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The dramatistic pentad forms the core structure of dramatism, a method for examining motivations that the renowned literary critic Kenneth Burke developed. Dramatism recommends the use of a metalinguistic approach to stories about human action that investigates the roles and uses of five rhetorical elements common to all narratives, each of which is related to a question.
Kenneth Duva Burke (May 5, 1897 – November 19, 1993) was an American literary theorist, as well as poet, essayist, and novelist, who wrote on 20th-century philosophy, aesthetics, criticism, and rhetorical theory. [1]
Burke staunchly argued that his theory of dramatism is a literal theory, understanding reality as a literal stage with actors and enactment. He bases his conclusion on two claims: 1) Dramatism is ontological because it indicates language as "action" and as a representation.
Language as Symbolic Action: Essays on Life, Literature and Method is a book by Kenneth Burke, published in 1966 by the University of California Press. [1] As indicated by the title, the book, Burke's 16th published work, consists of “many of Burke's essays which have appeared in widely diverse periodicals” and has thus been regarded as one of the most significant resources for studying ...
In particular, the concept of identification can expand our vision of the realm of rhetoric as more than solely agonistic. To be sure, that is the way we have traditionally situated it: “Rhetoric,” writes Burke, “is par excellence the region of the Scramble, of insult and injury, bickering, squabbling, malice and the lie, cloaked malice and the subsidized lie. . . .
Kenneth Burke, whom Goffman would later acknowledge as an influence, [1] had earlier presented his notions of dramatism in 1945, which in turn derives from Shakespeare. The fundamental difference between Burke's and Goffman's view, however, is that Burke believed that life was in fact theatre, whereas Goffman viewed theatre as a metaphor.
Burke's definition of man states: "Man is the symbol-using (symbol-making, symbol-misusing) animal, inventor of the negative (or moralized by the negative), separated from his natural condition by instruments of his own making, goaded by the spirit of hierarchy (or moved by the sense of order), and rotten with perfection".
Kenneth Burke plays an important part in learning and understanding the core values of rhetorical theory in identification. He introduces the notion by taking the Aristotelian approach into a "world of particulars." Burke states that Aristotle treated rhetoric as purely verbal. However, there are also areas of overlap.