Kenneth Burke and the Symbolic Motivation Move
Weeks 2-3: Kenneth Burke
Although Kenneth Burke is not the font of all contemporary rhetoric, no other
thinker lies at the intersection of so many of the rhetorical problems we will
address. Consequently, I have decided to begin our examination through contemporary
theory by reading Burke's work. The Gusfield volume is an editing of Burke that
others have found an excellent introduction. Do not rely on the secondary readings
on Burke. Read the Gusfield volume first. Only then will you be able to judge
the secondary work.
Questions to stimulate thought:
- How would you characterize the difference between Burke's viewpoint on rhetoric
and traditional viewpoints?
- Differentiate traditional and Burkean definitions of the following terms:
"rhetoric," "motive," "action," "form."
- Develop a Burkean model for communication to substitute for the "speaker-message-audience"
model.
- Explain what Burke means that the key term for the old rhetoric was "persuasion";
for the new rhetoric "identification."
Some Terminology:
You should know the following terms and how they are used in Burke:
- Action vs. Motion
- Identification
- Dialectic (as per Burke)
- Motives
- Drama
- Victimage
- Purification
- Mortification
- hierarchy
- acceptance and rejection
- guilt
- purification
- redemption
- transformation
- pentad & ratios
Basic Readings:
* Burke, Kenneth. On Symbols and Society. Ed. Joseph Gusfield. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1989..
Secondary Reading
Weeks 4-5: The Dramatistic Move
A cluster of theorists have developed approaches around dramatistic
assumptions. Burke is the first and the primary theorist in this cluster,
but the others are important to know. Several moves that these theories
have in common define the cluster:
- Rhetorical form. They punctuate accounts of rhetorical transactions
with the help of rhetorical form. This constructs coherence in rhetoric
around patterns in discourse rather than around the rhetor. Thus, they
study the clustering of language forms in a culture.
- Symbolic action. These theories primarily locate rhetoric in
directing the flow of social action rather than the initiation of action
or theories of knowledge. Consequently motivation is a central concern.
In the heyday of behaviorism, motivation had been understood as located
in biological drives and had been punctuated as an account of the initiation
of behavior. A sociological school -- the symbolic interactionists -- offered
an alternative. They began by rejecting the completeness of the biologically
based theory, arguing that humans had essentially identical biology yet
in any given situation humans react many different ways. Then, they asserted
a methodological point: the most interesting questions of human motivation
are to be answered not with an account of the initiation of action but
with an explanation of the variety of human action.
- Culture-creating power of language. In these theories, motivational
patterns are tied to cultures rather than to biological individuals or
the species in general.
On these three linchpins developed a theory of human motivation as symbolic.
Because symbols were given a central place in motivation, the methodological
moves of the symbolic interactionists had opened the opportunity to study
the clustering of rhetoric in forms, and the practical accomplishment of
rhetoric as an invoking of these forms to influence human action.
Clusters: Dramatism; Logology; Fantasy Theme Analysis;
Ideograph; Narrative.
Questions to stimulate thought:
- Consider the dramatistic move as a whole as a web of different ideas and
smaller moves flowing out from Burke. What idea sets do you think distinguish
themselves from the main stream of the dramatistic move, and what idea sets
do you think stay within "orthodox" dramatism? If you were going
to make a flowchart, diagram, or "family tree" of the dramatistic
move, what would that look like?
- How does Burke talk of ideology in /On Symbols and Society/ (p. 205-210,
303-315)? What have communication theorists done with this conception? do
you think he has a clearly delineated stance on ideology? How have our conceptions
of this term changed or appropriated Burke's?
- -How do we reconcile Burke's seeming refusal to address notions of power
in his work? How have later theorists entangled themselves in this debate?
- How does Burke talk of ideology in A Rhetoric of Motives and his
1947 article in Accent magazine entitled, "Ideology and Myth?" What
have communication theorists done with this conception? Do you think he has
a clearly delineated stance on ideology? How have our conceptions of this
term changed or appropriated Burke's?
- How can the synthetic approaches of dramatism be reconciled with the analytic
theories of argumentation? Is there a "rapprochement" as Dr. Klumpp
suggests?
- An ongoing thread in dramatistic and Burkean thought revolves around the
issue of the "body" and "material reality?" What kind
of wrestling has been done over Burke's explanations of these issues? Can
dramatism adequately account for such bodies, or does it merely exist for
the primacy of language above all?
- Much of criticism sent Burke's way has revolved around his "modernist
thinking" as well as his lack of treatment of gender issues. How do we
approach this subject: Is Burke a product of his times, or does his silence
on these issues constitute a real lack of credibility in dramatistic theory?
How have scholars defended/attack Burke in this debate?
- Burke insisted that dramatism was literal and not metaphoric. What does
he mean? Have theorists followed this insistence or gone down another path?
How has dramatism been appropriated metaphorically? Literally?
- Scholars in communication and, in particular, rhetorical theory have been
concerned since the days of Burke about the concept of agency. How much is
human action constrained by Burke's conceptions of dramatism? What kinds of
critical responses have evolved these notions? How have postmodern notions
of subjectivity incorporated or commented upon Burke's project?
- Has narrative lost its status as a paradigm? Have theorists come to accept
that all rhetoric can be viewed in narrative terms? Or has it simply become
a critical tool and less a true theoretical lens?
When these theories argue that rhetoric shapes action, how does their vision
differ from those who argue that ideology shapes action?
- How does the place of the following in a rhetorical theory change with the
altered assumptions of dramatistic theories of rhetoric: message, speaker,
motive, appeal, audience?
- Differentiate knowledge-based theories of rhetoric from action-based theories.
- In Bormann's work, define Symbolic Convergence theory? fantasies? fantasy
themes? rhetorical visions?
Basic Readings: **= Please read these by Week 4 (an inquiry week); * = Please read by Week 5 (a discussion and argument week)
- Dewey, John. Human Nature and Conduct. 1922; New York: Modern
Library, 1930. 112-14.
- Mills, C. Wright. "Situated Actions and Vocabularies of Motives."
American Sociological Review 5 (October 1940): 904-13.
- Burke, Kenneth. On Symbols and Society. Ed. Joseph Gusfield.
Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1989.
- ** Bormann, Ernest G. "Fantasy and Rhetorical Vision: The Rhetorical
Criticism of Social Reality." Quarterly Journal of Speech 58 (December
1972): 396-407.
- ** McGee, Michael C. "The 'Ideograph': A Link Between Rhetoric and
Ideology." Quarterly Journal of Speech 66 (February 1980): 1-16.
- ** Fisher, Walter. "Narration as a Human Communication Paradigm:
The Case of Public Moral Argument." Communication Monographs 51
(March 1984): 1-22.
Some Additional Reading:
- * Brock, Bernard L. "Rhetorical Criticism: A Burkeian Approach Revisited.
In Methods of Rhetorical Criticism: A Twenthieth-Century Perspective
3rd Edition, Revised (Detroit: Wayne State U Press, 1990) 183-195.
- ** Klumpp, James F. "A Rapprochement Between Dramatism and Argumentation."
Argumentation and Advocacy. 29 (1993): 148-64.
- Klumpp, James F. "'Dancing With Tears in My Eyes': Celebrating the
Life and Work of Kenneth Burke." Southern Communication Journal
61 (Fall 1995): 1-10.
- ** Conrad, Charles, and Elizabeth A. Macom. "Re-Visiting Kenneth
Burke: Dramatism/Logology and the Problem of Agency." Southern Communication
Journal 61 (Fall 1995): 11-28.
- Forum. . Brock, Bernard. "Limits of the Burkean System." Quarterly
Journal of Speech 78 (August 1992): 347-48; Celeste Michelle Condit. "Post-Burke:
Transcending the Sub-stance of Dramatism.: Quarterly Journal of Speech
78 (August 1992): 349-55; ** James W. Chesebro. "Extensions of the
Burkean System." Quarterly Journal of Speech 78 (August 1992):
356-68. Response: Phillip K. Tompkins and George Cheney. Quarterly
Journal of Speech 79 (May 1993): 225-31. Rejoinder: Celeste Condit; James
W. Chesebro. Quarterly Journal of Speech 80 (February 1994): 77-90.
- Goffman, Erving. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. New York:
Doubleday, 1959. (pgs. 1-34)
- ** Edelman, Murray. Constructing the
Political Spectacle. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1988. (pgs. 1-11)
- Crable, Bryan. "Burke's Perspective on Perspectives: Grounding Dramatism
in the Representative Anecdote." Quarterly Journal of Speech 86
(August 2000): 318-33.
- Crable, Bryan. "Symbolizing Motion: Burke's Dialectic and Rhetoric
of the Body." Rhetoric Review ; 22 (2003): 121.
- King, Andrew. "Burkean Theory Reborn: How Burkean Studies Assimilated
Its Postmodern Critics." Rhetoric Review 20 (2001): 32-37.
- Tonn , Mari Boor, Valerie A. Endress, and David Diamond. “Hunting and Heritage
on Trial: A Dramatistic Debate Over Tragedy, Tradition, and Territory.” Quarterly
Journal of Speech 79 (1993): 165-81.
- Brock, Bernard L. Kenneth Burke and Contemporary European Thought.
Tuscaloosa: U of Alabama,1995.
- Selzer, Jack. Kenneth Burke in Greenwich Village: Conversing with the
Moderns, 1915-1931. Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 1996.
- Warnick, Barbara. "The Narrative Paradigm: Another Story." Quarterly
Journal of
Speech 73, no. 2 (May 1987): 172-82.
- Wolin, Ross. The Rhetorical Imagination of Kenneth Burke. Columbia:
USC Press, 2001.
Recent Work (selected by Tim Barney and James Gilmore):
- Anderson, Dana. “Questioning the Motives of Habituated Action: Burke and
Bourdieu on Practice. ” Philosophy and Rhetoric 37 (2003):
55-74.
- Beck, Cheryl T. "Pentadic Cartography: Mapping Birth Trauma Narratives."
Qualitative
Health Research 16, no. 4 (April 2006): 453-66.
- Boje, David M., John T. Luhman, and Ann L. Conliffe. “A Dialectic Perspective
on the Organization Theater Metaphor.” American Communication Journal
6.2 (2003): 1-16.
- Brock, Bernard L., Mark E. Huglen, James F. Klumpp, and Sharon Howell. Making
Sense of Political Ideology: The Power of Language in Democracy. Boulder
, CO : Rowman & Littlefield, 2005.
- Burke, Kenneth. Introduction by Denis Donoghue. Here and Elsewhere: The
Collected Fiction of Kenneth Burke . Jaffrey, NH : Black Sparrow (2005).
- Burke, Kenneth. Late Poems 1968 -1993: Attitudinizings Verse-Wise, While
Fending
For One Selph, And In A Style Somewhat Artificially Colloquial. Ed. Julie
Whitaker and David Blakesley (Columbia: University of South Carolina, 2005).
- * Burke, Kenneth. "On Persuasion, Identification, and Dialectical Symmetry."
Philosophy & Rhetoric 39, no. 4 (2006): 333-39.
- Campbell, Karlyn Kohrs. "Agency: Promiscuous and Protean." Communication
and
Critical/Cultural Studies 2, no. 1 (March 2005): 1-19.
- Cheney, George and Karen Lee Ashcraft. "Considering 'The Professional'
in
Communication Studies: Implications for Theory and Research Within and
Beyond the Boundaries of Organizational Communication." Communication
Theory 17, no. 2 (May 2007): 146-75.
- Clark, Gregory. Rhetorical Landscapes in America : Variations on a Theme
by Kenneth Burke . Columbia : University of South Carolina Press (2004).
- Coupe, Laurence. Kenneth Burke On Myth: An Introduction. Theorists of
Myth Series.
(New York: Routledge, 2005).
- Crable, Bryan. "Rhetoric, Anxiety, and Character Armor: Burke's Interactional
Rhetoric
of Identity 1." Western Journal of Communication 70, no. 1 (January
2006): 1-22.
- Darr, Christopher. "Civility As Rhetorical Enactment: The John Ashcroft
'Debates' and
Burke's Theory of Form. Southern Communication Journal 70, no. 4 (Summer
2005): 316-28
- Eddy, Beth. The Rites of Identity: The Religious Naturalism and Cultural
Criticism of Kenneth Burke and Ralph Ellison . Princeton: Princeton UP
(2003)
- Fox, Catherine. “Beyond the ‘Tyranny of the Real': Revisioning Burke's Pentad
as Research Method for Professional Communication.” Technical Communication
Quarterly 11 (2002): 365-89.
- George, Ann and Jack Selzer. Kenneth Burke in the 1930s. (Madison:
University of
Wisconsin Press, 2007). Forthcoming.
- * Gunn, Joshua. "Refiguring Fantasy: Imagination and Its Decline
in U.S. Rhetorical Studies." Quarterly Journal of Speech 89 (February
2003): 41-59; * Bormann, Ernest G.; Cragan, John F.; Shields, Donald C. “Defending
Symbolic Convergence Theory from an Imaginary Gunn.” Quarterly Journal
of Speech 89 (2003): 366-72. * Gunn, Joshua “Response.” Quarterly
Journal of Speech 89 (2003):373.
- ** Hawhee, Debra. "Language as Sensuous Action: Sir Richard Paget,
Kenneth Burke, and
Gesture-Speech Theory." Quarterly Journal of Speech 92, no. 4 (November
2006): 331-54.
- Hoffmann, Michael H.G. and Wolff-Michael Roth. "The Complementarity
of a
Representational and an Epistemological Function of Signs in Scientific
Activity." Semiotica 164, no. 1 (2007): 101-21.
- Huglen, Mark E. "An Image of Online Education as `Poetic Humanism.'"
Kentucky Journal of Communication (2004): 43-54.
- Huglen, Mark E. "Variations of Kenneth Burke's Identification\Division."
Review of Communication 4.3-4, July-October (2004): 187-97.
- Ivie, Robert L. “Democratic Dissent and the Trick of Rhetorical Critique.”
Cultural Studies/Critical Methodologies 5 (2005): 276-93.
- Jack, Jordynn. “'The Piety of Degradation': Kenneth Burke, the Bureau of
Social Hygiene, and Permanence and Change.” Quarterly Journal of Speech
90 (2004): 446-68.
- Jodlowski, Denise, Barbara F. Sharf, Loralee Capistrano Nguyen, Paul Haidet,
Lechauncy D. Woodard. "'Screwed For Life': Examining Identification and
Division in Addiction Narratives." Communication & Medicine
4, no. 1 (January
2007): 15-26.
- Johnson, Davi. "Mapping the Meme: A Geographical Approach to Materialist
Rhetorical
Criticism." Communication & Critical/Cultural Studies 4, no.
1 (March 2007):
27-52.
- Jordan, Jay. "Dell Hymes, Kenneth Burke's 'Identification,' and the
Birth of
Sociolinguistics." Rhetoric Review 24, no. 3 (2005): 264-279.
- Journet, Debra. “Metaphor, Ambiguity, and Motive in Evolutionary Biology:
W.D. Hamilton and the ‘Gene's Point of View.'” Written Communication
22 (2005): 379-420.
- Kimble, James J. "My Enemy, My Brother: The Paradox of Peace and War
in Abraham
Lincoln's Rhetoric of Conciliation." Southern Communication Journal
72, no. 1
(January 2007): 55-70.
- Lurie, David. "Language, Writing, and Disciplinarity in the Critique
of the 'Ideographic
Myth': Some Proleptical Remarks." Language and Communication 26,
no. 3-4
(July 2006): 250-69.
- McGowan, John. "Kenneth Burke and the Comic Arts of Peace." Western
Humanities
Review 60, no. 1 (Spring 2006): 44-65.
- * Maddux, Kristy. "Finding Comedy in Theology: A Hopeful Supplement
to Kenneth
Burke's Logology." Philosophy & Rhetoric 39, no. 3 (2006):
208-232.
- Miller, Carolyn R. "What Can Automation Tell Us About Agency?"
Rhetoric Society
Quarterly 37, no. 2 (Spring 2007): 137-57.
- Miller, John J. “Argument Efficacy: Evaluating the Public Argument of President
Bill Clinton's Impeachment Crisis.” Argumentation and Advocacy 40
(2004): 226-45.
- Myers, Marshall. "The Use of Pathos in Charity Letters: Some Notes
Toward A Theory
and Analysis." Journal of Technical Writing & Communication
37, no. 1 (March 2007): 3-14.
- Paris, Christopher. "Burkean Parlor: Lingua Esoterica Obnox (Ad Nauseum);
or, The
Critics' and Editors' Snow-Jobs? Rhetoric Review 26, no. 3 (2007):
320-25.
- Parushev, Parush R. "Narrative Paradigms of Emergence - Contextual
Orthodox
Theological Identity." Religion in Eastern Europe 25, no. 2 (May
2005): 1-39.
- Phelps, Louise, David Fleming, John Lucaites, Jack Selzer, Shane Borrowman.
"The End
of Composition Studies." Rhetoric Review 25, no. 2 (2006): 211-14.
- Pruchnik, Jeff. "Rhetoric, Cybernetics, and the Work of Body in Burke's
Body of Work."
Rhetoric Review 25, no. 3 (2006): 275-96.
- Roberts, Kathleen Glenister. “Texturing the Narrative Paradigm: Folklore
and Communication” Communication Quarterly 52 (2004): 129-42.
- Seigel, Marika A. “'One little fellow named Ecology': Ecological Rhetoric
in Kenneth Burke's Attitudes Towards History .” Rhetoric Review
23 (2004): 388-404.
- Sheriff, Stacey. "Resituating Kenneth Burke's 'My Approach to Communism.'" Rhetorica 23, no. 3 (Summer 2005): 281-95.
- Smudde, Peter M. “Implications on the Practice and Study of Kenneth Burke's
Idea of a ‘Public Relations Counsel with a Heart.'” Communication Quarterly
52 (2004): 420-32.
- * Stob, Paul. “Kenneth Burke, John Dewey, and the Pursuit of the Public.”
Philosophy and Rhetoric 38 (2005): 226-47.
- Tell, David. "Burke's Encounter with Ransom: Rhetoric and Epistemology
in ‘Four Master Tropes.'" Rhetoric Society Quarterly 34.4 (2004):
33-54.
- Van Dyk, Krista K. Betts. "From the Plaint to the Comic: Kenneth Burke's
Toward A
Better Life" Rhetoric Society Quarterly 36, no. 1 (Winter 2006):
31-53.
- Verene, Donald Phillip. "Philosophical Rhetoric." Philosophy
& Rhetoric 40, no. 1
(2007): 27-35.
- Weiser, M. Elizabeth. "Burke and War: Rhetoricizing the Theory of Dramatism." Rhetoric Review 26, no. 3 (2007): 286-302.
- Williams, Mark T. "Ordering Rhetorical 'Contexts' With Burke's Terms
for Order."
Rhetoric Review 24, no. 2 (2005): 170-87.
- Ytreberg, Espen. “Erving Goffman as a Theorist of the Mass Media.” Critical
Studies in Media Communication 19 (2002): 481-97.
Return to the COMM 652 Home Page