Dramatistic Pentad Research Articles

Childbirth in exile: Asylum seeking women's experience of childbirth in Ireland

Objectivesthe purpose of this study was to gain insight into women's experiences of childbirth in Ireland while in the process of seeking asylum. This paper will focus on one of the primary findings of the study, how lack of connection, communication and cultural understanding impacted the health and well-being of the women who participated. Designresearchers adopted a structural approach to narrative analysis using Burke's (1969) dramatistic pentad to analyse 22 women's narrative accounts of their childbirth experiences. Ethical approval was granted, and the study was funded by the Irish Health Research Board. FindingsBurke's (1969) dramatistic pentad revealed numerous accounts of Scene/Agent and Act/Agency imbalance in the women's experiences, highlighting lack of communication, connection and culturally competent care evident in their experiences and how this impacted the care they received. Conclusioninadequate, poorly organised maternity services complicated by lack of training in cultural understanding and sporadic access to interpreter services had a detrimental impact on care provision. Providers appeared to have little insight into the specific needs of this vulnerable group already traumatised by pre and post migratory stressors. The resulting lack of effective connection and communication exacerbated women's experiences of alienation, loneliness, and isolation and were universal in the women's accounts. Implications for practice need to focus in Burkean terms on ‘How’ (Agency) providers can meet the maternity care needs of asylum seeking women. Dedicated community based services, mandatory training in cultural competence, 24 hour access to interpreters, information leaflets in several languages are essential measures. Further research looking specifically at the antenatal care and childbirth education needs of ethnic minority women is needed. Also, there is an urgent need for further exploration of the barriers to communication and the utilisation of trained interpreters in the provision of effective care to non-English speaking ethnic minority women.

Culturally, Historically Communicating the Yoruba's Traditional Concept of Military Heroism: Ááre Óná Kakanfó

This article uses Fischer’s narrative paradigm to analyze the traditional war leaders of the Yoruba in the south-west of Nigeria. The paradigm resonates with Kenneth Burke’s dramatistic pentad, which stress symbolic actions. The article defines the title, highlights its origin, presents the characteristics of an Aare Ona Kakanfo and tells a brief history of each holder of the title. The purpose of presenting all these is to argue that through the history and tradition of Aare Ona Kakanfo of the Yoruba land, Yoruba concept of military heroism is constructed and communicated. Also, this article shows how the public react to the character of the Aare Ona Kakanfo. In addition, it examines the relevance of the title in the contemporary Nigerian politics.

Using Burke's Dramatistic Pentad to Interpret Chinese "Gao-Kao" High Stakes Testing and Stressing - Paralelled Testing in the U.S. as Cross-Cultural Context

The Chinese College Entrance Examination (“Gao-Kao”) is the most high stakes assessment in China and parallels the most competitive examinations globally. Although it can provide Chinese educators and policy makers with an enormous pool of information about student achievement growth, school efficiency, etc., the current use of the test is mainly limited to ranking students by their raw scores. In this study, we tried two modifications to the traditional test to connect the assessment outcomes with school accountability. First, we linked the Gao-Kao English tests from 2010 and 2011 and aligned them on a Rasch scale. Secondly, we collected background information of the examinees via a background survey. The result showed that students from Hainan province improved a little in 2011 overall. In addition, school level reports were generated to show the school’s growth as well as the county and province averages. By implementing test equating and background survey measures, this study demonstrated that Gao-Kao data can be used to construct a longitudinal data source as an initial step to build a value-added school accountability system. The aforementioned findings and how they are communicated help to frame global use of such high stakes testing. Kenneth Burke’s Dramatistic Pentad is used as foundation for communicative interpretation of these findings. The international context provides backdrop within which the findings are nested. Contrast with testing in the U.S. serves to highlight unique features of the GaoKao examination approach.

The rhetoric of disability: a dramatistic-narrative analysis of One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest

In this article the authors introduce a rhetorical perspective into disability studies by exploring the work of Kenneth Burke (1969). Specifically, the focus is on how Burke's theory of dramatism can be used in disability research as well as in teaching disability studies, as it holds potential for the production of a diversity of social interpretations of the relationship between ‘impairment’, ‘disability’ and a disabling society. The focus shifts to Burke's dramatistic pentad and the concept of circumference as possible tools for teaching social work students to deal with ambiguity in their prospective practice. The authors discuss how a rhetorical analysis of ‘mental health problems’ in the seminal movie, One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest, has been introduced in a Master's degree course on cultural studies for social work students at Ghent University, Belgium. In conclusion, the relevance of a rhetorical perspective for social work students is discussed, in order to orient and reorient their prospective practice, based on a diversity of social interpretations of ‘impairment’ and ‘disability’.

Narrative and Rhetorical Approaches to Problems of Education. Jerome Bruner and Kenneth Burke Revisited

Over the last few decades there has been a strong narrative turn within the humanities and social sciences in general and educational studies in particular. Especially Jerome Bruner’s theory of narrative as a specific ‘mode of knowing’ was very important for this growing body of work. To understand how the narrative mode works Bruner proposes to study narratives ‘at their far reach’—as an art form—and on several occasions he refers to the dramatistic pentad as an important method for ‘unpacking’ narratives. The pentad proposed by Bruner to study narratives was developed by the American philosopher and rhetorician Kenneth Burke and is embedded in his general linguistic theory of dramatism. From an educational perspective Bruner’s reference to the work of Burke has not been elaborated upon thus far. In this paper we aim to take Bruner’s suggestion at hand and explore how his educational theory of narrative as a mode of knowing can indeed be enriched by Kenneth Burke’s theory and method of dramatism. We claim that specifically the rhetorical framework that is developed by dramatism offers an important perspective about perspectives for education in a context that is increasingly confronted with a plurality of interpretive frameworks.

Academic Discourse and Literacy Narratives as "Equipment for Living"

In his article Academic Discourse and Narratives of Literacy as 'Equipment for Living' Kris Rutten discusses practices of academic discourse and argues that students entering higher education have to become part of a specific community of institutional discourse. Rutten claims that narratives of and about literacy — narratives that revolve around issues dealing with language and the acquisition of literacy — dramatize the tension of moving from one discourse community to another. By charting situations of type, fictional literacy narratives can be used by students as equipment for living in order to reflect on confrontations and difficulties they experience in higher education. Kenneth Burke's dramatistic pentad is introduced as an analytical tool to study representations and interpretations of institutional discourse in fictional narratives. In a case study, the popular literacy narrative Educating Rita is analyzed and confronted with personal reflections of students. Further, Rutten discusses what can be learned from a rhetorical perspective on literacy about roles (identities) and language (institutional discourses) in higher education. Kris Rutten, Academic Discourse and Literacy Narratives as 'Equipment for Living' page 2 of 8 CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture 13.4 (2011):

Science Fiction and a Rhetorical Analysis of the 'Literature Myth'

In their article Science Fiction and a Rhetorical Analysis of the 'Literature Myth' Kris Rutten, Ronald Soetaert, and Geert Vandermeersche discuss what we can learn from science fiction about cultural literacy in general and literary culture in particular. From a theoretical and methodological perspective the authors start from the work of rhetorician Kenneth Burke. First, the authors conceptualize as equipment for living followed by a discussion of science fiction as equipment for living based on a description of the genre as satire by entelechy. Second, they analyze a selection of science fiction narratives using the dramatistic pentad as an analytical tool. The focus of the analysis is on how as agency is located in a futuristic scene. The article concludes with a discussion about how an analysis of the literature myth in science fiction narratives can be used to reflect on the rhetorical construction of cultural literacy.

Drama in the Archives: Rereading Methods, Rewriting History

This article examines the historiographic trajectory of rhetoric and composition studies by analyzing archival research practices, using Kenneth Burke’s dramatistic pentad as our analytical tool. We rely on a Burkean framework of “scenes, acts, agents, agencies, purposes, and attitudes” to invigorate our understanding of historiographic methods and to open up new possibilities for future histories of rhetoric and composition.

The Resources of Ambiguity

Richard Dawkins’s The Selfish Gene illustrates the power of ambiguity in scientific discourse. The rhetorical and epistemic resources that ambiguity provide are most apparent at the level of metaphor but are also central to the exigency for Dawkins’s argument and to the narrative form that the argument takes. Using ratios derived from Burke’s dramatistic pentad, I analyze how ambiguous language helped Dawkins to link different theoretical conceptions of the gene and consequently posit connections between genes and organisms that had not yet been empirically established. I thus demonstrate at a conceptual and textual level how ambiguity contributes to the construction of novel scientific arguments. For Dawkins, ambiguity provided a discursive space in which he could speculate on connections and developments for which he did not yet have evidence, data, or terminology. Despite his insistence that his use of figurative motive language was simply a ‘‘convenient shorthand’’ for more technical language, The Selfish Gene demonstrates the powerful epistemological and rhetorical role that ambiguous metaphors play in biological discourse.

Narrative and Rhetoric in Social Work Education

This article starts from the narrative turn in the humanities and the social sciences in general and social work in particular to explore the study of fictional narratives in social work education. Rhetoric is presented as an important perspective for social work by focusing on the work of the rhetorician and literary critic Kenneth Burke (1897–1993), specifically on his theory of dramatism. The dramatistic pentad is introduced as an analytical tool to study fictional narratives. In a case study, a play and a film by a Dutch–Flemish theatre collective are jointly analysed by students from the Master of Social Work and Welfare Studies programme at a Flemish university. This rhetorical perspective gives social work students the opportunity not only to study fictional narratives, but also to reflect upon their own practice.

The Montana Meth Project: Applying Burke's Dramatistic Pentad to a Persuasive Anti-drug Media Campaign

Courses: Persuasion; also Rhetoric, Health, Theory, Nonverbal, and Media classes Objectives: To understand Burke's dramatism and use the pentad as a tool to analyze advertisements in the Montana Meth Project anti-drug campaign

(Re)Charting the (Dis)Courses of Faith and Politics, or Rhetoric and Democracy in the Burkean Barnyard

In recent years, scholars in rhetoric and composition studies have given increased attention to the various ways that rhetoric and religion intersect. To explore this relationship further, this article employs Kenneth Burke's dramatistic pentad and the methods of pentadic analysis proposed by Floyd Anderson and Lawrence Prelli in order to analyze two texts, Crowley's Toward a Civil Discourseand Obama's “Pentecost 2006 Keynote Address.” In our analysis, we aim to reveal the motives locked within Crowley's and Obama's texts to demonstrate how their attempts to open the universe of discourse—that is, to provide ways of bridging the divide between political liberals and religious conservatives—shut down the possibility for dialogue. We then offer counterstatements—what Anderson and Prelli refer to as “expressions of alternative orientations toward social reality” (90)—that may serve to open the universe of discourse.

Pentadic Cartography: Mapping Birth Trauma Narratives

The reported prevalence of posttraumatic stress disorder due to childbirth ranges from 1.5 to 6%. The purpose of this qualitative study is to conduct a narrative analysis of 11 mothers' birth trauma stories. The dramatistic pentad provided the overall structure for this narrative analysis. Using pentadic cartography, the author mapped the verbal terrain of each narrative using the pentad's five terms of scene, act, purpose, agent, and agency. The ratio imbalance between act and agency appeared most prominently on the pentadic map. Viewing the mothers' narratives through the act:agency ratio offered a terministic screen that helped pinpoint where the trauma that women experienced occurred during labor and delivery. Implications for clinical practice focus on the How (agency), the way clinicians provide care to women during childbirth.

Metapahor, Ambiguity, and Motive in Evolutionary Biology

This article analyzes the power of ambiguous metaphors to present scientific novelty. Its focus is a series of papers by the prominent population biologist W. D. Hamilton in which he redefined the meaning of biological altruism. In particular, the article draws on Kenneth Burke’s dramatistic pentad to examine why suggestions of motive are so pervasive in Hamilton’s representation of genetic evolution and what epistemological consequences result from this rhetorical choice. Specifically, the metaphorical language of motive allows Hamilton to represent genes ambiguously and simultaneously as both the agents of evolutionary action and as the agency or mechanism by which organism agents act. The textual ambiguity generated by the agent-agency metaphors both reflects and constructs a conceptual ambiguity in the way evolutionary processes are theorized. Analysis of Hamilton’s rhetoric thus suggests the productive function of ambiguous metaphors in highly technical scientific texts.

It’s a picnic at Hubbard Foods

Heard the one about the company which took its staff thousands of miles for a picnic? It is not a joke; it really happened in New Zealand when Dick Hubbard, owner and managing director of breakfast cereal manufacturer Hubbard Foods Ltd flew his entire 102‐man workforce to Western Samoa for a tenth birthday picnic during the Queen’s Birthday Week. In this article, Walker and Monin use Burke’s “dramatistic pentad” as a framework to analyze the event in terms of action, location, the star (Hubbard himself), his part in the action and the purpose, and argue that it might be used to analyze other organizational events.

The purpose of the picnic: using Burke’s dramatistic pentad to analyse a company event

Uses Kenneth Burke’s “dramatistic pentad” as an analytical framework to analyse a company event that in New Zealand became symbolic of social responsibility in action. Presents the event in which the staff of an Auckland food processing operation was flown to Western Samoa for a weekend “picnic”. Explores the act – what happened; the scene the physical, geographic and cultural milieu of the action; the agent – managing director Dick Hubbard’s individual identity and the role he played out in terms of the action; the agency – the means by which Hubbard was enabled to accomplish this action, and his role in initiating, approving and funding the staff picnic; and finally, the purpose – the intended effect of the action and a consideration of perceived outcomes. Considers the usefulness of the dramatistic pentad to other organisational contexts. Concludes that it provides a useful model to guide the analysis of diverse organisational texts.

Pentadic cartography: Mapping the universe of discourse

Does contemporary discourse operate within an open universe that enables discussion of public issues from a broad variety of perspectives? Or, as many social commentators maintain, is the influence of technological rationality so pervasive that it subsumes all points of view to its own terms, thus closing the universe of discourse? In this paper, pentadic cartography is presented as a method for charting the ways terminologies open and close discourse. First, Herbert Marcuse's notion of a closed “one‐dimensional” universe of discourse and his proposed Hegelian dialectical method for opening it are examined. Next, Kenneth Burke's interpretation of the closed universe of discourse and how the dramatistic pentad is used to chart it are described. Pentadic cartography, an application of the pentad for mapping verbal and visual symbolic terrain, is then developed and discussed. It is then used to map both a public discourse (a sixty second television commercial) and a critical discourse (Marcuse's social criticism). The resulting maps—one a large‐scaled, in‐depth map and the other a small‐scaled, more global map—demonstrate the efficacy of pentadic cartography as an instrument for mapping symbolic terrain as well as a way to determine the degree to which terminologies function to open and close discourse. Finally, we outline three advantages of pentadic cartography over less pluralistic, more monistic critical approaches. The conclusion outlines the implications of our analysis and of pentadic cartography as a critical method, including its probable superiority to postmodernism as a way to open the contemporary universe of discourse.

An other ethics for Kenneth Burke

This essay identifies deflections of the Other in the rhetorical theory of Kenneth Burke, and introduces the ethical philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas as a supplement and corrective. These deflections are demonstrated in Burke's “definition of man” and dramatistic pentad, and those theoretical constructs are reformulated. Specifically, a definition of human beings and dramatistic nonad are offered in order to foreground the Other. These reformulations strengthen the epistemological, ontological and ethical status of Burke's rhetorical theory, and empower Burke's rhetorical theory to be deployed as an ethical‐rhetorical criticism focused upon the position of the Other in discursive interactions.

In Search of Patient Agency in the Rhetoric of Diabetes Care

Medical rhetoric has long been characterized by a focus on disease and on the physician as healer. Now, in the era of managed health care, patients are increasingly being viewed as agents in the management of their own chronic diseases. This article examines the concept of patient agency from a rhetorical perspective in lay and professional medical discourse relating to diabetes care. Kenneth Burke's dramatistic pentad is used as a tool to help uncover and analyze sites where values appear ambiguous. This study shows that patient agency is closely related to patient compliance in the language of biomedicine. The terms "compliance" and "adherence" operate as terrninistic screens in professional discourse and serve to limit discussion of patient agency. In managed health care, tension is evident between the trend toward greater patient agency and the constraints of biomedical text conventions concerning doctor and patient roles.

Chiara Lubich's 1977 templeton prize acceptance speech: Case study in the mystical narrative

Critical literature has largely ignored the element of purpose in Kenneth Burke's dramatistic pentad, along with its attendant philosophy of mysticism. Chiara Lubich's 1977 Templeton Prize Acceptance Speech presents rhetorical critics with a valuable opportunity to observe in practice the features of a rhetoric of purpose, as Burke has disseminated them. In fact, analysis of Lubich's speech according to Burke's criteria of purposive rhetoric suggests the existence of a discrete sub‐class of purposive rhetoric identified here as the mystical narrative.