Abstract
This essay examines Kenneth Burke's puzzling work on pure persuasion to suggest that pure persuasion has four characteristics, that it is: (1) primarily consummatory in purpose or becomes instrumental or resistant indirectly or secondarily; (2) a near relation of dramatic performance, ritual, and prayer; (3) creates and maintains identity; and (4) relies on form—formal elements are essential to its enactment. This essay argues that an unusual body of discourse, Nüshu, an allegedly thousand‐year‐old phonetic transcription of Jiangyong dialect articulated in a variety of texts sung and chanted by rural women over their needlework on red cloth, handkerchiefs, and fans in a remote area of China, may be an exemplar of discourse with many characteristics of Burke's pure persuasion.
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