Aug 29: The Elements of Dramatism (1-47)

Weekly Reading Response 1: Respond to either questions 2 or 4 on pages 44-45. They're reproduced here for easy reference (and citation). Use this tag (and any others that are relevant) in the categories field: Dramatism.

2. Burke chooses drama as a metaphor for analyzing human behavior, which allows him to approach questions of motives through a lens that emphasizes people as actors using symbols to influence each other and their scenes. A metaphor is a way of seeing one thing in terms of something else. What happens when you think of human behavior not as dramatic, but in terms of chemical reactions or cause and effect, as in psychology? What is involved, for instance, when we say that addictive behavior is the result of chemical imbalances? Or what if we think of behavior in terms of money, as in economics? What is involved, for instance, when we say that people are commodities, human “resources”? Think of some other metaphors that describe human behavior in terms of something else and consider the consequences of such symbolic representations. What difference does it make if you think of a person as a commodity, a consumer, a “change-agent,” a cyborg, a rat, a god, a carbon-based unit, or “describable by the enemy as vermin”? (See Chapter 2 for more on that last one.)

4. In popular usage, rhetoric is often thought of as an act that involves embellishing the truth with fancy language, distorting or over-stating a case, or attacking an opponent. From a dramatistic perspective, however, rhetoric comes into play in every situation that involves people acting on each other through symbols to achieve identification. In what ways can a poem be considered rhetorical? An email message to a parent or a friend? An essay written in a history class? This book?

Aug 31: The Elements of Dramatism (49-95)

Post some follow-up comments to the reading responses of your peers.

Film (on your own): The Usual Suspects