DRAMATISM
Of Kenneth Burke
KENNETH BURKE
 Critic- believed that language is a strategic human response to a
specific situation:
• “Verbal symbols are meaningful acts from which motives can be
derived.”
 Dramatism was Burke’s favorite word to describe what he saw going
on when people open their mouths to communicate
LIFE IS DRAMA
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B32yjbCSVpU
 Story Song• a part in the drama rather than the role of a passive listener
 Identification, dramatistic pentad, and guilt-redemption cycle
• Ways to analyze public address and other forms of symbolic action
Without it, there is no persuasion:
The recognized common ground between speaker and audience, such as physical
characteristics, talents, occupation, experiences, personality, beliefs, and attitudes:
consubstantiation
IDENTIFICATION
SUBSTANCE
 An umbrella term to describe a person’s physical characteristics,
talents, occupation, experiences, personality, beliefs, and attitudes
 Consubstantiation-theological reference
• Giving signs in language and delivery that his properties are the same
as theirs
 Audiences sense a joining of interests through style as much as
through content
IDENTIFICATION CONT.
 Works both ways
 Audience adaptation
 Identification in either direction will never be complete
 Without some kind of division in the first place, there would be no
need for identification.
 Without identification, there is no persuasion
DRAMATISTIC PENTAD
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYjpjVDG6zs
A tool to analyze how a speaker attempts to get an audience to accept
his or her view of reality by using five key elements of the human
drama- act, scene, agent, agency, and purpose
DRAMATISTIC PENTAD
God term- the word a speaker uses to which all other positive words are
subservient
Devil term- the word a speaker uses that sums up all that is regarded as
bad, wrong, or evil
Act
Response
Scene
Agency
Agent
Purpose
Situation
Subject
Stimulus
Target
Top-assumes a world of intentional action
Bottom-describe motion without intention or purpose
DP
 Offers a way to determine why the speaker selected a given
rhetorical strategy to identify with the audience.
 When a message stresses one element over the other four, it
reveals the speaker’s philosophy or worldview.
 The pentad can be seen as offering a static photograph of a single
scene in the human drama
DP DEFINED
 Act- a critic’s label for the act illustrates what was done. A speech
that features dramatic verbs demonstrates a commitment to realism.
 Scene- The description of the scene gives a context for where and
when the act was performed. Public speaking that emphasizes setting
and circumstance, downplays free will, and reflects an attitude of
situational determinism.
AGENT/ AGENCY
 Agent- the agent is the person or people who performed the act.
Some messages are filled with references to self, mind, spirit, and
personal responsibility. The focus on character and the agent as
instigator is consistent with philosophical idealism.
 Agency- Agency is the means the agent used to do the deed. A long
description of methods or technique reflects a “get the job done”
approach that spring from the speaker's mindset of pragmatism
PURPOSE
 The speaker’s purpose is the stated or implied goal of the address.
An extended discussion of purpose within the message who's a
strong desire on the part of the speaker for unity or ultimate meaning
in life, which are common concerns of mysticism.
ACTIVITY TIME
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ufoUtoQLGQY&feature=fvwrel
QUESTIONS TO ASK
1. What happened? What is the action? What is going on?
2. Where is the act happening? What is the background situation?
3. Who is involved in the action? What are their roles?
4. How do the agents act? By what means do they act?
5. Why do the agents act? What do they want?
ACTIVITY TIME
http://www.southparkstudios.com/clips/155077/ginger-pride-conference
QUESTIONS TO ASK
1. What happened? What is the action? What is going on?
2. Where is the act happening? What is the background situation?
3. Who is involved in the action? What are their roles?
4. How do the agents act? By what means do they act?
5. Why do the agents act? What do they want?
Man is
The symbol-using inventor of the negative
Separated from his natural condition by instruments
Of his own making
Goaded by the spirit of hierarchy
And rotten with perfection
 Animal nature
 Capacity to manipulate symbols in not an unmixed blessing
 Only through man-made language that the possibility of choice
comes into being
 Human as a tool using animal
 Always feel a strong sense of embarrassment for not having done
better
 Perspective by incongruity• Admirable drive to do thing perfectly can hurt us and others in the
process
GUILT REDEMPTION CYCLE
 The Root of All Rhetoric
 Ultimate motivation of all rhetoric is to purge ourselves of an ever
present, all inclusive sense of guilt.
 Guilt- Burke’s catchall term for tension, anxiety, embarrassment,
shame, disgust, and other noxious feelings intrinsic to the human
condition.
REDEMPTION THROUGH
VICTIMAGE
 Mortification- confession of guilt and request of forgiveness
• Much easier to blame problems on someone else
 Victimage- scapegoating; the process of naming an external enemy
as the source of all personal or public ills
• People uniting against a common enemy
• “Congregation through segregation”
 The easiest way for an orator to identify with an audience is to lash
out at whatever or whomever the people fear.
CRITIQUES
 Burkes was closely tied to symbolic interactionism
 Complexity seems to be characteristic of much of the writing
within that tradition
 Strategies of redemption
• His “secular religion” takes God too seriously for those who don’t
believe, yet not seriously enough for those who do.
 Trouble with the unsubstantiated assumption that guilt is the
primary human emotion that underlies all symbolic action