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In all cases we have filmed the best available copy. University Microfilms International 300 N, ZEEB RD., ANN ARBOR, Ml 48106 8215785 Carter, Chris Allen THE SOCIOLINGUISTICS OF KENNETH BURKE The University of Oklahoma PH.D. 1982 University Microfilms Internetionel300 N. Zeeb Road. Ann Arbor. M I 48106 THE UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA GRADUATE COLLEGE THE SOCIOLINGUISTICS OF KENNETH BURKE A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE FACULTY in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY BY CHRIS ALLEN CARTER Norman, Oklahoma 1982, THE SOCIOLINGUISTICS OF KENNETH BURKE APPROVED BY // DISSERTATION COMMITTEE xl Table of Contents AcknowledgTients Abstract Abbreviat ions Chapter One, "Ubiquitous Logology" ............................. 1 Chapter Two, "The Definition" ................................ 17 Chapter Three, "The City of W o r d s " ............................. 24 Chapter Four, "Ubiquitous Negation" , ......................... 42 Chapter Five, "Evolutionism and the Differentiative Ego" ..... 56 Chapter Six, "Structuralism and the Diacritic"................. 81 Chapter Seven, "Burkeanism and the Negative" ................... 116 Chapter Eight, "The City of Words Revisited" ................... 195 Chapter Nine, "Ubiquitous Mischief" ........................... 201 Chapter Ten, "The Definition Redrawn" ......................... 240 Chapter Eleven, "Logology Again" ............................... 244 Glossary Bibliography l i t Acknowledgments I want to thank Kenneth Burke and William Rueckert for their timely correspondence and their suggestions. I want to thank my committee chairman Roy Male for giving me just the right degree of guidance and for doing.the best thing a chairman can do, namely, for suggesting a dissertation topic that matched a subject needing treatment with a student's natural interests. I can still see him in his office in Gittinger Hall in the autumn of 1976, pulling a book off the shelf and saying over his shoulder, "You might want to write on Kenneth Burke." I want to thank Paul Ruggiers, who taught the first post-survey English course I ever had; who, along with James Sims, was one of two reasons I decided to major in English; and who suggested one day in the autumn of 1972, when I was on leave and visiting in his office over­ looking the South Oval, that I not rule out returning to Norman for graduate school. I want to thank the other members of my committee: Jack Kendall, David Gross, and Tom Boyd. I can picture each of them in the act of teaching, in various rooms, on various subjects— all of which moments I fondly recall in the terms of my own personal, intellectual "trans­ formations . " I want to thank Eric Eaton and Joanna Rapf, both of whom agreed at one tin}e to serve on my committee; Victor Elconin and Alan Velie, depart­ ment chairmen who offered me more than the usual amount of encouragement; iv all those ijistructors, both within and without the English Department, whose courses I took or audited; and the many friends with whom I associated during these graduate school years, most of whom have now been scattered to different regions of the country. I want to say I am grateful that there was a major public uni­ versity in my homestate and that in its less than a hundred years it had developed as far as it had, for the University of Oklahoma was thus able to be for me, in the best sense of a liberal education, a source of liberation. Had it been less a university than it was, it could not have pulled me across as much ground. And I want to thank my wife Sharon and my son Chad. The happiness we all shared enabled me to concentrate on this work. Abstract My starting point is Kenneth Burke's starting point. We humans are word-using or symbol-using animals; more specifically, and more certainly, we are the only creatures who use words about words or symbols about symbols. Burke has labeled this impulse "logological." Now Burke himself is part of a veritable "logologism"; that is, Burke is one of a number of twentieth-century proponents of the doctrine that places the study of the language faculty at the center of the sciences of the human and chat develops various critical languages for speaking and writing about human speech and writing. My second point is that the key to Burke's own logological system is his "logological definition of humankind," and my third point is that the five clauses of his definition can be expanded into brief introduc­ tions to the world of human language. I conclude the first movement of this dissertation by posting five principles of language, namely, the principles of logocentric symbolics, of negation, of alienation, of hierarchy, and of entelechy. My fourth point is that the key to this definition is its clause on negation. I believe that Burke, in developing a theory of human language built around "the negative,” joins another widespread trend of twentieth- century thought. A number of writers— some philosophic, some literary, some both— have offered what might be called various "negationisms," that is, have offered various doctrines that at the center of human existence is some kind of negation or void or gap or cipher or absence— whatever vi one chooses to call it. My fifth point is that of these surprisingly common negationist doctrines, none is more prevalent than the structuralist version con­ cerning the diacritical nature of all human meaning. Thus, if Burke, not always granted to he the important figure that I think he ought to be, is to be reseated at the roundtable of intellectual debate in our time, we might do so by allowing him to interrupt today's struc­ turalist dialogue. Both the structuralist theory of the diacritic and the Burkean theory of the negative center human meaning in a faculty of differentiation, but the structuralist diacritic is primarily a faculty of the intellect while the Burkean negative is a faculty with ethical, rhetorical, and practical, as well as intellectual, dimensions. In short, I use the structuralists as a foil to introduce Burke's superior theory. My sixth point is that neither a theory of intellectual differen­ tiation nor a theory of ethical differentiation seems the most obvious place to begin a discussion of human meaning. This slight obstacle can be overcome by taking an evolutionist approach to the subject. For this reason, I preface both the chapter on structuralism and the chapter on "Burkeanism" with a chapter on the evolutionism of Ernest Becker and others who have theorized about the emergence of human meaning. My seventh point is that Burke's own theory of linguistic negation generates, as does his definition, a series of phrases for describing the use of language. By the time I have shown how Burke's theory of the negative emerges from his various works, I will have posted another list of language principles, namely, principles concerning the diacritical vii: dialectical, poetical, ethical, rhetorical, and practical dimensions of word-use. My eighth point is that the best way to organize Burke's sprawling word-production is to gather all these linguistic principles into a whole cluster and then to reflect on the interrelationships among the various principles that constitute its parts. With this I conclude the second movement of the dissertation. My ninth point is that this cluster of linguistic principles can be taken and turned into an analysis of human society, the social order being largely a linguistic construction and its dynamics being largely the dynamics of words or symbols. Kenneth Burke's theory of language is hereby discovered to be a very relevant theory of sociolinguistics, one which helps us understand what kind of a mess we are in and what, if anything, we can do to ease the tensions which today threaten to cul­ minate in our own self-inflicted destruction. My tenth point is that my consideration of Burke's logology, to this point extended through nine chapters, along with some of Burke's own recent statements, force slight modifications of his logological definition of humankind, modifications which I tentatively suggest.