Kenneth Burke’s Representative Anecdote & the Cult of the Kill
The final idea Burke had that was better than his Pentad was the Representative Anecdote. There are a few theories like this one floating around now, but aside ...
Category: Big Theories
These theories extend beyond stand-up, and try to explain a number of different phenomena.
Kenneth Burke’s Identification and Consubstantiality
Another in the line of “8 Burkean concepts that are better than the Pentad” are the paired concepts of Identification and Consubstantiality. For our...
Kenneth Burke’s “Definition of Man [sic]”
One of the most discussed parts of Kenneth Burke’s work is his “Definition of Man [sic],” a 21 page section in a single book. Putting aside hi...
Kenneth Burke’s Cluster-Agon Reading Strategy
What’s a “Reading Strategy?” Reading strategies are to qualitative research (looking at qualities or characteristics) what methods are to quan...
Kenneth Burke on Literature
Perhaps the most quoted line from Kenneth Burke is that Literature is “Equipment for Living” (Counter Statement), so I decided I needed to dedicate ...
Kenneth Burke’s Dramatism
Kenneth Burke was a literary theorist and philosopher perhaps best known for his Pentad. However, I–following in the tradition of Elizabeth Mechling, Ph.D...
Jean-François Lyotard and Maurice Charland on the Rhetoric of the Republic, Litige and Pagans
Republican Rhetoric of the Polis, and Litige [Note: A version of this argument appears in my dissertation and on this website where I deal with Ironic Satire, a...
Kenneth Burke’s Perspective by Incongruity
After Burke lays out his method of Dramatism, in his second book, Permanence and Change, Burke introduces the term, perspective by incongruity, but in the next ...
Petty & Cacioppo’s Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM)
Caty Borum Chattoo turns to Petty & Cacioppo’s Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM) here (especially as it has been applied by Zhang), which theorizes two rou...
Michel Foucault on Prediscursives and the Discursive
Similar to de Saussure’s concept of signs, Michel Foucault claims that there are things that exist in the world – IRL – there are objects, bod...