ABSTRACT
Kenneth Burke has commented, "the whole overall 'picture' is but a construct of our symbol-systems". Burke sees the use of language and communication to convey information as only a secondary function. Act, scene, agent, agency and purpose constitute Burke's dramatistic pentad. As students of communication Burke draws attention to the importance of the forms behind the creation of symbolic action. Erving Goffman used Gregory Bateson's notion of frame to describe how "staged interaction" is presented and audienced. Gregory Bateson claims, are "an instruction to the viewer that he should not extend the premises which obtain between the figures within the picture to the wall paper behind it". In a sense the picture frame is external evidence for a psychological process by which audiences limit and edit experience of the world. Gaye Tuchman found a similar use of framing conventions in the organization of news, both in newspapers and in television news-casting.
