The comic frame as a corrective to bureaucratization: a dramatistic perspective on argumentation.

• Author: Madsen, Arnie J.
• Position: Special Issue: Dramatism and Argumentation

Critics rely on the diverse writings of Kenneth Burke to provide an orientation for the examination of rhetoric.(1) Among the elements of Burke's dramatistic perspective applied in rhetorical studies are the pentad, the representative anecdote, form, identification, and scapegoating. While rhetorical theorists and critics have drawn upon Burke's ideas, scholars analyzing the nature of argumentation have generally ignored the utility of a Burkean outlook.(2) Even a cursory examination of contemporary texts reveals that the works of Kenneth Burke have gone relatively unnoticed in the field of argumentation theory.(3)

Several essays by Burke provide clues about his likely outlook toward argumentation. By examining elements of those essays, this paper will initially develop the relationship between dramatism and argumentation. This essay specifically examines the dangers inherent in the "bureaucratic" mindset that existing power structures exhibit as they attempt to uphold the status quo. This mindset prevents arguments leading to the creation of broader frames of reference that would better serve societal needs. The second section analyzes the task of the dramatistic critic of argument. Central to the essay is an examination of how a dramatistic perspective on argument can serve to counter the dangers inherent in the bureaucratic mindset.

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN DRAMATISM AND ARGUMENTATION

Burke focuses, in many of his early writings, on art and literature. It is only in his later works that he turns to explicit considerations of rhetorical practice. As a result, "argument" per se is not a Burkean term or focal point (Kneupper 894).(4) Thus, in most cases argumentation scholars must infer a Burkean view of argumentation from his various writings.

One apparent Burkean treatment of argumentative principles lies in his consideration of syllogistic progression. This is "the form of a perfectly conducted argument, advancing step by step.... To go from A to E through stages B, C, and D is to obtain such form" (Counter-Statement 124). However, Burke later argues that normal practice reverses the usual "logical progression" of moving from data to conclusion. Instead, "the conclusion had led to the selection and arrangement of the data.... From what we want to arrive at, we deduce our ways of getting there, although the conventions of logical exposition usually present things the other way round" (Permanence 98; see also 98-99).

Similarly, the response to an argument usually does not follow traditional form. One person may "logically" lay out an argument from point 1, through point 2, to point 3. However, a second person responding to that argument often answers, "not by taking up each point in turn and refuting it, but by saying simply, 'The man is a bourgeois,' or 'He has a mother complex,'--or 'He wants the job instead'" (Burke, Permanence 109).

Another treatment by Burke of argumentation principles lies in his consideration of facts. Burke's essay "Fact, Inference, and Proof in the Analysis of Literary Symbolism" considers the relationship of those three terms in analyses of literary texts (Terms 145-172). Burke argues the goal of the essay is to ask:

... how to operate with |the "facts" of a text~, how to use them as a means of keeping one's inferences under control, yet how to go beyond them, for purposes of inference, when seeking to characterize the motives and "salient traits" of the work.... (Terms 145)

Burke argues many observations normally treated as fact are actually inferences, as authors "smuggle" interpretations into their reports of the factual (Terms 147).

Beyond the specific passages identified above, Burke often instead relies on metaphors when discussing argumentation. One of Burke's metaphors for argument is that an author "exploits"a set of terms, advocating a "cause" like a lawyer would plead a case in the courtroom (Attitudes 293). A second Burkean metaphor for argument is gaming. As Billig indicates, the gaming metaphor "appears in Kenneth Burke's account of argumentation's 'holds and counter-holds, the blows and the ways of blocking them'" (10; see also Burke, A Rhetoric 52).

One theorist who has worked on the relationship between Burke and argumentation is James Klumpp. Recognizing problems with traditional definitions of "reason" (Klumpp, "A Critical" 6-8), Klumpp instead offers four central characteristics of argumentation.(5) First, argumentation is dialectical, involving clash between people and ideas. Second, argument organizes social groupings and sorts information as being relevant or irrelevant to a particular claim. Third, argument is at base purposive. Finally, argumentation is formal, as we cast information into the accepted forms of a particular linguistic community (Klumpp, "A Dramatistic" 46).

Klumpp's core characteristics of argument are derivatives of what he terms a social communication perspective, or a dramatistic perspective toward argumentation. This perspective "stresses that communication casts experience into form. Furthermore, this form is socially constructed and then socially perpetuated to be called upon to encounter new experience" (Klumpp, "A Dramatistic" 44). Such a perspective involves five "interlocking assumptions." First, when people encounter experience, they do so through action. Second, human action is social, whether the action is by an isolated individual, a dyad, or the whole of society. Third, social action is a response to human experience. Fourth, the response is to a particularized situational exigency. Finally, communication serves to negotiate the social response, as the proper action in response to the situation becomes worked out after defining the situation (Klumpp, "A Dramatistic" 44-45).

Yet, even with Klumpp's characteristics and assumptions, the central features of a dramatistic perspective toward argumentation remain unclear. A useful starting point to further develop this perspective is Burke's definition of human ("Poem" 163).(6) For this essay, the key element of Burke's definition is that human beings are unique from other forms of life in that they can use symbols, constructing arguments and other utterances in response to the situations encountered in everyday existence. Thus, "humans are the symbol-making, symbol-using, symbol-misusing animal" (Burke, "Poem" 163). In addition to being the only animal to use symbols, human beings are the only animal to recognize the "negative," sensing the difference between what is and is not, and able to argue for what should and should not occur.(7) Other definitional clauses suggest human beings separate themselves from nature with technology and other devices they have created; human beings strive for the attainment of organization and social status; human beings realize that they are mortal and will eventually die; and human beings desire perfection (as in trying to call something by its "proper" name) (Burke, "Poem" 163).

Through his concern with human symbol use, Burke focuses on what he calls the world of action. The world of action is a realm unique to the symbol using person. Actions involve the use and manipulation of symbols, often corresponding to physical movements. Humans plan action conceptually before acting. Thus, Willard suggests that arguments are "processes bound by action" (Theory 16). These characteristics of action stand in contrast to the world of motion, that world we share in common with other life forms. The world of motion is the purely physical world, the stimulus-response realm. Herein no conceptualizations exist and no manipulation of symbols occurs. The sole concern of this world is physical maneuvering (Burke, Religion 39-40).(8)

To analyze human behavior in the action world, some idea of why humans act as they do is necessary. For Burke, motives are the basis of human action, and therefore are the critical feature in any study of human relations. The way to determine an individual's motivation is to analyze how the person interprets and linguistically responds to a given situation. As Burke argues, "the question of motive brings us to the subject of communication, since motives are distinctly linguistic products" (Permanence 35).

Burke says that the question we are trying to answer about motives is "what is involved when we say what people are doing and why they are doing it?" (Grammar xv). Humans have at their disposal the unique creative capacity for symbol use, and they also have the unique ability to use those symbols in interaction. Not only do symbols influence our behavior in a situation, but the manipulation of symbols can aid in consciously altering a situation through the construction of "should" and "should not" arguments.

From a dramatistic perspective, analysis of motivation requires a focus on an individual's argumentative utterances, for "it is only through the linguistic artifact of the argumentative utterance that interaction can occur. The product of an actor's mental creativity thus becomes the means by which one gains access to the mind of another" (Balthrop 200). This focus on argumentative utterances allows the critic to "make inferences about the personal perspectives of those involved in the argumentative process" (Balthrop 200). This is not to suggest that other factors beyond the text are unimportant; rather such utterances are manifestations of the choices made by an actor in responding to the unique exigencies of a situation (Balthrop 203).

One central feature of utterances is form. As Burke suggests in Counter-Statement, "form is the creation of an appetite in the mind of the auditor, and the adequate satisfying of that appetite" (31). Jasinski argues that form is a process of rhetorical anticipation, a method of inference where the audience anticipates the conclusions of the arguer (55). Williams extends these views of form by suggesting, "that which is 'rational' is that which satisfies or would satisfy an aroused...