1. As a rhetorically sensitive scholar, Bormann defined SCT terms carefully. Can
you distinguish between dramatizing messages and fantasies? Do you understand
why it’s a difference that makes a difference?
2. Some critics dismiss SCT as a cookie-cutter approach to group analysis. Could
this be said of most social science theories? Bormann regarded the charge as
a compliment.35 Can you figure out why he was pleased rather than offended?
3. Bormann insisted that SCT is an objective theory that’s valid any time and in
any culture, but that its methodology, fantasy theme analysis, is interpretive. Do
you regard SCT as a better objective or interpretive theory? Why?
4. Bormann was intrigued with a T-shirt that proclaims, “I have given up my
search for truth. Now I want to find a good fantasy.”36 Based on what you’ve
read, does this slogan reflect the symbolic world of SCT advocates? Does it
reflect yours?
