Kenneth Burke’s Dramatistic Pragmatism: A Missing Link between Classical Greek Scholarship and the Interactionist Study of Human Knowing and Acting

Abstract

The term “rhetoric” often has been maligned by those lacking familiarity with classical Greek and Latin scholarship. However, a more sustained, historically-informed examination of persuasive interchange is of fundamental importance for the study of human knowing and acting across the humanities and social sciences, as well as all other realms of community life.
 While acknowledging several contemporary scholars who have reengaged aspects of classical Greek and Latin rhetoric, this statement gives particular attention to the works of Kenneth Burke and the linkages of Burke’s writings with Aristotle’s Rhetoric, as well as American pragmatist thought and the ethnographically, conceptually-oriented sociology known as symbolic interactionism (Blumer 1969; Strauss 1993; Prus 1996; 1997; 1999; 2015; Prus and Grills 2003).
 Because scholarship does not exist as isolated instances of genius, even the productions of highly accomplished individuals such as Kenneth Burke are best understood within the context of a horizontal- temporal, as well as a vertical-historical intellectual community. Accordingly, Burke’s contributions to the human sciences more generally and pragmatist social theory (along with its sociological extension, symbolic interaction) more specifically are best comprehended within this broader, historically-enabled scholarly context.
 Kenneth Burke’s dramatistic pragmatism is not the only missing link between classical Greek thought and symbolic interactionism, but Burke’s work on rhetoric represents a particularly important medium for extending the conceptual and analytic parameters of contemporary symbolic interaction. Indeed, Kenneth Burke’s scholarship has important implications for the fuller study of community life as implied in the most fundamental and enabling terms of human knowing and acting.

Influence Work, Resistance, and Educational Life-Worlds: Quintilian’s [Marcus Fabius Quintilianus] (35-95 CE) Analysis of Roman Oratory as an Instructive Ethnohistorical Resource and Conceptual Precursor of Symbolic Interactionist Scholarship

“…However, Erving Goffman (1959), Orrin Klapp (1962;1964;Stanford Lyman andMarvin Scott (1970), along with those subsequently attending to their works, also have benefited notably from Burke's dramatistic analysis of the human group life. As indicated elsewhere (Prus 2003;2004;2006;2007a;2008a;2008b;2009a;2010;2011a;2011b;2011d;2013a;2013b;2013d;2015;2017;Prus and Burk 2010;Prus and Camara 2010;Puddephatt and Prus 2007)…”

“…Thus, it is most in- Institutio Oratoria and contemporary symbolic interactionist scholarship. Some may be tempted to envision these as two somewhat coincidental, parallel cultural developments, but a more sustained examination of the developmental flows of Western social thought from the classical Greek era to the present time indicates that this is not the case (see : Prus 2004;2007a;2008a;2009a;2010;2012;2015;2017).…”

“…As a result, because Burke incorporates some fundamental pragmatist features of classical scholarship into his dramatistic analysis, those lacking familiarity with the classical literature may readily assume that Burke has gleaned all that may be worthwhile from these "scholars from antiquity." Thus, despite his important, wide-sweeping, and more original, revitalizing contributions to 20 th century rhetoric and dramatistic analysis (Prus 2017), Burke's portrayals of human activity and interchange (1953 [1931]; 1959 [1937]; 1961; 1966; 1969a [1945]; 1969b [1950]) are considerably less novel and less adequately representative of classical scholarship (rhetoric, ethics, poetics) than might appear on the surface. Although much overlooked in our own time, this is clearly evident in Quintilian's expansive, analytically detailed text, a scholarly philosophic resurrection of classical Greek and Roman thought, science, and technology.…”

“…1 Some other explicit interactionist considerations of the affinities of contemporary pragmatist scholarship and Greek pragmatism (particularly the analyses of the human condition developed by Aristotle) can be found in the bibliography (see : Prus 2003;2004;2007a;2008a;2009a;2011a;2011b;2013a;2013b;2013c;2015;2017;Puddephatt and Prus 2007).…”