Earnest Bormann

Fantasty Theme Analysis & Symbolic Convergence Theory

Bormann: Central Assumptions

Fantasy Theme Analysis

Fantasy Theme Concepts

Fantasy

The activity of dramatizing.

Dramatizing Message

The type of communication in which the fantasy occurs.

Fantasy Theme

The content of the dramatizing message, chained by participants.

Fantasy Types

Repetition of particular scenerios that stress a specific ideological emphasis.

Rhetorical Vision

Sharing a fantasy theme and types across a wider community.

Rhetorical Community

Gets made via shared rhetorical visions.

Symbolic Convergence: Genesis

Symbolic Convergence

Doesn't require tracking of fantasy chains or of small group processes.

Locates sets of symbols in diverse communities; shows how the meanings for those symbols can converge.

Example: Donald Shields on Malcom X.

When X first presents these, they sound radical and scary to white people. But X used themes which are consonant with mainstream American culture, so in time, the symbols came to mean the same things to the diverse communities which heard them.

A good online paper about symbolic convergence theory: Linking the Immediate with the Mass-Mediated Theatre in Organizations: The Case for Symbolic Convergence Theory Brad Jackson, Associate Professor,The University of Calgary

Jackson's paper

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