Kenneth Burke Research Papers - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Kenneth Burke confessed that Permanence and Change was a secularization of the writing of Mary Baker Eddy that he learned in his Christian Science childhood. Eddy’s Platonic treatment of substance as “truth” engages with the tension between the symbolic and the nonsymbolic, foreshadowing Burke’s treatment of substance in relation to symbol, nonsymbol, and identification. The ways in which substance and identification interact in the works of Plato, Eddy, and Burke follow a line of discursive development that can illuminate critical review of how different forms of public discourse argue for “truth.”

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- Religion, Rhetoric, Classical rhetoric, Kenneth Burke
- by Cheree Carlson
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- Gandhi & Modern Economy, Kenneth Burke, Comic Frame

Understanding terrorism as a communicative action is the base of this research, which firstly tries to revisit communication in crisis caused by terrorism, through the prism of Kenneth Burke’s dramatistic theory as well as other authors’ contributions. Secondly, it searches to propose a qualitative model to analyze the communication of a government in the aftermath of a terrorist attack. The final aim of this article is to suggest a methodology that helps study how is the communication strategy of any government in that context of crisis.
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Partiendo de la consideración del terrorismo como acción comunicativa, la presente investigación realiza, en primer lugar, una relectura de la comunicación de crisis causadas por el terrorismo a la luz de la teoría dramatística de Kenneth Burke y de las aportaciones de otros autores. En
segundo lugar, tomando como base esta reformulación, propone un modelo cualitativo para analizar la comunicación que despliega un gobierno tras la crisis generada por una acción terrorista. La finalidad es sugerir un método que ayude a estudiar cómo son los trazos comunicativos que
dibuja un gobierno en ese contexto de crisis.

Sports media depictions of the Yankees and Red Sox have produced ironic team personae that can best be understood through the lens of Fisher's (1973) materialistic and moralistic American dreams. In this article, the author traces the interaction of Burke's first three tropes—metaphor, metonymy, and synecdoche—in sports news coverage of the Yankees and Red Sox from 2000–2010 to explain the discursive construction of the teams' ironic personae. Collectively, media emphasis on money metaphors, the Yankees' lucrative 21st century stadium, and a militaristic owner align the team persona with a materialistic, aggressive economic competition model, whereas the Red Sox are represented by metaphors of frugality, a classic stadium, and familial “Idiots” to create a moralistic, cooperative image of the organization. The teams' personae are ultimately created and sustained through the tropological cycle and the dialectical interaction of the rivals.

- by Lisa Perks
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- Social Class, Kenneth Burke, Sport Communication, American Dream
- by Douglas Bruster
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- Shakespeare, Kenneth Burke, Othello

Using Burke’s notion of terminological screens, we perform a cluster analysis on Donald Trump’s inaugural address. We discovered keywords that appeared to point to Trump’s stock campaign phrase, Make America Great Again: we, Washington, D.C., people, you/your, and America. Our analysis seeks to explain how the phrase's rhetorical presence in Trump’s inaugural address opened and closed possibilities for unity and division, and ultimately allowed for an inaugural speech reception on par with prior presidents

- by Jim A. Kuypers and +1
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- Rhetorical Analysis, Political Science, Rhetorical Criticism, Rhetorical Theory

presented at National Communication Association convention, Chicago, IL November 2014.

- by Meredith L Martin, PhD and +1
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- Rhetoric, Rhetorical Criticism, Church History, Rhetorical Theory

This activity uses a diagram to help students visualize Kenneth Burke's theory of dramatism. Specifically, through an analysis of the film Hell or High Water, students learn to identify each stage of the guilt-purification-redemption... more

- by Scott Anderson
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- Rhetorical Criticism, Kenneth Burke

The shift from modernity to postmodernity reflects a fundamental restructuring of social and cultural life. At such dizzying and disorienting moments of social change, culture’s inhabitants seek out new cultural art forms—forms that offer symbolic resources for negotiating the contours of the emerging social landscape. This essay contends that Mel Brooks’s 1987 film Spaceballs constituted an innovative form of storytelling known as parodic tourism. As rhetorical analysis demonstrates, by drawing upon the cultural memory of viewers through intertextual allusions, the film fosters an interactive experience that offers viewers the mental equipment needed to navigate life in postmodernity.

- by Brian L . Ott and +1
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- Rhetoric, Film Studies, Cinema, Parody

As video games increasingly become an important frame of reference and as they are more and more taken seriously in education and research, there is a growing need for a methodological tool for video game analysis. In this paper, rhetorical theory in general and pentadic analysis in particular are introduced as useful means to stimulate a critical approach of video games. A case study is presented in which a popular video game (Bioshock) is analysed using this rhetorical approach. It is argued that pentadic analysis can overcome a number of binary discussions within the contemporary field of video game criticism, thus offering interesting perspectives for research and education (e.g. as a reflection tool).

- by Jeroen Bourgonjon
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- Game studies, Rhetoric, Educational Technology, Rhetorical Analysis

Draft version of Olaison, Lena; Saara L. Taalas. (2017). “Game of Gamification – Marketing, Consumer Resistance and Digital Play”, in Mikolaj Dymek and Peter Zackariasson (eds.) The Business of Gamification: A Critical Analysis.... more

- by Saara Taalas
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- Digital Rhetorics, Consumer Culture, Fan Cultures, Consumer Resistance
- by Elizabeth Hanson Smith
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- Discourse Analysis, Communication, Rhetoric, Political Theory
- by Paul Johnson and +1
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- Rhetoric, Kenneth Burke, Tropes, Memory

What makes us laugh? Who makes us laugh? And why do we pay people to make us laugh? This course seeks answers to these questions (and others), approaching them from the perspective of rhetoric. Are stand-up comedians rhetors? And if they are, what exactly is the nature and purpose of their rhetoric? Beginning with a brief introduction to classical rhetoric, it moves into epistemic rhetoric and Kenneth Burke’s concepts of dramatism and the “comic frame.” These notions of rhetoric serve as a starting point for a critical (and creative) approach to stand-up comedy. From Lenny Bruce and George Carlin to Bill Hicks and Chris Rock, this course considers performances by some of the most notable stand-up comedians of the last fifty years and asks questions about language, race, gender, class, and the function and nature of comedy and laughter. Through writing students produce genealogies of our own senses of humor, as well as perform rhetorical analyses of comedy performances. The course culminates with student performances of carefully crafted (if not necessarily funny) rhetoric.

- by Steven Kapica
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- Rhetoric, Laughter, Judith Butler, Stand Up Comedy
- by Warren M Liew
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- Intellectual Property, Composition and Rhetoric, Social Media, Kenneth Burke
- by Brent Saindon
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- Museum Studies, Heterotopia, Visual Rhetoric, Jewish History
- by Lisa Perks and +1
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- Political cartoons, Sarah Palin, Feminist Rhetorical Criticism, Kenneth Burke
- by Jeremy Engels
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- Critical Theory, Social Movements, American Studies, Philosophy
- by Daniel Adleman
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- Media Studies, Film Theory, Television Studies, Postmodernism

Dina Goldstein’s photographic series, Fallen Princesses, depicts Disney princesses as live women inserted intobleak, realistic situations. For example, observers see Jasmine on a Middle Eastern battlefield holding a machine gun with an oil well exploding in the background. These images have been an Internet sensation winning numerous awards and acclamations. Despite their entertainment value, they perform significant cultural work by problematizing princess culture in a variety of ways. Such images create incongruity by using shifts in depictions of race, class, and gendered appearances of princes and princesses. By juxtaposing idealized notions of Disney type princesses with bleak negative representations; these pictures create feminist perspectives through incongruities. Enjoyed by a broad cross section of the population, such images jar the audience into considering worlds beyond those idealized by Disney. This essay examines issues of race, class and gender in the juxtapositions and incongruities in several of these images. By identifying the visual rhetorical strategies present in these incongruities between idealizations in fairy tales and stark reality, this essay pinpoints multiple interpretations and the ways that those interpretations function to push the audience to accept feminist principles. Understanding how these conflicting messages have gained acceptance from both fairy tale fans and critics can expose rhetorical strategies that gain wide acceptance while engaging in somewhat caustic social criticism. In particular, a feminist Burkean analysis allows exploration of the ways that these incongruities crack open multiple and contradictory meanings within a text and how these meanings function for different audiences.
This abstract is cited here: http://vitaminw.co/culture-society/fallen-princess-photo-feminist

- by Sarah Partlow-Lefèvre
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- Communication, Mass Communication, Feminism, Kenneth Burke
- by Jeanie Wills
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- Rhetorical Analysis, Rhetorical Criticism, Rhetorical Theory, Kenneth Burke
- by Gillian White
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- Critical Theory, American modernism, William Carlos Williams, Kenneth Burke

Films play a critical role in shaping public perceptions of historical and contemporary racial relations. Unfortunately, Hollywood often relies on narratives that romanticize racism, recuperate stereotypes, and promote the ideology of a postracial society. One common and harmful narrative is that of the White savior, a prominent trope in the 2011 film The Help. By reading The Help as what Kenneth Burke would describe as a “statement about motives,” the authors of this article argue that the White savior narrative operates by constraining constructions of scene, agency, and purpose. When these elements are constrained, they limit the options of who can be the main agent, or hero, of the film. This, in turn, defines the act itself. This article extends research on racism in film by illustrating how the White savior functions to simultaneously erase and romanticize racism.

Within this essay, I analyze the "State Farm: Neighborhood of Good" television ad in an attempt to convince my audience that the commercial's direction and influential factor is flawed due to its overabundance of pathos. In order to prove... more

- by Torrey Kurtzner
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- Humanities, Rhetoric, Aristotle, Popular Culture

The acclaimed Netflix original series, Orange Is the New Black (OITNB) assembles a cast of characters representing a large swath of the population normally excluded from popular, mainstream television, including women of color, lower-class women, and queer/trans* women. Within the “tribal” organization of the fictitious Litchfield prison, the show’s protagonist, Piper Chapman, naively struggles to understand the
overt racialization of her new surroundings. Deploying a Burkean understanding of the comic frame, we argue that the first season of OITNB encourages audience identification primarily through the show’s white, educated, upper-class central figure. Specifically, through Piper’s animation of a comic corrective, OITNB enables poignant but limited critiques of U.S. post-racial fantasies (including myths of color blindness and racial equality) that so powerfully buttress the Prison-Industrial Complex.

- by Suzanne Enck and +1
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- Feminism, Whiteness Studies, Prison Industrial Complex, Critical Race Theory and Whiteness theory

In this essay, I examined the significance of graphic novels as polyvalent texts that hold
the potential for creating an aesthetic sense of flow for readers and consumers. In building a justification for the rhetorical examination of comic book culture, I looked at Kenneth Burke’s critique of art under capitalism in order to explore the dimensions between comic book creation, distribution, consumption, and reaction from fandom. I also examined Victor Turner’s theoretical scope of flow, as an aesthetic related to ritual, communitas, and the liminoid. I analyzed the graphic novels’ Green Lantern: Rebirth and Y: The Last Man as case studies toward the rhetorical significance of retroactive continuity and the somatic potential of comic books to serve as equipment for living. These conclusions lay groundwork for multiple directions of future research.

- by Garret Castleberry
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- Mythology, Rhetoric, Performance Studies, Popular Culture

The July 2015 nuclear agreement between Iran and the United States has been heralded by many as the best possible chance of avoiding both a nuclear armed Iran and another war in the Middle East. Although success is far from certain, the path to the deal was even less so. The fact that the Obama administration achieved a verifiable suspension of Iran's enrichment activity in November 2013 was itself a major success. What is even more remarkable is that the Obama administration was able to do so while utilizing the same mix of policy tools, diplomacy, and pressure as the George W. Bush administration. The difference in outcomes is especially confusing given the tendency of foreign policy experts to hold that President Obama and President Bush's foreign policy worldviews are relatively identical. I argue that a rhetorical perspective provides the answer. Specifically, President Obama responded to the challenge of Iran's nuclear program by fashioning a frame of responsibility in a comic fashion, shifting the obligation to resolve the standoff peacefully onto both Iran and the United States. A crucial aspect of this rhetorical strategy was that it presented the Iranian regime with the option of rejoining the global community (albeit on restricted terms). Thus, Obama presented a hybrid of Kenneth Burke's tragic and comic frames that chastised the Iranian regime for dangerous behavior while acknowledging American guilt, error, and responsibility for bringing the nuclear stand-off to a peaceful end.

- by Travis Cram
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- Public Address, American Foreign Policy, Kenneth Burke, U.S. Foreign Policy

This essay explores the phenomena of hoaxes as communally constructed narratives by examining the series of letters sent to authorities claiming to be from Jack the Ripper. The study
looks at how and why the character of Jack the Ripper was created through these letters, and why this figure became a site of public fascination at the time (and remains so today). More than simply the work of cranks or psychotics, a study of the letters reveals them to be a way of articulating and managing collective anxieties. Through the work of Kenneth Burke, the essay suggests that the "Ripper letters" provided a symbolic way of dealing with the social trauma and complex emotional responses triggered by the brutal murders of several prostitutes that gripped London's East End in the autumn of 1888.

Chapter 3 of "On Racial Frontiers: The New Culture of Frederick Douglass, Ralph Ellison, and Bob Marley" (Cambridge UP, 1999). Epigraph: "with your black and white eyes upon me, I feel I am a new citizen of the country of your vision" (Invisible Man). A tendency to see Ellison's classic as representative of "the black experience" has obscured the novel's multiracial message, structure, and origins. Most of the novel takes place within interracial contact zones--on racial frontiers. Much of Invisible Man is in fact about the search for a multiracial community. This revisionist reading places Ellison within the literature of borderlands. Close readings follow the themes of being a "new citizen" of a multiracial audience; "One-eyed brothers"; "A straight white line," "A bath of whiteness," and "biracial culture heroes."

- by Gregory Stephens
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- American Literature, Cultural History, Cultural Studies, Ethnic Studies

Communication scholars are in disagreement over the presence of online public speaking courses in higher education. Despite limited research on the Online Public Speaking model, it is quickly replacing the traditional public speaking... more

- by Shaundi C Newbolt, PhD
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- Online Instruction, Pedagogy, Public Speaking, Teaching Online

"Pragmatism and Literary Criticism: The Practical Starting Point." In REAL: Yearbook of Research in English and American Literature. (Berlin, New York: de Gruyter, 1999) A clarification and defense of a "pragmatist" approach to literary and cultural criticism. The basis of such an approach is the "practical starting point" which serves as "a necessary admonitory adjunct" and "an essential corrective ingredient" (Kenneth Burke's phrases) in any critical theory. The paper has four sections: §1 defines the term "starting point"; §2 distinguishes the theoretical (TSP) from the practical (PSP) starting point; §3 grounds the practical starting point philosophically and argues for its superiority for literary and cultural criticism; §4 shows how each starting point is exemplified by two critics, Richard Rorty and Kenneth Burke, and explains why Burke's method is superior.

- by David L Hildebrand
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- Epistemology, Pragmatism, Literary Criticism, Ortega y Gasset

This essay undertakes a detailed frame analysis of print and electronic media coverage of three nationally publicized death penalty cases between the years of 2014 and 2015. Drawing specifically from the work of Kenneth Burke (1984), this research argues that tragically framed
death penalty cases reify victim/perpetrator discourses and cause the actual act of execution to be a fitting resolution within a narrative. Burke’s (1984) grotesque-mystical frame and Bakhtin’s (1984) theory of the grotesque body are used to argue that the media’s portrayal of botched executions help highlight the incongruities with the system of capital punishment, and cause audiences to feel more complicit in the act of execution. However, the grotesque frame may be
too mystifying and gruesome for most audiences to feel consubstantiality with characters in the narrative, or to promote engagement with the abolition movement. Ultimately, this essay suggests potential uses for both the grotesque frame as well as the comic frame within the US
death penalty abolition movement. Specifically, the comic frame may help abolitionists humanize condemned prisoners and the grotesque frame may help mitigate the complacency that national audiences might feel toward capital punishment.

- by Katie Shuy
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- Bakhtin, Rhetorical Criticism, Kenneth Burke, Capital Punishment
- by Beau B B Wuthrich
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- Chaucer, Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari, Michel Foucault
- by Elizabeth Weiser
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- Rhetoric, Museum Studies, Kenneth Burke

Walter Fisher’s work on the rhetorical uses of narrative has been productive in that it has spawned valuable work on the status of narrative in communication, as well as incisive critiques of its claims concerning the relationship between narrative, truth, and good reasons. Like any good theory, its richness comes at a cost. While others point out the problematic entailments of narrative viewed as a paradigm of communication, this paper will focus on another important point implicit in the criticism that the narrative paradigm has received: is this account of good reasons descriptive or normative in nature? Does it highlight a procedure that anyone can take to identify ideal values, or does it simply describe the procedure a certain audience may use to find (however incorrectly) good reasons for action or belief? This paper will explore the reasons for reading the narrative paradigm in both of these directions, and ultimately argue that its utmost critical value lies as a descriptive account of how humans identify with narratives and the values they hold.

- by Scott R. Stroud
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- Philosophy, Aesthetics, Ethics, Communication
- by Amy Appleford
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- Medieval Literature, Death Studies, Urban History, Death & Dying (Thanatology)

Pentadic analysis is the application of Kenneth Burke’s dramatism as a rhetorical device to understand the conflict or tensions inherent to most narrative drama. As a literary theorist, Burke believed that analyzing the focus that a narrator placed on some features of a conflict over others could provide insight into the narrator’s perspective. As the name implies, the core of pentadic analysis is a focus on five elements argued by Burke to be common to all narratives: act, scene, agent, agency, and purpose. These are collectively referred to as the dramatistic pentad, and understanding both their construction and their relation to one another is a valuable method for unpacking the intended motives behind a
character’s (or narrator’s) actions within a story—in many cases, these motives are even an extension of the author’s own worldview. This entry introduces the key elements of the dramatistic pentad and explores how the dramatistic pentad is used to analyze texts in the communications research
field.

- by Nicholas Bowman
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- Kenneth Burke, Pentadic Analysis

This essay undertakes a detailed frame analysis of print media coverage of the Matthew Shepard murder in three nationally influential newspapers as well as Time magazine and The Advocate. We contend that the media’s tragic framing of the event, with an emphasis on the scapegoat process, functioned rhetorically to alleviate the public’s guilt concerning anti-gay hate crimes and to excuse the public of any social culpability. It also functioned ideologically to reaffirm a dominant set of discourses that socially stigmatizes gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered persons and to hamper efforts to create and enact a social policy that would prevent this type of violence in the future. A concluding section considers Burke’s notion of the “comic frame” as a potential corrective for the media’s coverage of public tragedies.

- by Eric Aoki and +1
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- Cultural Studies, Queer Studies, Media Studies, Media Framing
- by Brian L . Ott
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- Rhetoric, Rhetorical Criticism, Kenneth Burke

Historians of pragmatism have long overlooked Kenneth Burke and Richard McKeon.This has not been without good reason. At first glance, the two read more like critics than adherents of the tradition. Yet placing Burke and McKeon’s writings from the 1920s to the late 1950s in the context of their development reveals a shared project aimed at reforming pragmatism. While pragmatists such as John Dewey and Sidney Hook alleged a conceptual fidelity between the scientific method and democratic processes such as public debate, Burke and McKeon questioned this link. Metaphors drawn from science, they believed, blinded pragmatists to the nature of communication.Due to this oversight, pragmatists ignored the ideological ambiguity that surrounded terms like “science” and “democracy” during the mid-twentieth century. Burke and McKeon sought to fix this omission. Pragmatists, they argued, needed to trade the language of science for a terminology drawn from a source more attuned to the power of communication: the arts. By advancing this case, Burke and McKeon crafted an aesthetic form of pragmatism—a variant of the philosophy that, ultimately, contemporaries would barely recognize as such.

- by Brad Baranowski
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- Intellectual History, Rhetoric, Political Theory, John Dewey
- by Peter Zhang
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- Social Movements, Ethics, Social Movement, Gilles Deleuze