A Rhetorical Criticism Of News Reports:From Kenneth Burke’s Dramatistic Perspective

Rhetorical criticism is an important field of rhetoric at present. Among many rhetorical criticism modes, Kenneth Burke’s dramatistic criticism is one of the most popular and most frequently applied modes. It is of great effectiveness in discovering hidden motives. Great progress has been made on the researches of Burke’s dramatistic criticism abroad, while in China few comprehensive and systematic studies on it have been made. Though news report is an important genre, few researches on it have been conducted from Kenneth Burke’s dramatistic perspective.So this study, based on Burke’s dramatism, tries to show how dramatistic criticism mode operates in news reports analysis as well as demonstrate its practical value in discourse analysis.Dramatistic criticism aims to explore how human beings form attitudes on others and induce them to take some actions. So the following two steps are necessary for dramatistic criticism: the first is to reveal hidden motives with the application of the dramatic pentad theory and the second to explore the realization of hidden motives with the application of the identification theory. Based on this, this research selects two news reports from China Daily and the other two from The Washington Post on China’s oil rig 981 as the research corpus. First, Burke’s dramatic pentad theory is applied to discover hidden motives of China and America and make a comparison between them. Then the identification theory is adopted to explore different identification strategies applied to realize hidden motives and get readers’ identification. Thereby how dramatistic criticism mode operates will be revealed.This research shows that motives are hidden in news reports and China and America shows different motives for the same event. Language, motives and ideology are inseparable in news reports. As the representatives of the governments, China Daily intends to create a positive image for China, while The Washington Post intends to create a negative image for China. China’s motives are to make readers believe that China’s drilling operations in the Xisha Islands are legitimate, and China is innocentin this dispute, so Vietnam should be punished and take responsibility for this issue.America’s motives are to convince readers to believe that both in history and under the current situation, China is the cause of conflicts and Vietnam is the victim.Besides, the rhetor of America tries to attract the international countries’ vigilance on China. So readers should increase their critical consciousness when reading news reports. As for the rhetorical strategies, both the substantial strategies and formal strategies are applied to get readers’ identification.