This paper is a study of the theoretical evidence supporting the notion of developing questions as a means of increasing a writer's analytical ability and facility for writing clearly. Specific questions that follow a carefully composed framework allow both the writer and the reader the opportunity to study what is being said and how it is being expressed. Questioning encourages both to identify the problem being addressed, develop valid hypotheses regarding a relevant response, collect and analyze data in support of those proposals, synthesize responses, and formulate valid conclusions. In some respects, this type of analysis is an attempt to use scientific methodology to achieve a literary goal. Such an approach involves asking a series of questions prompted by five key concepts. For the journalist, these concepts are most often phrased as who, what, where, when, and how. In Kenneth Burke's groundbreaking theoretical approach, an understanding of the act of communication which he termed dramatism, these five questions are tied to his concept that communication is symbolic, dramatic action. For him, the five concepts lie within understanding the agent, the act, the scene, the agency, and the purpose. Other theorists, especially Howard Bloom and Wayne C. Booth, have studied and expanded on dramatistic methods and other approaches which encourage the writer and the reader to generate questions in order to more clearly understand and analyze what is being communicated. Though this paper concentrates on written communication, Burke's theories in particular can also be applied to and used to analyze oral communication quite effectively.
Analyzing the written word first requires an understanding of rhetoric as the term is used in the context of a philosophical examination of communication. Monroe C. Beardsley defines rhetorical communication: "To regard a piece of language from the rhetorical point of view is (in one good sen...