Pentadic Analysis of a Wyoming TV Show: The Rhetoric of Scene and Agency and Its Impact on Native American Communities

• Main Author: Meredith, Lora Leslie
• Format: Others
• Published: North Dakota State University 2019
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10365/29301

Kenneth Burke’s Pentadic ratios are used to analyze the rhetorical choices of characters from the Cheyenne Reservation and the Sheriff’s department in the television show Longmire. The ratios reveal scene as the focus of Native American rhetoric and agency as the focus of the Sheriff’s rhetoric. The rhetorical choices paradoxically give the Cheyenne’s independence from the local white culture, while simultaneously victimizing them as products of their environment. In contrast, the Anglo deflection from scene speaks to the local law prioritizing their interventions on the reservation over Native jurisdiction. The rhetorical choices suggest the underlying value systems that cause conflicts between Native and Anglo communities and account for the patterns each culture pursues for justice. The show gives value to those narratives that deflect from land to designate jurisprudence, and depicts the disempowerment of those Native communities that rely on the legal boundaries of their reservation for their autonomy.