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Dramatism

Kenneth Burke

Chapter 22
Group and Public Communication—Public Rhetoric

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Theory Overview

Abstracts appear in Appendix A of the 7th Edition

Life is drama. The dramatistic pentad of act, scene, agent, agency, and purpose is the critic's tool to discover a speaker's motive. The ultimate motive of rhetoric is the purging of guilt. Without audience identification with the speaker, there is no persuasion. (Rhetorical and semiotic traditions)

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