SMU
North East Texas Humor Research Conference
Role of Humor in Political Argumentation & Discourse
Kenneth Burke & SNL as Political Argument
Undergraduate research presentation!
by Dr. Ben Voth!
Chair of Communication Studies!
!
January 29, 2011
Humor & American Politics
• Jon Stewart!
• Stephen Colbert!
• Saturday Night Live
Saturday Night Live
as communication research
• Argumentation and Advocacy-- 2002!
•
“The role of humor in political argument : How “strategery” and
“lockboxes” changed a political campaign,” with Chris Smith in
Argumentation and Advocacy 39 (2), Fall 2002, pp. 110-129.
!
• Laughing Matters-- 2008!
•
Chapter 13. “‘Saturday Night Live’ and Presidential Elections,” in Morris
Jonathan S., and Jody C. Baumgartner, eds.. Laughing Matters: Humor and
American Politics in the Media Age. New York: Routledge, 2008, pp. 229-240.
Tragic versus Comic Frames!
• Kenneth Burke!
• Distinction between Comic and Tragic frames
Communication research base-- Theory
• Kenneth Burke!
•
Kenneth Burke, Attitudes Toward History, (Los Altos, CA, Hermes Publications, 1959).
•
In Attitudes Toward History, literary critic and scholar of rhetoric Kenneth Burke (1959) argues comedy is
dialectic and allows a sort of transcendence, enabling people to become “observers of themselves, while
acting” (p. 171).
!
• Cheree Carlson“Gandhi and the Comic Frame: ‘Ad bellum purificandum,’”
Quarterly Journal of Speech, 72, (1986): 446-455.
•
The symbolic structures humans use to impose order upon their lives are called frames. A. Cheree Carlson (1986) notes that
frames are the constructs humans use to view, group, and interpret experiences with reality. These frames, in turn,
determine the symbolic actions and choices humans make from these experiences. Kenneth Burke (1959) argues that
humans categorize their actions and choices through the major poetic frames of epic, tragedy, comedy, elegy, satire,
burlesque, and the grotesque. Burke (1959) further explains these frames in terms of acceptance and rejection. Frames of
acceptance, such as comedy and epic, single out relationships as friendly and therefore capable of mutual dialogue and
understanding. However, rejection frames, such as burlesque and tragedy, define the human situation as unfriendly and
incapable of understanding. These frames emphasize their relation to authority and attempt to resist action that could
potentially threaten that authority. Regardless if the emphasis is placed on acceptance or rejection, the symbolic action
through these poetic frames allows people a means of dealing with life’s inequities through a dramaturgical perspective.
SNL 2000!
• Presidential Debate:
Al Gore vs. George Bush
Election 2000 Bush v Gore
Gallup June 2000
Presidential Debates & Polling
October Bush v Gore
SNL skit
SNL 2004
Bush v. Kerry
Recent SNL issues
• Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama!
• Texas & Ohio primaries-- SNL Saturday before!
• Palin and Fey-- Largest SNL Audience ever-- 17
million
Sarah Palin after election
• Sarah Palin’s home church!
• December 12, 2008!
• women and children inside the church!
• fire set around the entire perimeter of
the church!
• 20 below zero outside the church as
fire fighters fought the blaze!
• arson— the fire was deliberately set!
• no one was prosecuted!
• The media largely ignored this
incident.
Conclusions
• The Comic frame is highly important to
younger audiences (18-29) of American political
communication.!
• Comedy such as SNL can accomplish
persuasive goals.!
• The Comic frame solves the problems
associated with the tragic frame.