Comparing the Clinton and Dole advertising campaigns: Identification and division in 1996 presidential television spots

This study investigates televised spots by Clinton and Dole in 1996. It extends Burke's concept of identification (positive messages) to include attempts to create division (attacks), and explores the rhetorical and textual bases of these appeals. Burke's concept of identification, as operationalized here, permits insights into the nature of these spots that cannot be obtained from traditional analyses of advertisements. Surprisingly for political discourse, neither candidate used explicit identification. The incumbent Clinton used more identification than challenger Dole, who used more division. Clinton attempted to use policy more than Dole, whereas Dole focused more on character. Both campaigns attempted to identify and divide through association with groups and individuals.     

The Rules-Based Process of Revealing/Concealing the Family Planning Decisions of Voluntarily Child-Free Couples: A Communication Privacy Management Perspective

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.     

Progressive form and Mexican culpability in Polk's justification for war

The rhetorical structure of James K. Polk's justification for war with Mexico is analyzed from the perspective of Kenneth Burke's theory of form. Particular attention is given to the president's technique of suggesting Mexican culpability through a progression of forms which contrasts American rationality with Mexican irrationality.     

John Morley and the Irish question: Chart‐prayer‐dream

Attempts to circumscribe “the Burkean method” of rhetorical criticism can be frustrating. Critics more profitably might use Burke as an example and a prod, appropriating—as was done in this study—whichever of Burke's concepts, methods, and metaphors seem applicable to a given rhetorical event. Burke's “chart‐prayer‐dream” trilogy, together with his understanding of “strategies,” was employed to examine Morley's “Home Rule” speech before the Oxford Union in 1888. Morley's reply to Randolph Churchill abandoned propositional argument in favor of reviv‐alistic‐exhortation early in the speech; his strategies of form, argument, labelling, style, and mimesis are best understood as those of the High Priest seeking a confessional and an act of expiation from his auditors.     

Kenneth Burke and the Mod Donna The dramatistic method applied to feminist criticism

This essay employ's Burke's pentad and pattern of symbolic action and a definition of feminism proposed by Aileen S. Kraditor to posit a definition of feminist drama. An analysis of the Mod Donna by Myrna Lamb illustrates the critical use of this definition.     

No Jack Kennedy: Mitt Romney's “Faith in America” Speech and the Changing Religious-Political Environment

In December of 2007, Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney traveled to Texas to give an address on religion and politics. The speech was heralded by many as Romney's “JFK moment.” This study explores the campaign religion speeches of Kennedy and Romney by considering various issues concerning context, audience, and content of the two speeches. Guiding this analysis is Roderick Hart's work on the civil-religious contract and Kenneth Burke's work on dramatistic analysis, which are utilized to demonstrate that—despite the media's proclamations—Romney's speech represented a stark shift from Kennedy's rhetorical approach. Implications are drawn concerning the differences between the two speeches and an understanding of the confessional political style guiding the intersection of religion and politics today.     

Family Communication Patterns and Cognitive Processing: Conversation and Conformity Orientations as Predictors of Informational Reception Apprehension

This study examined the unique and combined associations among family communication patterns (i.e., conversation and conformity orientations) and young adult children's informational reception apprehension (IRA; i.e., listening anxiety and intellectual inflexibility). Participants included 592 young adult children from first-marriage and postdivorce families. Results indicated that family conversation orientations are inversely associated with listening anxiety and intellectual inflexibility, whereas conformity orientations are positively associated with both traits. Furthermore, an interaction effect between conversation and conformity orientations emerged, such that high-conformity orientations moderate (or reduce) the inverse association between family conversation orientations and young adults' listening anxiety. Among the more important implications in this study is the finding that family communication patterns have a small but meaningful association with individuals' information-processing skills.     

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     

The “energy”; of form

Using Kenneth Burke's schema of the four kinds of form and examples from contemporary political discourse, this paper examines three kinds of energy (dynamos, energeia, ergon) during the formal process.     

Movement as memory: Significant form in eyes on the prize

Eyes on the Prize: America's Civil Rights Years ranks as one of the most successful public television documentaries ever produced. Although it originally aired in 1987, the series has since been shown widely in school and college classrooms, where it arguably has influenced many students’ understanding of the civil rights struggle and, more fundamentally, of the nature and form of “social movement” itself This essay draws upon Kenneth Burke's concept of “significant form” to examine how the documentary's design works to shape public memory of the civil rights struggle as a social movement. In addition to yielding insight into the rhetorical structure of a landmark television documentary, the analysis of form in Eyes on the Prize illumines how public consciousness of “social movement” can be created and perpetuated through narrative form.     

Not Just Crazy: An Explanation for the Resonance of the Birther Narrative

In this essay I use an updated approach to Richard Hofstadter's paranoid style to analyze the contemporary birther movement. While the paranoid style provides a set of characteristics that describes paranoid narratives, it does not account for why some narratives ring true for certain audiences. Thus, in order to explain how and why the birther narrative resonates with a substantial portion of Americans, I argue that the resonance of the birther narrative can be explained through Kenneth Burke's scapegoating process, which activates the conspiratorial story for the birther audience. I use an analysis of a popular birther film, materials on the birthers' website, and media commentary on the group to illustrate this position.     

The rhetoric of Indonesian technology development: An analysis of B.J. Habibie's speeches 1

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the rhetoric of Habibie's speeches in order to explain his rhetorical strategies in intensifying Indonesian science and technology development using Kenneth Burke's ‘dramatistic analysis’. It examines significant key terms selected from Habibie's campaign speeches (1983–1993), discusses the symbolic relationships among the key elements of the drama of Indonesian technology development, as well as interprets the rhetor's strategies and motivations. It also describes the significance of Habibie's roles in recent political develompent with the background of Indonesian ideologies and traditional values. It concludes that Habibie's rhetoric points to ‘technologically modern society’ as the national goal, technologists and scientists as the leaders, and intensive science and technology development as the means, which marks a dramatic change in the already changing traditional concepts of development, political leadership and prosperity.     

A pentadic analysis of ideologies in two gay rights controversies

The application of Kenneth Burke's pentad in rhetorical criticism can reveal ideologies at work in a controversy. This paper is an example of how to use the pentad to understand ideology. Rhetoric in favor of gay rights is informed by an ideology that features agents as primary and acts as derivative. Rhetoric opposed to gay rights features acts as primary and agents as derivative.     

Advertising and Media

William L. Rivers and Michael J. Nyhan (eds.) Aspen Notebook on Government and the Media (New York: Praeger Special Studies, 1973 — $3.95, paper)

Ray B. Browne (ed.) Popular Culture and the Expanding Consciousness (New York: Wiley, 1973 — price not known)

Dennis P. Forcese and Stephen Richer's Social Research Methods (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1973 — $7.95)

Arthur W. Lavidge's A Common Sense Guide to Professional Advertising (Blue Ridge Summit, Pa.: Tab Books, 1973 — $9.95)

John D. Burke's Advertising in the Marketplace (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1973 — $10.95)     

Nonverbal communication and the support process: Interactional sensitivity in interactions between mothers and young adult children

This study investigated the contribution of nonverbal cues to supportive communication in interactions between mothers and young adult children. Current support communication research primarily focuses on verbal messages communicating support or conceptualizes nonverbal communication in narrow ways. Using the concept of interactional sensitivity from attachment theory for direction, a number of hypotheses concerning support provision were proposed in order to develop our understanding in this area. Findings provide insight into the role of nonverbal as well as verbal communication in supportive interaction. Interactional sensitivity—in the form of certain conversational involvement cues (vocal warmth/interest and kinesic/proxemic attentiveness), responses appropriate to the child's needs, and movement synchrony—predicted young adult children's perceptions of mothers’ supportiveness during a conversation about a relationship problem.     

Enacted Goal Attention in Family Conversations about End-of-life Health Decisions

Most extant research on end-of-life communication in families has been based on the assumption that more communication is better communication. We used a multiple goals theoretical perspective to demonstrate that the quality of communication about end-of-life decisions matters. Members of 121 older parent/adult child dyads (N = 242) engaged in an elicited conversation about end-of-life health choices and reported their assessments of the conversation. Using multilevel linear modeling, we found that outside ratings of a person's communication quality (i.e., attention to task, identity, and relational goals) as well as outside ratings of the partner's communication quality were positively associated with the person's reported conversational satisfaction and hopefulness and negatively associated with the person's hurt feelings and relational distancing.     

Topic Valence and Ambiguity in Parent-Emerging Adult Child Postdivorce Discussions

Communication privacy management theory maintains permeability rules manifest as communication strategies used during conversation. Although postdivorce families tend to privilege openness, this conclusion is based on recalled reports and single discussions about negatively valenced topics. To determine whether ambiguity functions as a manifestation of permeability rules and its effects on relational satisfaction and psychological well-being, 39 parent-emerging adult child dyads discussed one negatively valenced and one positively valenced postdivorce topic. Results indicated parents were ambiguous while discussing negatively and positively valenced topics, and children were perceptive of parents' ambiguity during the conversations. No differences were found between parents' use and children's perceptions of parents' ambiguity. Further, children's relational satisfaction and psychological well-being were affected by ambiguity in both discussions.     

科技期刊识别伪作者的方法 ——以《护理学报》实践为例

以《护理学报》实践为例,总结科技期刊识别伪作者的方法与体会。从期刊网站注册的作者信息中识别伪作者,从作者工作单位与文章内容吻合度来识别伪作者,从电话沟通过程中识别伪作者,这些方法都能在一定程度上杜绝弄虚作假的学术不端行为。认为采取多种方法识别伪作者,治理学术不端行为,更需要管理制度的完善和法律的跟进,以及网络媒体平台的自治与社会监管、高等院校对学术道德的培养等多个层面的齐心协力。     

Competition and cooperation

Hans‐Georg Gadamer's theory of human solidarity in the word is often misunderstood in the secondary literature, because the preeminent role he gives to communication is misconstrued. What Gadamer attempts in placing dialogue at the center of a communal ontology is something very difficult and important. He weights communal identity neither towards subjective individualism nor any kind of relational system, but in the creative and uncompleted intermedium of conversation. The priority Gadamer gives to the event of dialogue as the engine of unexpressed human identity is the pivot of his entire hermeneutic enterprise. The ontological preeminence of the unfinished “conversation that we are”; has implications for the theory of communication yet to be seized upon and worked out.