4.14 ~ Burke, Terministic Screens, & Identification

 To better understand Burke, here are a few key points to know:

• Language = "symbolic action." (Burke says Beware: Anyone who juxtaposes talking to action is trying to pull one over on you.  Speaking is an act.  Using symbols that communicate is an act.)

• Humans = symbol using (mis-using and abusing) animals.

• Rhetoric = Use of symbols to form attitudes or induce actions in other human agents. 

It's in A Rhetoric of Motives where Burke explores the concept of identification.  His basic argument for using the term: "persuasion" triggers us to look only at explicit, intentional acts of communication, where a rhetor directs to a specific, known audience.  This is a very small percentage of the actual persuasion happening.  But instead of trying to reframe the term "persuasion," he chooses identification.

He identifies 3 key processes of identification:

1) Naming something or someone according to specific properties;

persons (and ideas or things) share, or do not share, important qualities in common;

2) Associating with and disassociating from others ~ suggesting that persons (and ideas or things) share, or do not share, important qualities in common

3) The product or end result of identifying ~ the state of being consubstantial with others.

(Remember that "consubstantial" can be read as "the state of being identified with" or perhaps, "being in solidarity with" another.)

"[And] often we must think of rhetoric NOT in terms of some one particular address, but as a general body of identifications that owe their convincingness much more to trivial repetition and dull, daily reinforcement than to exceptional rhetorical skill."

In addition to creation of "forms" (where repetition of rhetorical acts develop into patterns and systems, which we soon take for granted; that is, they become normalized), there are two other common maneuvers of identification:

• Assumed "We" (insiders)

• Antithesis (outsiders / common enemy)

To suggest the gravitas of concepts and how they're employed, we watched portions of the following movies:

- A Class Divided -



- The Milgram Experiment & The Stanford Prison Experiment -

Burn these three Burkean identification processes into your memory:

1) Naming something or someone according to specific properties;

2) Associating with and disassociating from others--suggesting that persons (and ideas or things) share, or do not share, important qualities in common; 

3) The product or end result of identifying