Football and politics.

 

As TV campaigning for local, state, and federal political offices recently finished, Kenneth Burke's notion of dramatism and pentadic analysis seem appropriate in critiquing the nature and motive of campaign messaging. 

Essentially, dramatism is defined by Burke as the understanding that we (humans) use language strategically to deal with life, and that language is a real and influential device of our world. In the formation of dramatism and pentadic analysis, Burke made two assumptions. First, the presence of motion, or the human's basic biological/animalistic components. Second, action, which exercises our capacity to do something with purpose, distinguishing action from purely animalistic motions. 

The artifact of this week's blog is a campaign commercial from South Dakota's Republican Senator, John Thune. In many eyes, Thune is a well-rounded, morally and financially conservative rumored to be a significant candidate for the 2012 presidential election. Thune served in Congress for six years before winning a seat in Senate, and remains there today. 

Aired in 2004, the commercial (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTJFdDCPXKw&feature=related) directly opposed Tom Daschle, a Democrat competing for one the South Dakota Senate seats. Below are the five identified elements of Burke's dramatistic pentad:

Act:  political campaign for John Thune.

Scene:  the South Dakota 2004 elections for Senators

Agents: Tom Daschle (main), and John Thune

Agency:  a 1940s-esque football highlight reel

Purpose:  persuade South Dakota voters to make a decision/judgment about Tom Daschle, and vote for John Thune to be Senator

In Rhetorical Criticism, Sonja Foss suggests applying ratios to the elements to determine which element(s) is/are controlling or determining another. Regarding this commerical from Thune's 2004 campaign, the scene and purpose are the main terms. The scene - 2004 South Dakota Senate elections - establishes motive for Thune to campaign, therefore creating this commercial depicting Democrat Daschle as a "blocker" of policies and laws that would benefit the South Dakota population. The commercial uses a well-known setting or agency - highlight reel from a football game - to fulfill its purpose, a public statement working to impress a negative judgment about Daschle and persuade voters to vote instead for Thune. The purpose, persuading South Dakota voters that Daschle will block any beneficial bills, determines Daschle's representation in the commercial. Without the scene of 2004 elections and the goal to prevent a victory for Daschle, the commercial would have presented different elements, changing the act, agent, and agency identified in this critique.