Jag har i denna uppsats, med hjälp av Kenneth Burkes pentadmodell, undersökt motiv i Per Anders Fogelströms Mina drömmars stad. För att analysera framställningen av individens förhållande till samhället har jag även använt mig av Burkes identifikationsbegrepp och hans tanke om att syften bakom människors och karaktärers handlingar kan bottna i en strävan efter rening av en skuld vi bär inom oss.Genom att undersöka fem olika sekvenser, kronologiskt jämnt fördelade i romanen, har jag sökt formulera tänkbara motiv som ligger bakom textens budskap. För att undersöka hur scen och agent interagerar har jag använt mig av Burkes begrepp ratio, det vill säga förhållandet mellan dessa två komponenter i pentaden. Resultatet består i att Fogelström ämnar berätta historien om de människor som skapade grunden för dagens välfärdssamhälle, vars historia sällan belyses. Han beskriver ett förhållandevis obarmhärtigt samhälle, en agent, som tar beslut om sina invånares livsvillkor. Genom sin text fastslår Fogelström att det inte är människan som är ond, utan samhällets oförmåga att förse alla med materiell och ekonomisk trygghet som kan få människan att handla omoraliskt. Räddningen finns i medmänskligheten och solidariteten människor emellan. Det finns alltså, trots stundvis brutala skildringar av fattigdom, ett positivt budskap i romanen. Människan står inte totalt handlingsförlamad inför stadens hänsynslöshet, utan kan genom uppvisad medmänsklighet skapa bättre förutsättningar för varandra. Människorna är också likvärdiga inför samhället, oavsett klasstillhörighet.För att urskilja med hjälp av vilka grepp Fogelström gör detta har jag använt mig av Aristoteles klassiska begrepp ethos, pathos och logos. Fogelström blandar genomgående historisk fakta med fiktion i romanen vilket inger ett trovärdigt ethos. Han vinner mottagarens förtroende genom detta starka författarethos, med vilket han låter påvisa sina kunskaper om Stockholms historia, men framförallt genom att väcka pathos hos läsaren. Fogelström vädjar till mottagarens känslor genom ordval, retoriska stilfigurer och fokalisering genom flera av romanens karaktärer. Fokaliseringen tillåter läsaren att se händelseförlopp genom karaktärernas egna ögon vilket skapar en förståelse för individernas känsloliv och handlingar.

My dissertation analyzes the rhetorical nature of nostalgia within American discourse communities. To accomplish this I analyze the construction and manipulation of nostalgia at the Middleton Place Plantation in Charleston, South Carolina, and in Alan Lomax's memoir, The Land Where the Blues Began. Nostalgia is an emotional response to displacement and occurs when an individual is separated either physically or emotionally from a specific time and place. Because an individual cannot simply return to the place and moment that they long for, nostalgia is hard to remedy and easy to manipulate. The danger of nostalgia is that although it seems individual, it is controlled by social expectations. Because nostalgia can be socially controlled and manufactured, it serves the communal needs of a society rather than the needs of the individual. Therefore, nostalgia can entrench an individual even more deeply into the constructions of their society. In this manner, nostalgia acts as a mechanism of restraint in society, and history based upon or associated with nostalgia becomes a history of containment.My project argues that we recognize the rhetorical work achieved by nostalgia. Three elements must be present if nostalgia is to be rhetorical: it must be purposefully evoked, satiated, and impact the community. Here I define rhetorical activity as any activity that seeks to persuade an individual or a community towards any action. This project analyzes how sites of public memory evoke and satiate nostalgia in their visitors, and reveals the actions that sites request of their visitors. I argue that these sites familiarize their visitors with a time and a place that the visitor cannot have full access to. Because of this, the visitor is displaced and nostalgia is evoked. Sites of public memory then respond to that same nostalgia through the presentation of values, ideals, and beliefs. Consequently, visitors depart sites of public memory with reinforced and realigned values and--due to their newly acquired discourse community--a community of fellow participants. It is in this way that public sites of memory evoke nostalgia for rhetorical ends.

The purpose of the study has been to analyze the rhetoric of Malcolm X with Kenneth Burke's dramatistic pentad in order to gain a better understanding of Malcolm X's rhetorical strategies in providing answers to given situations. One speech, determined to be typical of Malcolm X during the last phase of his life, was chosen for the analysis. It was the speech delivered on December 20, 1964, during the visit of Mrs. Fannie Lou Hamer, Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party candidate for the Senate.

This thesis focuses on ways that rhetorical theory can assist in better understanding the dysfunctions of the modern organizational environment. At its root, organizational dysfunction refers to those parts of our organizations that do not function as we think they should. Dysfunction points to actions of organizational members that defies and violates shared organizational norms and expectations or core societal values, mores and standards of proper conduct.1 As an element of focus, this thesis uses Kenneth Burkes theory of dramatism and dramatistic methods such as pentadic criticism and cluster criticism to analyze leadership actions within the fictional BBC television programme The Office. Using The Office as a representative case study, the analysis applies Burkes theories, and particularly the pentadic elements of Agent, Scene, and Act to gain a more complete picture of the role an office manager can play in an organizations dysfunction. A more complete picture can then assist in finding solutions to that dysfunction.<p> Burkes methods allow for a critic to gain multiple perspectives on the same situation by attributing different terms of the pentad to the same elements of the situation being described. When looking for causes of dysfunction in an organization, often formal leaders are held accountable. But what does it mean to blame the leader? What specific role have they played in the dysfunction? Using Burkes pentad, this thesis explores three roles that office manager David Brent plays in the organizational dysfunction.<p> The first chapter explores office leader Brent as an Agent of dysfunction and analyzes his own dysfunctions in order to understand the offices dysfunctions. The second chapter looks at the ramifications for labeling Brent as part of the Scene and analyzes how Brent and other scenic elements combine to create office dysfunction. In the final analysis chapter, Brent is labeled as an Act of dysfunction himself which positions Brent as a mere symptom of a larger dysfunction within the organization. The perspectives are combined and contrasted to reveal insights that may have been previously hidden proving that rhetorical theory is a valuable approach to better understand organizations and the people within them.<p> 1 Y. Vardi and Y. Weiner. Misbehaviour in Organizations: A Motivational Framework, Organizational Science, (7,1996) 151-65.

This thesis focuses on ways that rhetorical theory can assist in better understanding the dysfunctions of the modern organizational environment. At its root, organizational dysfunction refers to those parts of our organizations that do not function as we think they should. Dysfunction points to actions of organizational members that defies and violates shared organizational norms and expectations or core societal values, mores and standards of proper conduct.1 As an element of focus, this thesis uses Kenneth Burkes theory of dramatism and dramatistic methods such as pentadic criticism and cluster criticism to analyze leadership actions within the fictional BBC television programme The Office. Using The Office as a representative case study, the analysis applies Burkes theories, and particularly the pentadic elements of Agent, Scene, and Act to gain a more complete picture of the role an office manager can play in an organizations dysfunction. A more complete picture can then assist in finding solutions to that dysfunction.<p> Burkes methods allow for a critic to gain multiple perspectives on the same situation by attributing different terms of the pentad to the same elements of the situation being described. When looking for causes of dysfunction in an organization, often formal leaders are held accountable. But what does it mean to blame the leader? What specific role have they played in the dysfunction? Using Burkes pentad, this thesis explores three roles that office manager David Brent plays in the organizational dysfunction.<p> The first chapter explores office leader Brent as an Agent of dysfunction and analyzes his own dysfunctions in order to understand the offices dysfunctions. The second chapter looks at the ramifications for labeling Brent as part of the Scene and analyzes how Brent and other scenic elements combine to create office dysfunction. In the final analysis chapter, Brent is labeled as an Act of dysfunction himself which positions Brent as a mere symptom of a larger dysfunction within the organization. The perspectives are combined and contrasted to reveal insights that may have been previously hidden proving that rhetorical theory is a valuable approach to better understand organizations and the people within them.<p> 1 Y. Vardi and Y. Weiner. Misbehaviour in Organizations: A Motivational Framework, Organizational Science, (7,1996) 151-65.

In disease outbreak situations, the media are considered (and relied upon) by authorities to “translate” information across disciplinary boundaries. A reporter covering the 2003 SARS outbreak observed that journalists “are often conscious of their role as participants in a human crisis” (World Health Organization). Consequently, a pandemic presents a unique rhetorical situation to journalists. As significant intermediaries in public health messaging, journalist-rhetors help frame the narrative of a disease outbreak for lay audiences and influence whether those audiences implement protective behavioral changes. While the literature implicitly acknowledges issues of motivation in the media industry as a whole, little work has yet appeared to examine strategies specific to individual acts of reportage. Through comparative analyses of media portrayals of the 2009 H1N1 influenza outbreak before the nature of the threat became clear, this project explores rhetorical characteristics of the coverage in order to uncover implicit assumptions guiding public understanding of a high-risk health threat. Kenneth Burke’s method of cluster analysis yields insight into the symbolic processes embedded in a rhetorical artefact, enabling an interpretation of the rhetor’s worldview. Resulting worldviews can then be examined through a dramatistic lens. Burke also described the strategic adoption of “role” as an element of symbolic action. This study found that journalists purveyed widely different, even contradictory, worldviews, each with different impacts on audiences in terms of the interpretation and appropriate response to the threat. I argue that such divergences occur due to alienation arising from individual ethos in conflict with formal constraints in the new pandemic “scene.” Responses to alienation manifested in identifiably distinct roles. Identification with a particular role in pandemic reportage was reflected in the terminology of journalists studied. Through clusters of association and dissociation, journalists classed the threat as “mild” and rejected the term “pandemic,” as a serious threat but one that could be managed, or as an apocalyptic threat against which there was no defence, with all stances occurring simultaneously in time. Ramifications for the lay public ranged from the location of protection with public health officials, invitations to engage in processes of Othering, or the amplification of the cataclysmic nature of the scene. As these stances differed in their portrayals of impacts on the lay public and thus ability to motivate behavioral change, an improved understanding of journalistic experience in the pandemic “scene” is crucial to improving communication aiming to protect the health of lay publics.

In this dissertation, I develop a theory of rhetorical catharsis and apply this theory primarily to George W. Bush's rhetoric of the War on Terror in Iraq. Contrary to the standard Aristotelian perspective of catharsis as the "purging of pity and fear" that brings relief and resolution to an audience, I turn to Kenneth Burke's claim that catharsis is tied to the scapegoating process and argue that catharsis is the purging and projection of one's trauma to a victim who serves as the sacrificial vessel for one's pain. I thus redefine catharsis as the purging of trauma that plays a key role in catharsis and leads to the victimage and scapegoating of the Other in language and public life.To explore how rhetorical catharsis functions in language use, I analyze the concept of a rhetorical catharsis through literature, presidential rhetoric, and print media and show how catharsis operates in the rhetoric of war, particularly that of President Bush's war on terror in Iraq. In addition to Kenneth Burke, I draw on scholars such as Rene Girard, Deborah Willis, Terry Eagleton, Robert Ivie, Allen Carter, Robert McChesney, and Bartholomew Sparrow, among many others. I argue that communities experiencing tragedy use language to name people and entire nations as the scapegoat for their ills.By understanding how language makes possible the victimage and scapegoating of vasts groups of people and even entire nations in times of national trauma, I offer ways of speaking about trauma that may help redirect the violent impulse of catharsis.

Both France and the U.S. have witnessed extensive immigration in the twentieth century, and today, more than ever since World War II, the world's population is in dramatic flux. Currently almost fifty-four million people worldwide are identified by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) as displaced people. If and how France and the U.S. should accommodate displaced peoples has agitated political debate in France and the U.S. with conservatively aligned political parties in both countries rejecting calls to resettle displaced peoples in France and the U.S. At the center of this dissertation is the following research question: how are immigrants rhetorically constructed in high school French and U.S. history textbooks? Rhetoric is not just about persuading an audience; it is about using identifications that program the audience not to think, but to automatically believe that one thing is associated with another. In this dissertation I use Kenneth Burke’s rhetoric as identification to examine how immigrants are rhetorically constructed in four high school French history textbooks and two high school American history textbooks, all of which are widely distributed in their respective countries. I disarticulate rhetorical constructions of immigrants in these history textbooks by interrogating the interactions of their political, economic, social, and cultural structures. In Burke’s rhetoric as identification "social cohesion and control" are realized through apposition and opposition. In the following quotation Burke explains a salient element of his rhetoric as identification: “A is not identical with his colleague, B. But insofar as their interests are joined, A is identified with B. Or he may identify himself with B even when their interests are not joined, if he assumes that they are, or is persuaded to believe so.” Why are so many people in France and the U.S. persuaded that peoples displaced by war and poverty should be locked outside their borders? Through a Burkean analysis, I locate answers to this question in the historical master narrative evidenced in the high school French and U.S. history textbooks selected for this study--a narrative that rhetorically constructs skewed characterizations of immigrants.

This master thesis examines commercial video games and their relation to the concept of immersion and realism. Games as a communicative medium is quite a new area of interest within rhetorical research in Sweden. Most of the research conducted has, however, been focused on gaming and formation on opinion – games that explicitly tries to persuade the player, unlike commercial games that focus on entertainment, that is. But that does not mean that commercial games cannot influence us. From time to time we can read about video games in the press and the discussions they generate. Most recently, China has banned the Swedish video game Battlefield 4 when Chinese government officials was claiming that the game portrays the Chinese military in an unfair manner. Thus we seem to ascribe meaning to the things that happen to us in the digital world, and that what happens in the digital world also has effects in the physical world, which the example clearly implies. With all the advanced gaming consoles today, I often find that game journalists and game developers in many contexts are talking about realism and immersion as two concepts that make up a good gaming experience. But what is realism and immersion: what does it mean and how do they relate to each other, and what kind of rhetorical impact do they really have on the player in the game? Although there is more research about commercial games and rhetoric in an international context, there is no one to my knowledge that has been exploring the concept of immersion and realism in games in this way. In this essay I argue that it is crucial to understand immersion and realism in order to fully understand the video game medium and its persuasive aspects. By examining three popular games Battlefield 4, Grand theft auto V, and The last of us, and by applying the theories of Nelson Goodman and Kenneth Burke to my examination, my aim is to increase the understanding of the effect of realism and immersion in games. I find that there are several ways that rhetoric can help us in understanding the two concepts. Both realism and immersion could be seen as something that enables the creation of identification within the realms of gaming. My suggestion is that we should understand realism as something that is enabled by the use of symbols and that it is enabled through the use of procedures in gaming. While my other suggestion is to perceive immersion as something that transfer the player from the couch and into the game world through argumentation and narrative. Both realism and immersion is something that make the player feel that he or she is one with the characters, the events and the story in the game.

This thesis reconsiders Maurice Halbwachs' theory of collective memory in terms of rhetoric. My purpose is to examine specifically how fading generations conform the present to the past as they fight to maintain and defend their collective identities. Although rhetoric and memory studies have often focused on the complex matters of national collectives, Halbwachs was also concerned with the individual and his or her interaction among those groups that matter in everyday living and memory's role in generational shifts that slowly transform culture. Halbwachs' theory helps determine exactly how attempts at conflict resolution are sometimes guarded defenses against threats to one's personal and collective identity. In contrast to the generally accepted use of memory as selectively adapting the past for present purposes, this protection of identity may require the present to remain faithful to one's past. To examine how memory and rhetoric are complementary, I draw a parallel between Maurice Halbwachs' collective memory theory and Jim Corder's notion of individual identity as historical narrative. Then, in further retracing Kenneth Burke's influence on Corder's work, I also compare Halbwachs' social constructionist view of memory to Burke's theories of symbolicity and identification. Finally, I apply these theories to the recent 2012 debate in Ybor City, Florida over the Spanish spelling of Seventh Avenue in which passing generations struggle to preserve their identity and sense of belonging in the changing social milieu. In demonstrating how people seek a more permanent sense of identity articulated through memory, this debate offers an alternative to the theory of identity as a rhetorical performance negotiated in the present.