Publication Date

3-1987

Advisor(s) - Committee Chair

Burt Feintuch, Camilla Collins, Carl Kell

Degree Program

Department of Folk Studies and Anthropology

Degree Type

Master of Arts

Abstract

A rhetorical theory of folklore was used to interpret how summer camp staffers use a folk drama as a means of identification and as a type of artistic expression. The performance was analyzed for ethnographic information using Kenneth Burke's theory of dramatism and for artistic techniques using Burke's theory of the psychology of audience. The dramatistic pentad contextualized the performance, and this information was analyzed for motives through the delineation of dramatistic ratios. The skit's syntagmatic structure was outlined using Burke's description of five aspects of form. The analysis demonstrates that meaning is emergent through both the content and form of the symbolic action of the folk drama. Identification is achieved primarily through the presentation of motives. The aesthetic experience is created primarily through the use of form. The interpretation demonstrates that the skit's content and form can not be understood apart from each other and that understanding content and form is but one aspect of the performance's meaning.

Disciplines

Anthropology | Folklore | Linguistic Anthropology | Social and Behavioral Sciences

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