Barry Brummett

Burke's representative anecdote as a method in media criticism

This essay argues that Kenneth Burkes concept of “literature as equip‐ment for living” is especially useful for media content criticism. An appropriate dramatistic method, the representative anecdote, is illustrated. Its application to selected fictional and nonfictional discourses of the Nineteen‐Fifties and late Seventies which exhibit public concern regarding automation, cloning, foreign affairs, and social regimentation is discussed. Paradigmatic expressions of the anecdote underlying media content is found in the film and book versions of Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

Towards a Theory of Silence as a Political Strategy.

This essay outlines a theory of strategic, political silence. That sort of silence directs public attribution of predictable meanings towards political leaders who unexpectedly refuse to speak in public. Those meanings are mystery, uncertainty, passivity, and relinquishment. The theory is illustrated in a criticism of President Carters silence from 5 July to 15 July 1979.

Electric literature as equipment for living: Haunted house films

Following Burkean critical theory, this essay examines five examples of films about haunted houses to determine their symbolic potential as “equipment for living.” These films help audiences to overcome feelings of anomie and disorientation. The essay studies ways in which film content and the cinematic medium engage issues of chaos. It is argued that both content and medium subject the audience symbolically to paradoxical conjunctions of realms of time and space which do not ordinarily coincide. The essay demonstrates how such an experience serves the audience as equipment for living.

The Mediation of Spectator Sport

Abstract This study employs the theory of “media logic” and the method of hermeneutical criticism to demonstrate some effects of a major social institution, television, on the “text” of experiencing spectator sports. The study finds that the medium of television makes spectator sports into an experience which incorporates narrative, intimacy, commodification, and rigid time segmentation. The conventions imposed by television on spectator sports are presented here as powerfully affecting the meanings which televised sports have for their audiences.

Burkean scapegoating, mortification, and transcendence in presidential campaign rhetoric

The essay explains Kenneth Burkes concepts of scapegoating and mortification as symbolic means of redeeming guilt, and transcendence as a symbolic means of avoiding guilt. Presidential campaign rhetoric from 1980 illustrates these three rhetorical strategies well: Jimmy Carter used a strategy of mortification and redemption, Ronald Reagan employed transcendence, and John Anderson used scapegoating. Some implications for theory of political rhetoric are explored.

Rhetorical theory as heuristic and moral: A pedagogical justification

The essay reviews current conceptions of rhetorical theory which see it as following a social science model. Difficulties of accounting for rhetorical experience as described by Beckers mosaic model are also reviewed. Because rhetorical theory cannot be explained by social science models, and because of the problems raised by Beckers model, the essay proposes that rhetorical theory and its supporting criticism be regarded primarily as pedagogical, with students as its primary audience.

A pentadic analysis of ideologies in two gay rights controversies

The application of Kenneth Burkes pentad in rhetorical criticism can reveal ideologies at work in a controversy. This paper is an example of how to use the pentad to understand ideology. Rhetoric in favor of gay rights is informed by an ideology that features agents as primary and acts as derivative. Rhetoric opposed to gay rights features acts as primary and agents as derivative.

Premillennial apocalyptic as a rhetorical genre

This essay develops a rationale for treating apocalyptic discourse as a rhetorical genre. Situational and substantive‐stylistic characteristics are shown to recur in traditional, religious apocalyptic discourse throughout history as well as in recent discourse concerning religious and civic issues.

The Homology Hypothesis: Pornography on the VCR.

In this essay, I develop the argument that texts may be especially rhetorically effective when the content, the medium used to convey the content, and real life experiences that make the content relevant are formally or structurally similar. I examine the work of several scholars from different traditions to show that many schools of thought have suggested that formal linkage creates rhetorical effect: some structuralists, Marxists, recent media theorists, and the work of Altheide and Snow. Burkes theory of form is offered as a useful way to explain the effect of formal links. The ways that formal linkages and the symbolic dynamics of content, medium, and experience might be discovered are illustrated in an analysis of conventional, heterosexual, male‐dominant pornography as viewed on home videocassette recorders. Finally, I consider the implications of discovering such formal links and outline research strategies needed to develop this argument further.

The representative anecdote as a burkean method, applied to evangelical rhetoric

This essay explains Kenneth Burkes method of discovering the representative anecdote of a discourse. The method is synecdotal insofar as it identifies a story or dramatic form which represents the motivational essence of the discourse. The anecdote is metaphorical insofar as it underlies groups of discourses. The method is demonstrated through application to three examples of evangelical rhetoric. Implications of that rhetoric in social and political contexts are discussed.