The rhetoric of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.: Comedy and context in tragic collision

Abstract

Several critics of the rhetoric of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., have noted changes in the content and style of his address toward the end of his career. None, though, have made a systematic generic assessment of those changes, nor have they linked such generic transformations to King's altered situation, the new type of movement he was then leading, the diminished state of his leadership as his efforts turned northward, nor the salutary and lasting effect King's rhetoric has had on America. This study examined the changes in King's public communication during the last year of his life by contrasting it, as drama, with public communication from his earlier reformist period. The study concluded that King moved from a mostly comic style, in 1955–1966, to a mostly tragic style, in 1967–1968, in selected major speeches. The analytical tools used were drawn from Kenneth Burke's pentad, his terms for order, and his theory of dramatic genres, as supplemented by the work of some of his interpreters.