness, and Conservative Arguments Locating Responsibility for the

Other teaching ideas

Samuel L. Head, “Teaching Grounded Audiences: Burke’s Identification in Facebook and

Composition,” Computers & Composition, Vol. 39, 2016, pp. 27-40.