DRAMATISM

1
DRAMATISM

• OF KENNETH BURKE

2
Dramatism as Criticism

• Language as strategic resource
• Life IS drama both speaker and listener are
  engaged in that drama
• Persuasion involves audience identification
  (overlap between speaker and audience SUBSTANCE)
• Identification achieved through STYLE and CONTENT
• Identification can work both ways

3
The dramatistic pentad

• Dramatistic pentad is tool to analyze persuasion
• Persuasion is about speakers attempt to get the
  audience to believe his version of reality.
• Motivation (and worldview) is revealed through
  relative stress he/she gives to each of five
  elements act, scene, agent, agency (means),
  purpose. E.g. stress on setting and
  circumstance downplays free will.
• Essential values revealed through
• Uses of god-term
• Uses of devil-term

4
Elements of the Pentad

• Act (names what took place in thought or deed)
  (realism)
• Scene is background of the act or situation in
  which it occurred (determinism)
• Agent is the person or kind of person who
  performed the act (idealism)
• Agency is the means or instruments used to
  perform the act (pragmatism)
• Purpose (speakers) is the implied or stated goal
  of the act (mysticism)

5
Guilt-Redemption Cycle

• Ultimate purpose is purging of guilt (tension,
  anxiety, shame, noxious feelings generally).
• Negative feelings from negativity in language,
  technology, hierarchies, binary oppositions,
  pressure for perfection (rotten with perfection)
• Guilt is purged through self-blame or, more
  commonly, victimage, designating a common
  external enemy this helps identification.
• Rhetoric public search for perfect scapegoat

6
Critique

• Inconsistency in use of terms
• Literary allusions
• Assumption that guilt is the primary human
  emotion is unsubstantiated HOWEVER, this focus
  gives Burkes approach a critical edge, a way of
  resisting rhetoric
• Religious imagery is problematic