A construct for assessing ethics in communication

Ethical assessments have emerged as significant and unique issues in several contemporary speeches. When faced with the rhetoric of black power, student activism or the rhetoric of the Vietnam conflict, it seems essential that the rhetorical critic he able to identify, justify, and apply reasonable and constructive principles for assessments of the ethics of oral communication. Employing Kenneth Burke's theory of dramatism as a point of departure, this analysis describes and relates contemporary ethical standards and then concentrates upon when and how to apply ethical standards to communicative behavior.