Scoffing at the enemy: the burlesque frame in the rhetoric of Ralph David Abernathy

• Autores: Gary Steven Selby
• Localización: Southern communication journal, ISSN 1041-794X, Vol. 70, nº 2 (INVIERNO), 2005, págs. 134-145
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • This essay employs Burke's conception of symbolic frames to examine four speeches that Ralph David Abernathy gave during civil rights movement campaigns in Albany, Georgia, and Birmigham, Alabama, in 1962 and 1963. In constrast to Martin Luther King's use of the comic frame, Abernathy consistently portrayed Whites from the perspective of burlesque humor, inviting a reaction to them not of fear or pity but of scoffing laugther. This use of the burlesque frame enabled Abernathy to articulate the injustices Blacks had suffered at the hands of Whites and to minimize tha riks Blacks faced by continuing in further public demonstration. His discourse points to the importance of burlesque within social movement rhetoric.