I am not really sure how many of you had to bear with the multiple lectures on how language is a system of symbols, and those symbols allow us to understand the world around us. I have been hearing that…
Monthly Archives: April 2010
Burke
by jocias • • 0 Comments
“In the beginning was the word” that sparked the creation of language and its complex system of signifiers, an infinite loop expanding as new ideas breathe into existence. Burke calls the rhetorical use of these symbols magic; its practitioners, spellbinders.…
Defining Rhetoric: A Vain Attempt
by kmontero • • 0 Comments
To begin, I would like to criticize Kenneth Burke’s complex statements for my simple mind. Although reading Anne’s post provided clarity regarding his text and idea of “alienation” resulting from languages’ (signifier) inability to fully express meaning (signified), I believe Burke is entirely too…
(Re)Defining Rhetoric
by jgreene • • 0 Comments
Based on the readings for the week, it seems to me that the 20th century recovery of rhetoric is about defining what is entailed when we talk about rhetoric. Not necessarily satisfied with the way rhetoric was being treated, intellectuals…
Commentary 6
by Alex Janney • • 0 Comments
The readings for this week reinforced the idea that word choice is an essential component of rhetoric. In Burke’s, Language as Symbolic Action he makes reference to how Pascal found a way around dueling. While his sneakiness had very little…
Fusion of Present and Past
by uzma • • 0 Comments
Man is a symbol using animal and dramatism functions as a philosophy of human relations. Burke’s dramatism answers many empirical questions of how people explain their actions to themselves and others, and explains the different cultural and social structural influence…
Burke and Weaver and the Power of Filters
by Anne Engert • • 0 Comments
Can we ever see the world as it really is? Metaphysical questions such as this go back a long way, and my grasp of all the centuries of ontological and epistemological philosophical wrangling is superficial at best. That we are…