tic" (10).
Burke began his work on the study and analysis of rhetorical theory in the 1920s and 1930s. In a career that spanned more than 70 years, Burke's thinking about the nature of communication continues to challenge the way writers, critics, and philosophers evaluate their work. His best-known theory, which he termed dramatism, continues to have an influence on serious writers in a wide variety of disciplines. James H. Klumpp contends, "Kenneth Burke's dramatistic theory revitalized contemporary American theories of rhetoric into new understandings of the ongoing rhetorical processes of societal construction" (148).
Brown observes, "Burke is a sophist who has considered the rational criticism of sophistry and would go even beyond that criticism" (7). Although many of his theories took decades to become accepted by the academic community, he began to enjoy a wider popularity during the 1980s, especially among academicians in the field of speech communications.
Burke writes, "Words are aspects of a much wider communicative context, most of which is
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