Peeling The Onion: Satire and the Complexity of Audience Response

Abstract

Satire is a popular form of comedic social critique frequently theorized in terms of Kenneth Burke’s comic frame. While its humor and unexpected combination of incongruous elements can reduce tension that surrounds controversial issues to make new perspectives more accessible, audience response to satire can vary tremendously—including the very negative as well as the very positive. Teaching satire should include exposure to rhetorical theory and audience reception analysis to better prepare students as consumers and creators of satires. With a complex, layered pedagogy, satire can be an important component of the twenty-first-century rhetor’s toolkit.

Notes

1. ¹I thank Rhetoric Review reviewers Frank Reynolds and Mark Gellis and editor Theresa Enos for their valuable suggestions and encouragement that helped me improve this article and articulate its contribution. And I thank Mike Sobiech for asking me to be a reader of his MA thesis on satire in first-year composition. Without his enthusiasm about the serious work humor could accomplish in the writing classroom, I would not have begun teaching satire.

2. ²Student papers are quoted with permission.

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Notes on contributors

Jane Fife

Jane Fife teaches writing and directs the writing center at Western Kentucky University. She researches and teaches about contemporary composing practices and rhetorics, particularly how they are influenced by our digital environments. She is interested in how composition pedagogies can prepare students as public rhetors. She has published in Pedagogy, College Composition and Communication, Composition Studies, and several edited collections.