Kenneth Burke's Dramatism: Overview and Application

What better way to begin a story than at the beginning? But which beginning is worthy of the reader’s careful eyes? After all, there are potential beginnings to stories coming to existence every second of every day. How should anyone know which story to tell, or where a story really begins? It seems that there are so many questions that need to be answered, but let’s not waste our time with those questions. Instead, allow me to tell you a short story of my own invention, which may or may not begin at the beginning.

I walk out of the door and onto a small bus with comfortable chairs. There are televisions buzzing with static in a quiet way overhead. This bus is already nearly full with people chattering to one another. In less than five minutes we will be on our way. I don’t know the destination of this bus, nor do I care. I just look forward to the beginning of a new adventure, as this one has grown tiresome. I pull out my iPod, slip my ear buds into my ears and blast classical music into my brain. As the Moonlight Sonata plays and the bus begins to move forward, I drift off to sleep. The darkness envelops me like the arms of an old friend and the conscious world drifts away. I am standing alone against a blank canvas that is mine for creating and somewhere above me Barber’s Adagio for Strings begins to play its melancholy strains. I pick up a paintbrush, dry and soft, and begin to paint the nothingness into something.

The brush moves with the sound of the strings, long slow strokes of disembodied enchantment. The mood a soft blue, a quiet sadness in the tone offers a look at a somber world in the process of becoming. Then the brush strokes shorten, not quite staccato, and whites and yellows dot the background of what will surely be a masterpiece. I close my eyes and let the music guide me. My hand moves across the canvas, as though a dancer sashaying across a stage. The haunting music builds… crescendo… and hold. I tremble. Sustaining the note… release and rest… and then, pianissimo. As the song ends, the brush falls from my hand and disappears. My muscles pull my eyelids upward and light floods into my pupils. They constrict and I can see what I have created. The canvas of this dream? A quiet nightmare of horror and sadness. An interrupted New York City skyline bathed in blue with smoke billowing in the place where the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center once stood confronts me. Is it really September 11th again?

A story of a dream, which reflects a day I will never forget, is the story I have chosen to share. Yet, this story, as all others is significant. While it seems to be a small story of nothing more than a dream, it might be so much more when considered through the lens of Kenneth Burke’s dramatism.

Kenneth Burke’s dramatism became a part of communication theory in the late 1950s. However, even before dramatism was acknowledged by the field of communication, Burke was using the word, “to describe what he saw going on when people opened their mouths to communicate” (Griffin, 2009, p. 289). Burke concerned himself with the drama of life. In order to better understand this drama, he went on to define the term identification as it pertains to dramatism and he created the dramatistic pentad.

Burkean identification is the ability for a speaker and the audience to connect with each other through such things as, “physical characteristics, talents, occupations, experiences, personality, beliefs, and attitudes” (Griffin, 2009, p. 209). It was Burke’s belief that a speaker could not persuade his or her audience without identification, which could work to unify and/or divide depending upon the cause of the speaker. In accordance with Burkean identification, I, as the speaker, have expectations that the reader(s) of my story, the audience, will be able to identify with me. In particular, I play upon the idea that my readers and I will be able to relate to one another through the shared experience of falling asleep and dreaming, through the shared experience of remembering the September 11th, 2001 terrorist attacks on New York City, through the shared experience of listening to Samuel Barber’s “Adagio for Strings” and through the shared experience and talent of painting. If my audience is able to identify with me on the basis of our common ground, our shared experiences or similar talents, then perhaps I will be able to persuade them to see the verisimilitude of my story.

Further, Burke’s dramatistic pentad is “a tool to analyze how a speaker attempts to get an audience to accept his or her view of reality using five key elements of the human drama – act, scene, agent, agency, and purpose” (Griffin, 2009, p. 291). It was Burke’s belief that when a message used one of the five elements more than the other elements, or when a message placed more stress upon one of those five elements than it did upon the other elements, that the speaker’s worldview or philosophy would be revealed. Based upon the pentad, my story can be analyzed to find out how I attempted to get my audience to accept my view of reality, and my story can be analyzed to reveal my worldview or philosophy.

Act considers what is done, or what has taken place. In my story there were three acts. The first act was the boarding of a bus, the next act was falling asleep, and the final act was the creation of my dream.

Scene considers when and where the act is taking place, thus giving context to the act. In my story there were two scenes. The first scene is the scene of the crowded bus bound for an undisclosed location. The second scene is that of my dream, which is described as a canvas in various stages throughout the progression of the dream. The canvas goes from being a blank canvas to becoming the interrupted New York City skyline.

Agent is the person who is performing the act. Within my story, all acts were performed by only one agent: me. Though often I was carrying out an action using only one part of myself, such as my hand or my eyes, in my story.

Agency considers the means the agent employs to carry out the act. There were several types of agency within my story. First, I walked onto the bus. Then, I used music to help me fall asleep. Once I was asleep, I used music to help me create my dream by painting on a canvas.

Purpose is the speaker’s stated goal or the speaker’s implied goal of the story or address. While there are no clear goals of the story, I could argue that there were two implied goals of this story: reminding my audience of the September 11th attacks in New York City, and encouraging my audience to believe that we create our own dreams out of memories, symbols and sensory experiences.

Simply based upon this analysis, it is possible to argue that the pentad has revealed my philosophy or worldview to be a commitment to realism or pragmatism, as I do favor the elements of act and agency. I, however, disagree with that. Knowing myself as I do, I find myself quite often avoiding pragmatism. Quite often I enjoy the most complicated and least practical means of arriving at my destination, whatever or wherever it might be. But, I digress…

So you, dear reader, did you experience identification? Did you accept my story as a view of my reality? How did my story make you feel? Using Burke’s pentad, what did your analysis of my story yield? And what does my story make you think of me?

References

Griffin, E. (2009). A first look at communication theory (7th ed.).
New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.