Burke's Concept Research Articles

Mind the Audience: Forensic Rhetoric, Persuasion, and Identification by Reference to the Social Identity of Athenian dikastai

Abstract: This paper highlights the importance of an audience-centric approach in the study of Athenian forensic rhetoric and leverages insights from Social Identity Theory and Burke's concept of 'identification' to examine courtroom speeches. Litigants, perceiving the Athenian dikastai as a distinct group marked by a salient social identity, rhetorically employed the group's prototypes, norms, and interests to establish their identification—and underscore the opponent's division—with the audience. This prominent role of social identity and the potential for jury bias affecting the large audiences of dikastai prompt a reconsideration of the nature of Athenian trials and suggest that, in addition to upholding the law, Athenian courts functioned as platforms for the imposition of social and legal conformity.

베르네의 해양화에 나타난 바다의 소리풍경 연구

The purpose of this study is to examine what Claude-Joseph Vernet tried to realize by vividly evoking auditory images in his marine paintings and what it means through the analysis of the soundscapes in these paintings. As a result of analyzing 141 pieces of this artist's marine paintings, which are classified into three themes of 'storm', 'calm', and 'French harbor', a total of 1,302 elements of soundscape appeared, and these created images of 'disaster' in the theme of 'storm', 'invitation to a journey' in the theme of 'calm', and 'prosperity' in the theme of 'French harbor', thus confirming the perception that Vernet's contemporaries had about the sea. These research results allow us to interpret the artist's marine paintings more broadly from the perspective of the sea itself, rather than looking only at Edmund Burke's concept of the sublime, like Denis Diderot.

The Op-ed Articles on the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) Project: A Rhetorical Analysis

This paper attempts to make a rhetorical analysis of six op-ed articles on the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) project, which are published online in the English daily newspapers of Nepal. This study has discussed about how the authors in each article have used the language and context as a medium to persuade the readers in favour or in opposition of the MCC project and also to identify the rhetorical techniques that are used to accomplish their purpose. The rhetorical analysis is supported by the theoretical ideas of Aristotle and Kenneth Burke. In particular, Burke's concept of dramatism pentad has been used to find the answer of what was done (act), when or where it was done (scene), who did it (agent), how he did it (agency) and why (purpose). The findings of the study show that these authors have used effective rhetorical techniques to present the same situation in different ways, using their percussive appeals in their writing and the motive to bring the readers under their rhetorical influence. This study further found that the authors have used logos (logical reasoning) as the major tool to support the MCC project and have mainly used the scene-purpose ratio as a rhetorical tool to push the anti-MCC ideas. Finally, the study concludes that tracing out the relationship between the pentadic elements helps the critical readers to find the specific motives of the authors and also identify the rhetorical techniques used in their writing.

Narrative and nuclear weapons politics: the entelechial force of the nuclear origin myth

AbstractThis paper contributes a novel way to theorise the power of narratives of nuclear weapons politics through Kenneth Burke's concept of entelechy: the means of stating a things essence through narrating its beginning or end. The paper argues that the Manhattan Project functions narratively in nuclear discourse as an origin myth, so that the repeated telling of atomic creation over time frames the possibilities of nuclear politics today. By linking Burke's work on entelechy with literature on narrative and eschatology, the paper develops a theoretical grounding for understanding the interconnection of the nuclear past, present, and future. The paper supports its argument by conducting a wide-ranging survey of academic and popular accounts of the development of the atomic weapon in the US Manhattan Project. It reveals a dominant narrative across these accounts that contains three core tropes: the nuclear weapon as the inevitable and perfected culmination of humankind's tendency towards violence; the Manhattan Project as a race against time; and the nuclear weapon as a product of a fetishized masculine brilliance.

Shaker Vision: Seeing Beauty in Early America. By Joseph Manca

Shaker Vision: Seeing Beauty in Early America. By Joseph Manca

Burke's "sensitive" sublime rooted in brain and body versus Kant's transcendental concept in the German Romantic discourse.

During the 18th century, debates about what constituted the sublime flourished in Europe, and particularly in Germany. These debates were nourished by two different visions: The Kantian concept supposed that the sublime is supra-sensible and rooted in reason (Logos) rather than in the object, thus provoking a mental state of tension between nature and art; Edmund Burke's concept, on the other hand, conceived of the sublime as a bodily immersive experience, which we here define as "sensitive" sublime. In summary, Burke's view of the sublime is rooted in the senses and not in the power of reason, unlike Kant's. This was to disrupt the mainstream ideas of that time, unconsciously anticipating some of the recent neuroaesthetic acquisitions regarding the central role played by the sensory apparatus in the experience of beauty and of the sublime.

What Do We Mean by “Reform?”: On the Seductiveness of Reform in Teaching and Teacher Education and It's Mischievous Influences

Drawing on literary critic Kenneth Burke's concept of “terministic screens,” the author explores some of the history and a few of the troubling implications for the work of teachers and teacher educators that flow from the idea of reform. Concluding that “reform is a bad idea,” the author argues for an alternative conception of educational improvement, one that is more life-affirming and hopeful. Seeking to weaken the conceptual and ethical hold of reform on policy-makers and educators, the author argues with John Goodlad that educational improvement first and foremost must be understood as a learning problem, an issue of educational renewal.

China’s Deng Development Model

This article is a form of reflection on the Chinese development model. In the ongoing discussion on this subject, the view seems to prevail that the source of the country’s economic success is the use of evidence-based policy, understood as “scientific development,” that is, basing economic policy on the most recent findings of development economics. The conclusion of this article is quite the opposite. It turns out that the foundations of the Chinese development paradigm are assumptions that are very similar to the principles around which Edmund Burke's concept of modern conservatism is built. A specific core of this concept is aversion and skepticism toward scientific theories, combined with the postulate of the gradual nature of all economic and social changes. Ultimately, however, it turns out that modern conservatism alone is also not sufficient in explaining the Chinese development success. The second pillar is the relevant set of development goals and their proper sequence.

Equality of restraint: Reframing road safety through the ethics of private motorised transport

BackgroundMotoring is an emancipation. It is both an individual freedom and a collective freedom with car ownership at 30, 491, 000 vehicles by 2019 in Great Britain. Yet, as the evidence of the impacts of road transport accumulates and the health and environmental aims of sustainable travel become clearer, demand for an ethical analysis also intensifies. PurposeThe paper draws on a previous limited ethics-based literature on road transport. Key tenet of liberalism, of ‘freedom from’ as well as ‘freedom to’, are highlighted. This includes Edmund Burke's concept of ‘equality of restraint’ in meeting common needs. Freedom from fear of road traffic danger forms part of an individual's rights. FindingsEquality of rights and freedom from fear in road use have not been key considerations for reducing risks to vulnerable road users. Indeed, ethical issues have largely been ignored. The emergence of Vision Zero within the road safety field with its focus on zero deaths and serious injuries has brought an ethics-based approach to the mainstream although it appears to be struggling to gain traction in neo-liberal societies. ConclusionsThe Covid-19 pandemic has led to UK governments promoting the use of walking and cycling. These modes have hitherto been left to fend for themselves in an environment where road safety has been measured by casualty reduction while fear has suppressed walking and cycling with the consequence losses to physical and mental health. We ask whether an ethics-based contribution, and lessons from Covid-19, can help re-set the direction of UK road safety policy and practice.

Символическое действие и коммуникация: метафора и деньги у Кеннета Берка

The article examines how the social-critical vision of modern society stems from the key notions of Kenneth Burke's conception of “symbolic action”. The bridge between literary criticism and Burke's socio-anthropological constructions is the concept of motive. An authentic source of motives for human action is a metaphor that gives an image that is simultaneously poetic, imaginary and dynamic, moving (in the form of “third term” of the metaphor). The metaphor reveals unexpected, but essential unity of dissimilar things. And in this sense it serves as a model of inter-subjective relations. Group cohesion can be understood as an “extended metaphor” in which all group members have a common “third term”. Thus, Burke brings the fields of anthropology and poetics closer together. A metaphor is a relationship in which the elements do not absorb each other, but reveal the essence of each other, sublate their partiality, contingency, that is make up a collective form. This is the “paradox of substance”. The commonality of a tribe is not an abstraction that arises “after” individuals, but exists in the form of a generic substance in the individuals themselves. This defines the dialectic of identification: the individual coincides with himself by mediation of not-himself (some external “character”). The paradox of substance places symbolic actions in the general field of “symbolic communication,” in which the word is not only an external instrument, but an internal quality of individuals. Poetic imagery is the substance of the social. Metaphor in this capacity is contrasted with money, which, displacing metaphor as a principle of social coherence, undermines truly human motives (utilitarianism instead of communal poetics).

Places and People: Rhetorical Constructions of “Community” in a Canadian Environmental Risk Assessment

This paper addresses the issue of public engagement in environmental risk contexts through a rhetorical analysis of the key term “community” in a risk assessment of mining-caused soil contamination. Drawing on Burke's concept of terministic screens and method of cluster criticism, the analysis shows the divergent constitutions of “community” in the Sudbury Soils Study's official discourse and the citizen-activist rhetoric of the Community Committee on the Sudbury Soils Study. Tracing the verbal and visual clusters within each organization's articulation of “community” as place and people reveals how the official Study's technical-regulatory ideology of environmental risk and citizen participation is countered by the Community Committee's contestatory environmental justice ideology. These competing views of “community” are mutually constitutive in that the official Study's mainstream risk discourse establishes the terms for the Community Committee's reactive counter-discourse, thus limiting citizen participation mainly to questions of “downstream” impacts. Our rhetorical analysis of “community” suggests a generative method for understanding the complex power relations animating specific risk communication contexts as well as for potentially reinventing “community” in terms more conducive to meaningful citizen engagement.

“When God Gives You AIDS … Make Lemon-AIDS”: Ironic Persona and Perspective by Incongruity in Sarah Silverman's Jesus is Magic

Sarah Silverman, one of the most polarizing and popular comedians performing today, gained notoriety with the release of the 2005 standup comedy movie Jesus is Magic. Through her discussion of sensitive social issues such as 9/11, the Holocaust, and AIDS, Silverman has developed a distinct onstage ironic persona of ignorance and innocence that juxtaposes with her controversial, humorous content. This stark contrast of delivery and content highlights a unique iteration of Kenneth Burke's concept of perspective by incongruity, originally conceptualized as only “verbal atom cracking.” Silverman's use of performance to “crack” ideas extends Burke's original notion in a new way. Throughout her ironic performance, Silverman comically and subversively discusses white privilege, post-feminism, and the trivialization of serious events as a means of highlighting questionable behaviors and attitudes. We argue that Silverman creates social and rhetorical significance through the implementation of perspective by incongruity via an ironic persona that enables her audience to adopt a comic perspective on important cultural issues.

A Burkean analysis of China Is Not Happy: a rhetoric of nationalism

As a sequel to China Can Say No, China Is Not Happy is the bestseller of 2009 in China. The book praises China's post-80s generation for their act of patriotism, condemns the West, in general, and the United States, in particular, for exploiting the Chinese and for causing a global economic crisis. It also criticizes the Chinese liberal elite and overseas returnees for being Western-influenced mental slaves and traitors. The authors of the book call for an abandonment of “literary tone”, advocate a tough stand against Western countries, and envision China as the leader of the world through its economic and military power. This paper examines the major themes and belligerent rhetoric employed in the book through an application of Kenneth Burke's rhetorical concepts of identification, terministic screens, and representative anecdotes. The author of this paper contends that such use of rhetoric demonstrates the language habit of China's political discourse in its modern history, escalates blind nationalism, and widens the gap in intercultural understanding between China and the US.

Teaching Rhetoric Through Data Visualization

Objectives: Students will explore Kenneth Burke's concept of the terministic screen by creating a cluster criticism of a recent speech text. Students will also learn new research technologies by conducting their analysis using online visualization tools. Courses: Rhetorical Criticism, Public Speaking, Research Methods, Communication Theory, Persuasion, and Media Communication.

Talking Sustainability: Identification and Division in an Iowa Community

This study investigates how sustainability and its inherent values figure into farmers' discourse, i.e., how farmers and members of farming communities talk about sustainability. We conducted qualitative interviews of various individuals in a single Iowa community to determine whether the visions guiding their land management choices resembled at all the ideals of a sustainable agriculture. Using Kenneth Burke's concepts of identification and division, we rhetorically analyzed the interview transcripts. We found animosity towards much green terminology but widespread commitment to environmental preservation, especially when aligned with economic interests. We highlight rhetorical strategies for promoting sustainable practices.

Kenneth Burke on Recalcitrance

This essay discloses distinctive but overlapping realist, communicative, and critical dimensions of Burke's concept of recalcitrance. Previous scholarly uses of the concept have tended to yield only partial understandings of one or another of these three distinctive dimensions. Moreover, that previous work overlooked some of Burke's pivotal and revealing writings on the term when elaborating its meaning, including his designation of the term's application to factors that substantiate, incite, and correct statements. This essay offers the term's first comprehensive account that integrates overlooked writings and yields its full range of conceptual dimensions and applications as Burke had envisioned them.

It's All Your Fault: Kenneth Burke, Symbolic Action, and the Assigning of Guilt and Blame to Women

This article uses Kenneth Burke's concept of agency and, more specifically, the dialectic tension between symbolic action (SA) and nonsymbolic motion (NSM) to investigate two contemporary social controversies: obesity and sexual assault. We argue that situations involving loss of control over the body can be felt as symbolic acts and important failures requiring rhetorical solutions. The issues of obesity and sexual assault both embody linguistic choices that oppress and control women's perceptions of agency and their ability to free themselves from guilt and shame. Through our analysis of representative narratives surrounding the “sins” of appetite and desire, we reveal how the concept of agency underlies and vexes debates over obesity and acquaintance rape and complicates the allocation of blame.

Rehumanization through Reflective Oscillation in Jarhead

This essay uncovers rhetorical processes devoted to rehumanizing the enemy Other as an antidote to the virulent rhetoric of war. With an eye toward disrupting a problematic process of national identity construction based on othering and dehumanization, this essay examines Jarhead as a case study that challenges current ideologies of soldiers and their enemies. Using Kenneth Burke's concept of consubstantiality and Linda Hutcheon's discussion of reflective oscillation, this essay examines Jarhead as a case of rhetoric working to rehumanize enemies, thus providing an example of how film can work against war culture.

Uptake of a team briefing in the operating theatre: A Burkean dramatistic analysis

Communication among healthcare professionals is a focus for research and policy interventions designed to improve patient safety, but the challenges of changing interprofessional communication patterns are rarely described. We present an analysis of 756 preoperative briefings conducted by general surgery teams (anesthesiologists, nurses, and surgeons) at four urban Canadian hospitals in the context of two research studies conducted between August 2004 and December 2007. We ask the questions: how and why did briefings succeed, how and why did they fail, and what did they mean for different participants? Ethnographic fieldnotes documenting the coordination and performance of team briefings were analyzed using Kenneth Burke's concepts of motive and attitude. The language and behaviour of participants were interpreted as purposive and situated actions which reveal perceptions, beliefs and values. Motives and attitudes varied both within and across sites, professions, individuals, and briefings. They were contingent on the organizational, medical and social scenes in which the briefings took place and on participants' multiple perceived purposes for participating (protecting patient safety, exchanging information, engaging with the team, fulfilling professional commitments, participating in research, and meeting social expectations). Participants' attitudes reflected their recognition (or rejection) of specific purposes, the briefings' perceived effectiveness in serving these purposes, and the briefings' perceived alignment (or conflict) with other priorities. Our findings illustrate the intrinsically rhetorical and variable nature of change.

Rhetorical Features of Green Evangelicalism

Christian evangelicals and environmentalists are often viewed as holding irreconcilable and mutually exclusive perspectives. We argue that examination of the discourses of environmentalism and an emerging evangelical Christian discourse that we call “green evangelicalism” shows there are more grounds in common than is typically supposed. Using a conceptual framework that integrates Dryzek's ideas about how to map environmental discourses with Burke's concepts of terministic screens, orientation, and identification, we locate the discursive parameters of a distinctly green evangelicalism as it is manifested in response to the problem of climate change. Comparing the discursive map of green evangelicalism with charts of other environmental discourses enables us to locate rhetorical opportunities and obstacles for generating identification among otherwise distinctive orientations toward environmental problems.