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Abstract
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.
Acknowledgments
We thank Lawrence Prelli for his generous help on this project; the editor and the anonymous reviewers at RSQ for detailed feedback on earlier drafts; and Sharon Crowley for graciously engaging us at the 2008 Conference on College Composition and Communication.
Notes
1For further discussion of “terministic screens” see chapter 3 in Language as Symbolic Action, 44–62.
2Because Burke's perspective is rooted in act and liberal democratic discourse is rooted in agency, the latter position would actually exclude dramatism. This is one reason Burke's democratic dialectic should not be confused with liberal pragmatic discourse. The distinction between Burke's democratic dialectic and liberal democratic discourse is also evident from a tropic perspective. According to Hayden White, the perspective of “realism” (to which Burkean dramatism belongs) is motivated by metaphor and has, as its ideological implication, “anarchism.” Liberalism, on the other hand, is associated with “irony.” See White's Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth Century European History, “Introduction” and especially 29ff as well as The Tropics of Discourse: Essays in Cultural Criticism, 51–77, especially 70ff. In addition to White, see Frank J. D'Angelo, “The Four Master Tropes: Analogues of Development,” especially 103. Thus, from the pentadic and tropic perspectives, it is accurate to distinguish the anarchic nature of Burkean democracy from the liberal version.
3Burke's democrat is thus an “antinomian,” who opposes any and all presumptions of a dominant terminological “law.” On this point see Wolin, 7 and 97.
4Ross Wolin likewise forwards Burkean conflict (“perspective by incongruity”) as a response to the “trained incapacity” and “occupational psychosis” described in Permanence and Change. See Wolin's chapter “The Tactics of Conflict and Cooperation,” especially 73–77.
5In analyzing representative anecdotes (Grammar 59–61; 323–25) of different lengths, we are involved in (re)charting (dis)courses at two distinct “scales.” Our discussion of Crowley's book represents what Anderson and Prelli call a “small scaled” analysis (83). This “global” approach allows for a comprehensive map of a thoroughly developed critical perspective but sacrifices detail at the textual level. Our discussion of Obama's speech, on the other hand, is a “large scaled” analysis in which we “map terminological implications” in more detail (83). For elaboration of this distinction and related pentadic mapping principles, see Anderson and Prelli, especially 82–84. See also their small-scaled map of Marcuse's philosophy (87–88) and their larger-scaled map of a television advertisement (84–87). The ability to offer maps at different interpretive scales demonstrates the flexibility of the pentad for zooming in on terminological landscapes or for adopting a more panoramic view.
6For examples of analyses that use Burke's pentad as a critical method see Birdsell; Blankenship, Fine, and Davis; Brummett (A Pentadic) Fisher; King; Ling; and Tonn.
7For other examples of scholarship addressing religion's role in public discourse, see the recent forum included in Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies4.1 (March 2007): 91–110.
8See also Burke's “The Tactics of Motivation.”
9Before doing so, we feel it important to note that writing these counterstatements has been jarring for us. We have come to recognize that, as scholars in a traditionally liberal field, we tend to hold liberal-pragmatic views of the world. In writing these counterstatements, we have experienced a good bit of discomfort, dissonance, and even a bit of dissensus. And yet, we consider it vital as rhetoricians and as critics to reinvigorate the discussions surrounding religion and politics—both inside of and outside of academia—as much as possible.
10For an example of a rhetorician who advances a liberal pragmatic perspective on communication, see Richard McKeon's “Communication, Truth, and Society.”
11 See, for example, Counter-Statement, 114 and our theoretical framework section herein.
12 In pentadic terms, we are forwarding rhetorical practices that emphasize agent, act, and purpose against the dominant liberal pragmatic orientation toward scene and agency.
13Here we treat “fundamentalist discourse” as both religious and secular. That is, we recognize perspectives that are anarchic, dogmatic, and non-deliberative whether they call on a religious or humanistic warrant.
14We hasten to add that if religious fundamentalists dominated contemporary political discourse, we would invoke counterstatements as Burkean critics.
15We use derivations of the term “act” to encompass both material and symbolic action. Additionally, these counterstatements are rhetorical treatments of action that recognize act as a legitimate vocabulary of motive.