CHAPTER 23 ObjectiveInterpretive

Rhetorical tradition

Dramatism
of Kenneth Burke

For Kenneth Burke, words are first and foremost action—symbolic action. And where
there’s action, there’s drama.
So when a political candidate says her opponent lacks character or competence,
what is she doing? To Burke, her words don’t just advance a claim of fact or opin-
ion. Instead, the words are an attack. The target might craft words to defend, or
engage in a counterattack of his own. Like an engrossing reality show, each may
play the role of hero, victim, or villain. As a rhetorical critic, Burke believed close
analysis of each candidate’s words could reveal their hidden motives in the drama
of the campaign. Such analysis can also unmask the drama inherent in religious
sermons, stand-up comedy, corporate training events, sports commentary, or any
situation where someone engages in public symbolic action.
When you see the word critic, you might think of movie reviewers or people
who nag and complain. That’s not what Burke and other rhetoricians mean. In their
Critic world, critics carefully analyze the language that speakers and authors use. They try
Rhetorical scholar who to discern the motivations behind their messages—and often these motivations aren’t
carefully analyzes the obvious. Burke devoted his career to developing vocabulary and methods that help
language of speakers and theorists understand the connection between the symbols speakers use and their
authors.
motives for speaking in the first place.
Until his death in 1993 at the age of 96, Burke picked his way through the
human “motivational jungle” by using the tools of philosophy, literature, psychology,
economics, linguistics, sociology, and communication. He spent his young adult
years in Greenwich Village, a New York bohemian community that included poets
E.  E.  Cummings and Edna St. Vincent Millay. Like many intellectuals during the
Depression of the 1930s, Burke flirted with communism but was disillusioned by
Stalin’s intolerance and brutality. Although he never earned a college degree, he
taught for 15 years at Bennington College in Vermont and filled visiting lectureships
at Harvard, Princeton, Northwestern, and the University of Chicago. Burke’s writing
shows an intellectual breadth and depth that leads admirers to refer to him as a
Renaissance man. He called himself a “gypsy scholar” and responded to questions
about his field of interest by asking, “What am I but a word man?”1
Like Barnett Pearce in CMM and Stan Deetz in his critical theory of commu-
nication (see Chapters 6 and 21), Burke rejected the commonly held notion that

287
288 GROUP AND PUBLIC COMMUNICATION

communication is primarily a process of message transmission. The transmission

approach treats communication as just one part of the realm of motion, where things
Realm of motion move according to cause-and-effect laws without meaning or purpose. Although
Things moving according clouds, rocks, planets, and even animals exist only in that realm of motion, Burke
to cause/effect laws believed humans are different. Yes, like animals, humans have material bodies that
without purpose.
occupy the realm of motion and obey its laws. But unlike animals, we also possess
the capacity to engage in intentional action.2 This ability to plan and act arises from
our ability to use symbols. Thus, when we speak, we’re engaging in symbolic action—
Symbolic action using words to give life to particular motives and pursue particular goals.3 Drama
Words as intentional inevitably follows this dance between symbols and the motives underlying them.
action, giving life to For Burke, life is not like a drama; human life is drama.
particular motives and
So Burke coined the umbrella term dramatism to describe “a technique of
goals.
analysis of language and thought as basically modes of action rather than as means
Dramatism of conveying information.”4 Almost every public utterance speaks to a moral con-
A technique of analysis of flict where something has gone wrong or might soon go awry. Presidential candi-
language and thought as dates try to craft memorable campaign slogans that capture this sense in just a few
modes of action rather
words. In the 1920s, Warren Harding promised a “return to normalcy.” In the
than as means of
conveying information.
1960s, Lyndon Johnson told voters that “the stakes are too high for you to stay at
home.” In 2008 Barack Obama called for “change we need,” and in 2016 Donald
Trump pledged to “make America great again.”5 But why do the words of presiden-
tial candidates so frequently drip with doom-and-gloom negativity? For Burke, that
isn’t just a rhetorical question. He had an answer: The nature of language itself
leads us to believe that something is wrong with the world. And if something is
wrong, somebody or something needs to pay the price to make things right.

LANGUAGE AS THE GENESIS OF GUILT

Burke regarded human beings as symbol-using animals, and he obviously enjoyed
exploring how symbol use separates us from other creatures. He examined words,
defined words, played with words, and made up his own words. But Burke also
regarded our capacity for language as the source of our downfall. That’s because
language introduced the negative. The animalistic world of motion just is; it contains
no negative commands. But our language is filled with words like no, not, nothing,
never, and prefixes such as un-, dis-, and non- that negate the meaning of other
words.6 Even our definitions of words are dependent on the negative. As Burke said,
“You can go on forever saying what a thing is not.”7
Likewise, most laws tell us what we shouldn’t do: we shouldn’t steal, shouldn’t
drive over the speed limit, shouldn’t smoke in a public building. We couldn’t have
laws without the negative. It’s necessary for humans to create the rules and stan-
dards for behavior that Burke called the “thou shalt nots” of life.8 These shoulds
and oughts inevitably produce guilt when we fail to live up to their moral i­mperatives.
For Burke, guilt wasn’t only a specific emotional response to a specific rule
Guilt violation, like the remorse a student might feel when caught cheating on a test.
Burke’s catchall term to Rather, Burke uses guilt as his catchall term to cover every form of tension, anxiety,
cover every form of embarrassment, shame, disgust, and other noxious feelings inherent in human
tension, anxiety,
embarrassment, shame,
­symbol-using activity. When we feel like the world isn’t as it should be, we’re expe-
disgust, and other noxious riencing Burke’s style of guilt.
feelings inherent in human Burke’s Definition of Man oozes with this sense of guilt. Like most writers of
­symbol-using activity. an earlier generation, Burke used the word man to designate both men and women.
Given his record of using words to startle his readers, I wonder if he might recast
 CHAPTER 23: Dramatism 289

his definition with feminine vocabulary if he were writing today. But in order to
remain faithful to what he wrote, I won’t alter his gender-loaded references.
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.9
Like Mead (see Chapter 5), Burke starts with the uniquely human ability to
create, use, and abuse language. The rest of his definition makes it clear that the
capacity to manipulate symbols is a mixed blessing. The remaining lines suggest
three linguistic causes for the sense of inner pollution.
By writing “inventor of the negative,” Burke reiterates that it’s only through
human-made language that the possibility of choice comes into being. In a world
without human beings, there are no negative commands, no prohibitions. It’s only
when humans act symbolically that the possibility of No! Don’t do it! arrives.
The phrase “separated from his natural condition by instruments of his own
making” bounces off the traditional description of humans as tool-using animals.
Here again, Burke suggests that our inventions—language and all the tools developed
with language—cause us grief. Murphy’s Law states that anything that can go wrong
will.10 When it comes to relations among people, Burke would say Murphy was an
optimist. That’s because language is morally loaded.
Burke wrote extensively about hierarchies, bureaucracies, and other ordered
systems that rank how well people observe society’s negative rules. He was con-
vinced that no matter how high you climb on the performance ladder, you’ll always
feel a strong sense of embarrassment for not having achieved perfection. A perfect
10 on the ladder of esteem, privilege, or power is exceedingly rare, and if ever
achieved, fleeting. The guilt-inducing high priests of the hierarchy are the profes-
sional symbol users of society—lawyers, journalists, artists, advertisers, and even
your professors when they assign grades at the end of the term.
In the final phrase, Burke suggests that our seemingly admirable drive to do
things perfectly can hurt us and others in the process. This is an example of
­perspective by incongruity, or the linking of two dissonant ideas in order to provide
Perspective by shocking new insight.11 Rolling Stone magazine used perspective by incongruity
incongruity when they featured Boston marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev on the cover. He
Providing shocking new appeared relaxed and stylish in the photo, like a hot new rock star might. Some
insight by linking two
people criticized the seeming glorification of a murderer, but an editor defended
dissonant words.
the choice: “The jarringly non-threatening image of Tsarnaev is exactly the point. . . .
it’s Tsarnaev’s very normalcy and niceness that is the most monstrous and terrifying
thing about him.”12 Perspective by incongruity shocks our sensibilities but helps us
see things from a different angle.

THE GUILT–REDEMPTION CYCLE: A UNIVERSAL MOTIVE FOR RHETORIC

Scapegoat
Whatever private purpose a speaker, singer, or writer has, Burke believed that purging
Someone or something guilt is the ultimate motive for public rhetoric. He saw the quest for redemption as
blamed for guilt. the basic plot of the human drama, even if the speaker is unaware of its force. Rhet-
oric is the public search for someone or something to blame, a quest for a perfect
scapegoat.
290 GROUP AND PUBLIC COMMUNICATION

To identify a speaker’s chosen scapegoat, Burke instructed critics to look for

devil-terms, or words used by the speaker that sum up all that a speaker regards as
Devil-term bad, wrong, or evil. For example, in his nationally broadcast address to Congress
A term that sums up all following the 9/11 attacks, President Bush used the word terror or terrorist 34
that a speaker regards as times.13 In that speech he declared a “War on Terror,” a devil-term that shaped the
bad, wrong, or evil.
country’s foreign policy for more than a decade. More recently, in the 2016 cam-
paign Donald Trump frequently blamed immigrants and illegal immigration for the
nation’s economic, crime, and security problems.
Devil-terms call for god-terms to oppose them—words summing up what the
God-term speaker regards as righteous and good. Against the devil-term of illegal immigration,
A term that sums up all Trump often mentioned a wall he hoped to build along the southern border of the
that a speaker regards as United States. Burke said a speaker’s god-term is best understood by other words
righteous and good.
that cluster around it—it can be known by the company it keeps. When he announced
his candidacy, Trump said it would be a “great, great wall,” that “nobody builds
walls better than me,” and “I will have Mexico pay for that wall.”14 These words
clarify Trump’s meaning by drawing attention to how the wall would demonstrate
his own negotiating skill and grandeur.
Devil- and god-terms reveal another aspect of Burke’s theory: his frequent use
of spiritual language. Those who have rejected or never had a religious commitment
may be impatient with Burke’s use of theological terms. He made no claim to be a
man of faith, nor did he ask his readers to believe in God. Regardless of whether
you accept the Christian doctrine of human sin, purification through the death of
Jesus, and divine redemption, Burke claimed that the “purely social terminology of
human relations cannot do better than to hover about that accurate and succinct
theological formula.”15 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.
Burke said that the speaker or author has two possible ways of off-loading guilt.
The first option is to purge guilt through self-blame. Described theologically as
Mortification mortification, this route requires confession of sin and a request for forgiveness.16 In
Confession of guilt and the 2016 presidential campaign, Hillary Clinton seemed equivocal when acknowl-
request for forgiveness. edging she’d made a mistake by maintaining an email server in her home while
secretary of state. Donald Trump’s grudging apology for lewd comments caught on
video seemed half-hearted at best. They aren’t alone. For example, several years
after allegations first surfaced, cycling superstar Lance Armstrong finally confessed
to illegal performance-enhancing drug use.17 Obvious candidates for mortification
often find it excruciatingly difficult to admit publicly that they are the cause of their
own grief. Since it’s much easier for people to blame their problems on someone
else—the second option—Burke suggested we look for signs of victimage in every
rhetorical act.18 He was sure we would find them.
Victimage is the process of designating an external enemy as the source of our
Victimage ills. Presidential candidates do that all the time in American rhetoric. Reagan blamed
Naming an external Soviet communists; Bush blamed al-Qaeda and Islamic terrorism; Obama blamed
enemy as the source of the economic policies of the Bush administration. In 2016, Bernie Sanders criticized
our ills.
wealthy Wall Street bankers, Hillary Clinton branded some Trump supporters as
“deplorables” and “irredeemable,”19 and Donald Trump characterized some Mexican
immigrants as “criminals, drug dealers, rapists.”20 He also gave his opponents con-
descending nicknames like “Lyin’ Ted” and “Crooked Hillary.” Presidential candi-
dates aren’t shy about naming people and groups they oppose, and they hope you’ll
identify with their victimage in one key way: supporting their candidacy. Beyond
 CHAPTER 23: Dramatism 291

“My fellow victims . . .”

©Peter Steiner/The New Yorker Collection/The Cartoon Bank

politics, other types of speakers hope you’ll identify with them so much that you’ll
buy their product, donate to their cause, or convert to their religious faith.

IDENTIFICATION: WITHOUT IT, THERE IS NO PERSUASION

The late Harry Chapin (who happened to be Burke’s grandson) captured some of
the tragedy and comedy of everyday life by putting words to music in story songs
people could identify with. His classic “Cat’s in the Cradle” is the timeless tale of
a father too busy to spend time with his son. Parents who listen to the lyrics realize
they have a part in the drama rather than the role of passive listener. They can’t
help but identify with the drama portrayed in the song.
For Burke, identification with the speaker isn’t just a fleeting sense of connec-
tion. Instead, without identification, there is no persuasion.21 Unless we identify with
the drama portrayed by the speaker, persuasion won’t occur. Although he was a
great admirer of Aristotle’s Rhetoric (see Chapter 22), Burke was less concerned
with enthymeme and example than he was with a speaker’s overall ability to identify
with the audience and vice versa.
Identification is the common ground that exists between speaker and audience.
Identification Burke used the word substance to describe a person’s physical characteristics, talents,
The common ground occupation, friends, experiences, personality, beliefs, and attitudes. The more overlap
between speaker and between the substance of the speaker and the substance of the listener, the greater
audience;
the identification. Behavioral scientists have used the term homophily to describe
­consubstantiality.
perceived similarity between speaker and listener,22 but again, Burke preferred religious
language rather than scientific jargon. Borrowing from Martin Luther’s description
of what takes place at the communion table, Burke said identification is consubstan-
tiality.23 This religious term calls to mind the oft-quoted Old Testament passage where
Ruth pledges solidarity with her mother-in-law, Naomi: “For where you go I will go,
and where you lodge I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my
292 GROUP AND PUBLIC COMMUNICATION

God.”24 Although Ruth and Naomi came from different generations, cultures, and
religious upbringings, they found common ground. That’s identification.
One of the most common ways for speakers to identify with audiences is to
lash out at whatever or whomever people fear. (“My friend is one who hates what
I hate.”) Burke was not an advocate of such identification through devil-terms and
victimage, but he said he couldn’t ignore the historical pattern of people uniting
against a common enemy (“congregation through segregation”25). His most famous
rhetorical analysis was of Hitler’s Mein Kampf, a book that blamed Jewish people
for all of Germany’s problems.26 This symbolic victimage was followed by extermi-
nation in death camps.
Audiences sense a joining of interests through style as much as through content.
Burke said the effective communicator can show consubstantiality by giving signs in
language and delivery that his or her properties are the same as theirs. During World
War II, President Roosevelt achieved identification with the American public through
his “fireside chats” on the radio, a popular medium at the time. Although Donald
Trump is a wealthy New York businessman, during his campaign he spoke in plain,
simple sentences that connected with the rural poor. For both presidents, their form
led some members of their audience to think they were “talking sense.” On the other
hand, Trump’s simple style alienated some affluent and educated voters.
For Burke, identification is the key to persuasion—without identification, there
is no persuasion. For an aspiring presidential candidate, that means crafting mes-
sages designed to build that sense of identification. But that wasn’t Burke’s main
concern. He was more interested in examining rhetoric after the fact to discover
what motivates the speaker. His dramatistic pentad is a tool for doing just that.

THE DRAMATISTIC PENTAD: A LENS FOR INTERPRETING SYMBOLIC ACTION

Burke’s dramatistic pentad enables the critic to dig beneath surface impressions in
Dramatistic pentad order to identify the complex motives of a speaker or writer. As Burke said, it’s a
A tool critics can use to shorthand way the rhetorical critic can “talk about their talk about” in a meaning-
discern the motives of a ful way.
speaker by labeling five
key elements of the In a well-rounded statement about motives, you must have some word that names
drama: act, scene, agent, the act (names what took place in thought or deed), and another that names the
agency, and purpose. scene (the background of the act, the situation in which it occurred); also you
must indicate what person or kind of person (agent) performed the act, what
means or instruments he used (agency), and the purpose.27
To demonstrate the dramatistic pentad, I’ll focus on a speech President Obama
gave at a campaign rally on July 13, 2012. After calling for wealthy Americans to
pay higher taxes to develop infrastructure, he said:
If you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own. You didn’t get there on
your own. I’m always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was
just so smart. There are a lot of smart people out there. It must be because I
worked harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something—there are a whole
bunch of hardworking people out there. If you were successful, somebody along the
line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Some-
body helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed
you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business—you
didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn’t get invented
 CHAPTER 23: Dramatism 293

on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies
could make money off the Internet.28
Some people identified strongly with Obama’s words. Others opposed the
drama he described. The pentad helps us understand why. We’ll start by identifying
the five elements present in the speech.
Act. To Burke, the act is the most important element of the pentad, “foremost
among the equals.”29 The act is what was done. Without action, there is no
drama, and multiple acts form the plot of the drama. In Obama’s speech, the
central act is achieving success, particularly in business.
Agent. An act implies an agent—the person who committed the act. In Obama’s
speech, the agents are the people (particularly business owners) who have
achieved success.
Agency. An act also implies a procedure for how the act was done. In this
speech, Obama doesn’t give a tutorial on how he thinks business owners achieve
success. Instead, he argues what agency is not. Intelligence and hard work aren’t
it, because some smart people who work hard don’t succeed.
Scene. Agent, act, and agency imply a scene where they take place. Obama
describes the environment of business owners (agents) who have achieved success
(acts)—the infrastructural, technological, and educational features around them.
Purpose. The purpose behind the act addresses the motive of the agent. The
final sentence quoted above suggests why Obama thinks business owners seek
success: to earn money.
Now, before we go further, I need to warn you against a misunderstanding that
trips up some students. Observe that the elements of the pentad describe the drama
described in the speech. They do not describe the speech itself. In other words, the
agent isn’t President Obama, the scene isn’t the campaign rally, the act isn’t giving
a speech, the agency isn’t the rhetorical devices he used, and the purpose isn’t to
persuade voters. That basic description isn’t rhetorical criticism. Remember that
Burke was interested in how speakers engage in symbolic action. He thinks Obama
is portraying a drama for his audience. If we identify with the drama, then we’re
persuaded, and Obama’s symbolic action worked. The pentad helps us map how
Obama tries to build that identification by examining relationships, or ratios, among
the pentad’s parts.

RATIO: THE RELATIVE IMPORTANCE OF EACH PART OF THE PENTAD

Burke associated each part of the pentad with a corresponding philosophy.30 Speak-
ers who emphasize the act demonstrate a commitment to philosophical realism
(“actions speak louder than words”). A focus on the agent as instigator of the act
is consistent with philosophical idealism (“the mind and heart of the person is what
matters”). A long description of agency resonates with pragmatism (“let’s just get
the job done”). Emphasis on scene downplays free will and exhibits an attitude of
situational determinism (“I couldn’t help it”). And an extended discussion of the
agent’s purpose reflects a quest for ultimate meaning that resonates with mysticism
(“what is the real meaning of life?”).
After the critic has labeled the act, scene, agent, agency, and purpose, the next
step is to discern the relative importance that the speaker gives to each of these
294 GROUP AND PUBLIC COMMUNICATION

five elements (and, therefore, each of these philosophies). The critic can start by
identifying the two elements of the pentad most heavily emphasized in the speech.
Ratio These two elements create the dominant ratio that provides the most insight into
The relative importance of the speaker’s motivations.31 Obama’s speech emphasizes scene first, and then act.
any two terms of the In the second half of the passage, he devotes five full sentences to describing
pentad as determined by
aspects of the scene around successful businesspeople: teachers, roads, bridges,
their relationship.
the Internet, the American system. In the drama he describes, the scene drives
the successful acts within it. In this scene–act ratio, business success and failure
occur as a by-­product of elements of the scene, not the purpose or agency of
business owners.
Obama’s immediate audience seemed to identify with this deterministic drama.
They applauded, laughed, and cheered “yeah!” and “right!” throughout.32 Business
owners had a very different reaction and countered with a drama of their own.
Obama’s challenger Mitt Romney voiced their version of the story: “To say that
Steve Jobs didn’t build Apple, that Henry Ford didn’t build Ford Motors . . . to say
something like that  .  .  . [is] insulting to every entrepreneur, every innovator in
­America.”33 Many of Obama’s opponents adopted the refrain featured at the 2012
Republican convention: “We built it.” Those three words establish an agent–act ratio.
In that story, good deeds (like success) come from good people. That also implies
bad deeds (failure) come from bad people—an unsettling thought for those who fall
on hard times through no fault of their own.

CRITIQUE: EVALUATING THE CRITIC’S ANALYSIS

Kenneth Burke was perhaps the foremost rhetorician of the twentieth century.
Today, rhetorical critics continue to draw on the pentad to analyze a speaker’s words
and motivations. Universities offer entire courses on Burkean analysis. The Kenneth
Burke Society holds conferences and competitions that give his followers the oppor-
tunity to discuss and delight over his wide-ranging thoughts. KB Journal exists solely
to explain, clarify, and critique Burke’s ideas through debate and qualitative research.
He obviously had something to say, and a community of agreement continues to
have something to say about him.
Burke’s concept of rhetoric as identification was a major advance in a field of
knowledge that many scholars had thought complete. Rather than opposing
­Aristotle’s definition, he gave it a contemporary luster by showing that common
ground is the foundation of persuasive appeals. Nevertheless, his thoughts about
redemption remain controversial. Perhaps that’s because his “secular religion” takes
God too seriously for those who don’t believe, yet not seriously enough for those
who do. Both camps have trouble with Burke’s unsubstantiated assumption that
guilt is the primary human emotion that underlies all symbolic action. Whatever
you think about these issues, it’s clear Burke provided creative and new understand-
ing of what people are really doing when they talk.
I appreciate Burke’s commitment to an ethical stance that refuses to let desir-
able ends justify unfair means. He urged speakers not to make a victim out of
someone else in order to become unified with the audience. But some scholars don’t
think he did enough to clarify values or reform society. The late Phyllis Japp
(­University of Nebraska–Lincoln) wrote that, as a feminist reader of Burke, she
found in his writings “an indispensable array of guerrilla tactics for survival in a
field of masculinist symbols.” But at other times, she met “passages that seem alien
to my [female] experience of the world and engage concepts that fail to include my
 CHAPTER 23: Dramatism 295

perspectives.”34 Her mixed assessment seems to agree with that of Kevin McClure
and Julia Skwar (University of Rhode Island), who applaud Burke for building
moral concerns into dramatism but contend that more needs to be done to flesh
out the theory’s ethical implications.35
Perhaps the greatest weakness of dramatism is this: Burke isn’t an easy read.
Most of the time, he said what he said in a roundabout way. His frequent use of
literary allusions overwhelms the new reader. Unless a student is prepared to grap-
ple with Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Augustine’s Confessions, and
Freud’s The Psychopathology of Everyday Life—all on the same page—Burke’s mental
leaps and breadth of scholarship will prove more frustrating than informative. Even
advocates like Marie Hochmuth Nichols, who introduced Burke to the communi-
cation discipline in 1952, have defended why Burke was frequently confusing and
sometimes obscure: “In part the difficulty arises from the numerous vocabularies
he employs. His words in isolation are usually simple enough, but he often uses
them in new contexts.”36 Although Burke’s followers think he was brilliant, it’s hard
to argue that his writings have aesthetic appeal.
Yet Burke enthusiasts insist that the process of discovery is half the fun. Like
a choice enthymeme, Burke’s writing invites active reader participation as he sur-
rounds an idea. And here, I’ve only given you a taste of what Burke has to offer.
No matter what aspect of rhetoric his ideas address, the reader will never again be
able to dismiss words as “mere rhetoric.” Burke has done us all a favor by celebrat-
ing the life-giving quality of language.

QUESTIONS TO SHARPEN YOUR FOCUS

1. Despite the fact that Burke was a rhetorical critic who described himself as a
“word man,” he was convinced that the creation of language began the downfall
of the human race. Why?
2. Find a popular song and examine its lyrics using the pentad. What elements do
the lyrics emphasize? What is the dominant ratio? What does that say about
the songwriter’s motivation?
3. Burke claims that all rhetoric ultimately expiates guilt through victimage. Pick
one of the ethical reflections from another chapter. How would that ethical
stance evaluate victimage? When is victimage right (if ever), and when is it
wrong (if ever)?
4. Based on what you know of Burke, how would you apply Burke’s ideas to his
own theory? What does he scapegoat? What are his god-terms and devil-terms?
What elements of the pentad does he emphasize as he portrays the drama of
human life?

A SECOND LOOK Recommended resource: Sonja Foss and Karen Foss, Contemporary Perspectives on
Rhetoric: 30th Anniversary Edition, Waveland, Long Grove, IL, 2014, pp. 185–231.
Dramatism: Kenneth Burke, “Dramatism,” in The International Encyclopedia of the
Social Sciences, Vol. 7, David L. Sills (ed.), Macmillan, New York, 1968, pp. 445–451.
Summary of key concepts: Edward Appel, Language, Life, Literature, Rhetoric and Com-
position as Dramatic Action: A Burkean Primer, Oar Press, Leola, PA, 2012, pp. 265–271.
Identification: Kenneth Burke, A Rhetoric of Motives, University of California, Berkeley,
1969, pp. 20–46.
296 GROUP AND PUBLIC COMMUNICATION

Dramatistic pentad: Kenneth Burke, A Grammar of Motives, University of California,

Berkeley, 1969, pp. xv–xxiii.
Guilt–redemption cycle: Kenneth Burke, “On Human Behavior Considered ‘Dramatis-
tically,’” in Permanence and Change, Bobbs-Merrill, Indianapolis, IN, 1965, pp. 274–294.
Human nature: Kenneth Burke, “Definition of Man,” in Language as Symbolic Action,
University of California, Berkeley, 1966, pp. 3–24.
Burkean analysis of King’s “I Have a Dream”: David Bobbitt, The Rhetoric of Redemp-
tion: Kenneth Burke’s Redemption Drama and Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream”
Speech, Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham, MD, 2004.
Burkean analysis of obesity and sexual assault: Sandra L. French and Sonya C. Brown,
“It’s All Your Fault: Kenneth Burke, Symbolic Action, and the Assigning of Guilt and
Blame to Women,” Southern Communication Journal, Vol. 76, 2011, pp. 1–16.
Explication and critique of guilt–redemption cycle: Kristy Maddux, “Finding Comedy
in Theology: A Hopeful Supplement to Kenneth Burke’s Logology,” Philosophy and Rhet-
oric, Vol. 39, 2006, pp. 208–232.
Feminist critique: Celeste Michelle Condit, “Post-Burke: Transcending the Substance
of Dramatism,” Quarterly Journal of Speech, Vol. 78, 1992, pp. 349–355; also in Barry
Brummet (ed.), Landmark Essays on Kenneth Burke, Hermagoras, Davis, CA, 1993,
pp. 3–18.