PUBLISHED IN ISSUE 1 | FALL 2021
Band-Aids Don’t Fix Bullet Holes: A Pentadic Analysis of Emma Gonzalez’s “We Call B.S.” Speech
Joel Reyes
Joel Reyes is a two-time Great Plains Honors Council Dennis Boe Award winner and member of the Lone Star Honors College.
Emma Gonzalez speaks at an anti-gun rally after the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas Highschool (YouTube)
ABSTRACT
This research investigates the rhetoric surrounding gun violence in schools, in particular, from survivors of school shootings. On Wednesday, February 14, 2018, Nikolas Cruz murdered seventeen individuals and injured seventeen others at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School using an automatic rifle. Traumatized by this event and angered by the notion that this situation could have been avoided, survivor Emma Gonzalez would recite a speech, titled “We Call B.S.,” at a Ft. Lauderdale anti-gun rally, only three days after the incident, to speak on the issue of United States gun violence. This research conducts a rhetorical analysis of Gonzalez’s speech through the lens of Kenneth Burke’s dramatistic pentad. First, a discussion of Burke’s theory of dramatism, in which he argues that any motivation cannot have a single cause, and
its application in various media and speeches, is explored. Then, Burke’s pentad is applied to Gonzalez’s speech, analyzing its underlying motivations and revealing a dominant ratio of scene-agent. The dominant ratio and the philosophical system of materialism imply that her underlying motivation concerns informing the youth on the current United States gun crisis and inspiring them to take action against insufficient gun policy. This study argues that Gonzalez’s speech participates in a larger conversation about the impact gun violence has on young adults.
SUMMARY
INTRODUCTION
This research conducts a rhetorical analysis of Emma Gonzalez’s “We Call B.S.” speech using Kenneth Burke’s dramatistic pentad, revealing a dominant ratio of scene-agent and the philosophical system of materialism. This study argues that Gonzalez’s speech participates in a larger conversation about the impact gun violence has on young adults.
On Valentine’s Day 2018, high schooler Emma Gonzalez would witness shooter Nikolas Cruz, a former student, killing seventeen individuals and injuring seventeen more at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, using an automatic rifle. For many, this situation appeared as yet another senseless tragedy that would contribute to the multitude of statistics on United States shootings. For Gonzalez, the incident made gun control personal. Haunted by this experience and angered by how this scenario could have been avoided,
Gonzalez took to the Ft. Lauderdale streets at a Florida anti-gun rally, three days after the shooting, to not only speak about the conditions that enabled this incident to occur, but to demand a change in the system of firearm purchase. In her speech, Gonzalez explains her hopes that through collective action, with the youth at the forefront, true change could be initiated in current U.S. gun policy.
Literary theorist Kenneth Burke argues in his book The Philosophy of Literary Form that while words are only one part of larger communicative contexts, words themselves have a nature of their own; communication is interpretative, for it is a “social structure of meanings by which the individual forms himself” (108). Words are modes of action. In Grammar of Motives, he argues that human action is complex, ambiguous, and conflicting; it has many competing explanations. But, he suggests, the way one narrates reveals how one
perceives the world and their underlying motivations for any dramatic situation. He presents the Pentad, a heuristic that helps us understand written and spoken language by investigating motivation. Using Gonzalez’s speech as a case study, an application of Burke’s Pentad provides an opportunity to investigate rhetoric surrounding gun violence in schools, and, in particular, from survivors of school shootings. Given that between 2009 and 2018 there were 180 school shootings and 356 victims in the United States, according to a study by CNN, paying attention to the words and reactions of youth who were personally involved in these events warrants study.
In this essay, I first review relevant literature concerning Burke’s Pentad. I then apply a pentadic reading on Gonzalez’s speech, explaining the identified pentadic terms, the dominant ratio (scene-agent), and how she uses external stimuli (personal excerpts, interviews, Twitter, and politics) to expand upon the scenic term. Then, I briefly relate my pentadic reading to Burke’s critique on the “brutalizing” scene-agent ratio. Finally, through the pentadic terms and the materialist perspective, I argue that this pentadic criticism reveals Gonzalez’s underlying motivation of inspiration and explanation.
LITERATURE REVIEW
Pentadic Criticism
Drawing from his theory of dramatism, Burke provides the foundation for pentadic criticism in his book A Grammar of Motives. Burke describes dramatism as a tool to explore the motives of human action, including those of a rhetor of an artifact. This artifact represents the tangible evidence of an act, ranging from text, film, and even canvas (Foss 7, 445). Sonja Foss explains that Burke’s theories emphasize the idea that humans create and show their message similarly to the presentation of a play (455). As a result, the basis of application involves a critic identifying five key terms, representative of basic elements of drama, within the artifact. By looking at an artifact, one should know what took place, in thought or deed (act), the background of the act (scene), what person or kind of person performed the act (agent), what means or instruments he used (agency), and the purpose (Burke xv).
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The Pentad is most useful when the critic pairs the pentadic terms into ratios in order to discover their relationships and influence between one another. These ratios are important
because they are “at the very center of motivational assumptions” (11). The critic initiates the process simply by pairing the pentadic terms, selecting from 20 possible combinations. In the ratio, the critic looks at the first pentadic term to see if it affects the second pentadic term. Through the processing of each of the ratios, a critic should discover that one pentadic term (or ratio) not only dominates the artifact and influences the other pentadic elements, but reveals a corresponding philosophical system. Within this system, more explanations about the definition of a situation, its meaning for rhetors and audiences, and possible consequences appear (Foss 461). By looking at the pentadic term(s) the rhetor focuses upon, a critic better comprehends how they restructure the audience’s view of reality, thus uncovering a motive (Ling 466). Critics can discover that a rhetor “may deflect attention from scene matters by situating the motive of an act in the agent” or even “deflect attention from the criticism of personal motives by deriving an act or attitude” (Burke 17).
Pentadic Criticism and Various Applications
Burkean theory, including pentadic criticism, is a versatile methodology for analyzing artifacts beyond literature text. For example, Barry Brummett’s essay, “Electric Literature as Equipment for Living: Haunted House Film,” expresses the plausibility of Burkean theory on “non-traditional” artifacts such as “architecture, music, films, etc.,” noting that “although Burke is mainly concerned with the study of literature in the traditional sense, he occasionally hints at the relevance of his methods for studying nonverbal or extraverbal communication media” (247). Critics have interpreted media such as Thelma and Louise (movie), SpongeBob
SquarePants (animated cartoon), and Bioshock (video games) (Peplow; Griffin; Bourgonjon et al.). Some explained that understanding the theory behind the pentad proves useful towards success in English and Speech courses (Griffin; Nelson), while others claim that the pentad contains relevance in argumentative theory (Knuepper 898).
Mari Boor Tonn, Valerie A. Endress, and John N. Diamond not only applied pentadic criticism to collections of media coverage on the death of Karen Wood in a hunting accident but simultaneously argued that a third coordinating term (agent) appears as often as their established ratio (scene-act). Applying the agent as the third dominant term allowed the critics to understand the blaming of Wood for her own death, through the physical and symbolic scene (Tonn et. al 169-170). They also employ Burke’s philosophical system, arguing that the “act and the physical scene itself become forcefully transfigured through symbolic territory, which always combines both physical and metaphysical elements” (174). While applied in a way different from Burke’s initial intentions, all aforementioned critics still uncovered an underlying motivation.
Pentadic Criticism and Speeches
Researchers have applied pentadic criticism to a wide range of speeches, from Senator Ted Kennedy’s speech at Chappaquiddick, to Congressional testimonies from celebrities such as Katie Couric, to even former President Obama’s farewell address (Ling; Darr and Strine; Obama), in an effort to generate insight into rhetor’s actions. Looking at these previous pentadic analyses on speeches shows the potential usefulness in its application to the “We Call B.S.” speech.
David Ling’s analysis of Senator Kennedy’s speech at Chappaquiddick explains Kennedy’s emphasis on the controlling nature of the scene that caused the car crash and
subsequent death of his assistant, Mary Jo Kopechne. In his particular analysis, he divides Senator Kennedy’s speech into two parts, applying a different set of pentadic terms for each. The nature of the scene takes precedence in the first half, but in the latter, the speech shifts to agent. The agents now become the people of Massachusetts, who must make the decision of whether or not to forgive Senator Kennedy for his actions (Ling 467-470). In R. Chase Dunn’s
analysis of former President Barack Obama’s farewell address, he explores Obama’s use of purpose to encourage continual participation in civic and political duties. Dunn interprets Obama’s speech into three separate strands containing different featured ratios, but they come together to demonstrate a continuity of purpose (81-83).
The pentad’s significance lies in its versatility. It is a way to interpret human behavior by revealing underlying motives. Whether through books, movies, and even television shows, this methodology effectively extracts a rhetor’s intentions through any medium. Now that there is a firm understanding of the pentad and how it can be applied, this paper will explore its application on Emma Gonzalez’s “We Call B.S.” speech, recited on February 17, 2018. While initially spoken at an anti-gun rally outside of a federal courthouse, CNN’s Youtube channel would later upload this speech, expanding its overall accessibility (Segal and Kelkar). Gonzalez would go on to speak again at the March for Our Lives event on March 24, 2018. However, for the purposes of this essay, the analysis will solely apply to the first speech in February.
ANALYSIS
Gonzalez’s speech can be divided into two significant portions. In the first half, Gonzalez expresses the responsibility students have found themselves in to change current gun laws. She
then focuses the latter on specific social and political conditions found within the United States that contributed to Cruz committing this mass shooting.
After an application of the Pentad, the following terms were identified in Gonzales’s speech:
Agent
The current generation (youth)
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Agency
Preparing thorough arguments, voting, petitioning, protesting, speaking about the issue
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Act
Advocating for stricter gun regulations
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Scene
The United States, lenient laws, government, and citizen inaction
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Purpose
To change current circumstances and laws
Non-Dominant Terms
While the act remains inexplicitly stated, instances of the agency appear sporadically throughout the speech. Gonzalez formats the act, instead, to take form in the various agencies in which one may advocate for stricter gun regulations. Survivors of the Stoneman Douglas shooting use social media, “posting, tweeting, doing interviews and talking to people” about gun regulations from a personal stance. Gonzalez urges people her age to “call B.S.” to not only naïve politicians, but notions that kids are “too young to understand how the government works.” When confronted by adults who belittle their knowledge, Gonzalez exclaims that students must study their “notes to make sure that [their] arguments based on politics and political history are watertight”. In her final remarks, she urges those who believe her to register to vote, contact local congresspeople, and most candid of all, “give them a piece of your mind.” While all aforementioned actions (agencies) are executed differently, Gonzalez relates each of them to the ultimate act of expressing need to reform current gun laws.
The purpose (changing the current circumstances and laws) appears the least explicitly referenced. The biggest coded example in Gonzalez’s speech occurs in the middle, when she states, “We are going to be the last mass shooting. Just like Tinker v. Des Moines, we are going to change the law.” She hopes that through persistent execution of the act, true reform may occur to ensure that mass shooting accidents in the U.S. never happen again.
While Gonzalez focuses on different terms for her speech, act, agency, and purpose all play a role in how and why the youth may incite genuine reform.
Dominant Terms
With the remaining terms, a scene-agent ratio dominates the entirety of Gonzalez’s speech. The agents (the youth) pursuing the act of advocating for stricter gun regulations would not occur without the scene (lenient regulations, government, and citizen inaction). Thus, the scene dominates over the agent.
Instances within Gonzalez’s speech further indicate the youth as the primary participants in the act. She explains that Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School will appear in textbooks as the final mass shooting in the United States, due to the “tireless effort of the school board, the faculty members…and most of all the students.” In her concluding remarks, she explains that “us kids seem to be the only ones who notice” corruption in political leaders. These examples help position the youth at the center of the gun control issue and more heavily involved with the act. While the individuals at the Ft. Lauderdale rally ranged in various ages, Gonzalez’s speech seemed to have a specific target for her generation. In her interpretation, adults and government officials have done little in regard to initiating gun law reform. Rather than continuing this perpetual cycle, she hopes to ultimately break it, and create permanent reform on gun regulations through the actions of the youth.
Some of the most detailed findings regard the scene within the dominant ratio. While the United States encompasses the general scene, Gonzalez uses various stimuli to explore different aspects of the scene. The first and second stimuli involved an excerpt from a teacher and an interview. Gonzalez uses these stimuli to convey the perceived nature of American adults, who turn away from mass shooting incidents, due to their acquired comfortability with gun violence. The third stimuli refers to a specific tweet from the social media platform Twitter. This tweet expressed that many signals indicated that the shooter, Nikolas Cruz, was not mentally sound. Gonzalez responds to this tweet, stating that many students did report his actions to authorities “again and again” but nothing significant happened to change his behavior.
She uses this tweet as a vehicle to express the explicit scene around Cruz. Gonzalez explains that the fault should place itself more on the people who “let him buy the guns in the first place,” and “who didn’t take them [guns] away from him when they knew he expressed homicidal tendencies.” For the final stimuli, she expresses the relationship between politicians and the National Rifle Association (NRA). Gonzalez focuses specifically on President Trump and Senator Chuck Grassley, who not only took donations from the NRA, but interfered with laws that could have prevented the Stoneman Douglas shooting from occurring. This portion of the speech focuses on the scene surrounding United States government leaders, who, according to Gonzalez, further contributed to mass gun violence in America through changes in law. While Gonzalez uses these stimuli to focus on different aspects of the United States, they come together to form a generalized scene that has catalyzed mass shooting incidents.
A final point of consideration concerns the explained scene-agent ratio of Emma Gonzalez’s speech. Burke explains and criticizes the logic of a specific application of the scene-agent ratio in A Grammar of Motives. In this application, the scene contains a “brutalizing” effect upon the people indigenous to the scene (7). In other words, the negative or restrictive nature of the scene also represents itself within the agents that inhabit that scene. As Burke states, “this restricting of the scene calls in turn for a corresponding restriction upon personality or role” (7). For instance, in a pentadic criticism of 19th century Mormon rhetoric, Richard Benjamin Crosby argues that through the active role of the United States in Mormon religious practices, God (agent) was bounded by the United States political and cultural landscape (scene) (16). This analysis, however, suggests Gonzalez completely contrasts this noted application of the scene-agent ratio. While she creates the scene of the United States in a negative connotation, citing lenient gun laws, government inaction, and frequent mass shootings, these “brutalizing” characteristics do not directly translate into the youth. Instead, the scene juxtaposes the youth, who Gonzalez presents as dynamic and determined individuals who will change the scene.
Revealing Motivation
With the terms now identified, one sees the motivation behind Gonzalez’s speech concerns inspiring and informing the youth. Using the scene-agent ratio allowed Gonzalez to expose United States gun culture. By explaining multiple, negative facets of the scene through relevant media, she provides concrete evidence explaining why change needs to occur. She focuses especially on the youth as the agents of this change.
Understanding this motivation, one further understands why Gonzalez emphasizes the agent over other pentadic terms. Many people her age may not know much about the ongoing
controversy surrounding gun reform. The use of statistics, personal reflections, and discrepancies within politics provide an introduction into the current conversation of gun control. Additionally, Gonzalez explains several actions the youth have already taken, such as participating in interviews and talking to congresspeople, in the current journey to gun law reform. Seeing other younger individuals taking such fervent action may inspire other youth to take the steps within their own lives to change this ongoing problem.
With the identified dominant term (scene), the philosophical system of materialism plays a role in underlying motivation. This system regards all facts and reality as explainable in terms of either matter and motion or physical laws (Foss 461). This concept of motion or physical law loosely correlates with Gonzalez’s motivation. While not a “physical law,” she constructs the current gun laws of the United States as ineffective and counterintuitive. For instance, Gonzalez explains that in the United States, not only does one not need a permit to purchase a gun, but one also does not need to register it. As a result, the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School (the reality) may be understood as a direct consequence of United States gun laws (the “physical” law). This materialist perspective further expresses her intentions of explanation, showing that the scene plays an active role in gun violence.
Lastly, the dominant ratio and materialist system further clarifies the minimizing of the terms of act and agency in the speech. If the youth remains uninformed about the current gun crisis, giving them ways (agency) to pursue advocation for gun reform (act) will not serve particularly useful.
CONCLUSION
I applied a pentadic reading upon Emma Gonzalez’s “We Call B.S.” speech, identifying the pentadic terms, the dominant scene-agent ratio, and how the dominant ratio supports Burke’s criticism of the “brutalizing” scene-agent ratio. When looking at the non-dominant terms, the various agencies that came together formed the overall act. Furthermore, through use of multiple stimuli, such as interviews and tweets, Gonzalez provided a more comprehensive look at the scene. From the explicit interactions around Cruz to the political stance on gun reform, Gonzalez put these stimuli together to express how the United States laws may accelerate gun violence incidents. Finally, through the specific use of these pentadic terms and applying the materialist perspective, I argue that Gonzalez promoted a message of inspiring and informing the youth.
Gonzales locates her generation at the center of the conversation regarding gun control in the United States. In doing so, this pentadic application reveals that Gonzales defamiliarizes and reframes the debate surrounding the second amendment by situating the youth as integral and revolutionary participants in the conversation. She has also moved the conversation beyond present political clichés about the inefficiencies and counterintuitive nature of a
culture created by current gun laws, to a public space of critique about received notions on the role of youth in the public sphere. In short, the application reveals that she has presented the issue of gun control in a new light while maintaining the sense of urgency this issue demands.
The analysis opens up discussion for future research. The scene-agent ratio suggests rationale for understanding the underlying motivation of youth activists, who often incorporate scenic statements into their call to action. Further application of pentadic criticism on speeches by youth activists like Greta Thunberg and Malala Yousafzai may reveal similar patterns to Gonzalez. Out of the scope of pentadic criticism, future research may also explore the power of social media, as it has provided a virtual means of activism never seen before, and magnified Gonzalez’s overall reach.
Whether one completely agrees with Gonzalez’s stance or not, or how she conveys her intended (or unintended) message, there remains no doubt that something, whether it be law or conversation, needs to change so that events like Stoneman Douglas never happen again.
WORKS CITED
“10 Years. 180 School Shootings. 356 Victims.” CNN. Accessed 4 February 2021.
Bourgonjon, Jeroen et al. “From Counter-Strike to Counter-Statement: Using Burke's Pentad as a Tool for Analysing Video Games.” Digital Creativity, vol. 22, no. 2, 2011, pp. 91–102., doi:10.1080/14626268.2011.578577.
Brummett, Barry. “Electric Literature as Equipment for Living: Haunted House Films.” Critical Studies in Mass Communication, vol. 2, no. 3, Sept. 1985, p. 247. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1080/15295038509360084.
Burke, Kenneth. A Grammar of Motives, Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1945, pp. xv-17.
---. The Philosophy of Literary Form: Studies in Symbolic Action, Third Edition. University of California Press, 1973.
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Foss, Sonja K. Rhetorical Criticism: Exploration & Practice, Second Edition, Prospect Heights: Waveland Press, 1996.
Griffin, Cindy L. “Teaching Rhetorical Criticism with Thelma and Louise.” Communication Education, vol. 44, no. 2, Apr. 1995, p. 165. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1080/03634529509379008.
Ling, David A. “A Pentadic Analysis of Senator Edward Kennedy’s Address to the People of Massachusetts, July 25, 1969.” Rhetorical Criticism: Exploration & Practice, Second Edition. 1996, pp. 464–471.
Nelson, Jeffrey. “Using the Burkean Pentad in the Education of the Basic Speech Student.” Communication Education, vol. 32, no. 1, Jan. 1983, p. 63. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1080/03634528309378514.
Segal, Corinne, and Kamala Kelkar. “At Fort Lauderdale Rally against Gun Violence, Impassioned Calls for Change and Anger at Politicians.” PBS, 17 Feb. 2018,
Tonn, Mari Boor, et al. “Hunting and Heritage on Trial: A Dramatistic Debate over Tragedy, Tradition, and Territory.” Quarterly Journal of Speech, vol. 79, no. 2, May 1993, p. 165. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1080/00335639309384027.
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