Epistemology and ontology in Kenneth Burke's dramatism
- 1 March 1985
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Taylor & Francis in Communication Quarterly
- Vol. 33 (2) , 94-104
- https://doi.org/10.1080/01463378509369585
Abstract
Kenneth Burke initially established dramatism as a method for understanding the social uses of language. An examination of Burke's major rhetorical concepts—identification, the definition of the human being, the concept of reality, and terms for order—reveals the epistemology of his dramatism as a marriage of paradox and metaphor. However, recently Burke has shifted dramatism towards a philosophy. Three shifts establish a dramatism based upon “act,”; not the tension between “action”; and “motion,”; dramatism that employs language “literally,”; rather than exploiting its ambiguity, and dramatism that is more “reality”; oriented rather than the link that orders and relates “reality”; to our abstract values.Keywords
This publication has 4 references indexed in Scilit:
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- Dramatism as ontology or epistemology: A symposiumCommunication Quarterly, 1985
- The symbolic construction of social realities: A case study in the rhetorical criticism of paradoxCommunication Quarterly, 1984
- Language as Symbolic ActionPublished by University of California Press ,1966