“Burke's perspective on perspectives: Grounding dramatism in the representative anecdote”

New England Town Meeting and the Cultivation of Deliberative Play

“…How can other deliberative bodies provide similar spaces for participants to enact temporary identities to connect across differences? Theses about domination harken to the traditional definition of rhetoric as violence rather than conceiving of rhetoric as invitational or interactional (Crable, 2000; Mallin & Vasby Anderson, 2000). When participants focus on their common ends, rather than personal goals, they often use rhetorical strategies that are more inclusive and that highlight identification, rather than division.…”

“Risks Both Known and Unknown”

“…Burke defined his lifelong project as "to formulate the basic stratagems by which people employ, in endless variations, and consciously or unconsciously, for the outwitting or cajoling of one another" (Burke, 1969, p. xvii). Scholars have argued over dramatism as an ontological or epistemological approach since Burke's emergence in the 1920s; the 21st century has wrought increasing regard for dramatism as ontological and literal (see Crable, 2000aCrable, , 2000bHawhee, 1999;McLemee, 2001).…”

Rhetoric, Anxiety, and Character Armor: Burke's Interactional Rhetoric of Identity1

“…Though social scientists in communication take a more interpersonal view, their commitment to empirical methods similarly restricts focus to the behavior and reports of individuals, not individuals-in-relation, the focus of the present essay. [14] As I have argued elsewhere (Crable, 2000), for Burke, only a terminology that begins ontologically, with action-and not knowledge, as in the epistemologically driven work of social science-is appropriate for the study of human existence and motives. [15] Laing identifies such selves as ''false'' not because there is an essential or ''core'' self behind these presentations, but because they can be easily undermined by another interactant.…”