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Symbols and the Construction of Values: Kenneth Burke and (Re)Valuation

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Symbols and the Construction of Values: Kenneth Burke and (Re)Valuation SYMBOLS AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF VALUES: KENNETH BURKE AND (RE)VALUATION BY C2008 Jan M. Hovden Submitted to the graduate degree program in Communication Studies and the Graduate Faculty of the University of Kansas in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy ___________________________________ Chairperson ___________________________________ ___________________________________ ___________________________________ ___________________________________ Date Defended___________________________________ The Dissertation Committee for Jan M. Hovden certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation SYMBOLS AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF VALUES: KENNETH BURKE AND (RE)VALUATION Committee: ____________________________________ Chairperson Date Approved:________________________ ii Acknowledgments This project could not have been completed without the support of many individuals. I would like to thank Dr. Parson for his endless efforts in helping me complete my dissertation. He inspired me and helped me become a better scholar and teacher. I would like to thank Dr. Harris, Dr. Manelescu, Dr. Rowland and Dr. Antonio for being mentors and making my graduate school experience as positive as it could be. Without my fellow debate graduate assistants—Phil Samuels, Lindsey Shook, Mick Souders, Sarah Topp and Ben Warner—my time at KU would have been less productive and enriching. Thank you all for the emotional and intellectual support that you have given me over the years. I would also like to thank the members of the KU debate team for endless hours of entertainment and support. You made my time at KU one of the best experiences of my life. Finally, I want to thank my parents, Wally and Sandy Hovden, and my sister, Sherry Hovden for instilling in me a desire to learn and to advance myself. I love you, and I could not have done this without you. iii Abstract I argue that a theory of symbolic value formation is implicit in the writings of Kenneth Burke. I analyze ten of Burke’s major writings and use what Burke refers to as the ten key terms of moral and aesthetic valuation as the means to ascertain what this theory is. I then outline the process of how individuals and social orders imbue people, ideas and things with value via symbol systems and how those values are altered over time based on interactions with the social and physical world. The work highlights people’s desire for stable value systems along with how unstable those systems actually are. iv Table of Contents Chapter 1: Introduction ……………………………………………………2 Chapter 2: Orientations, Ethics and Language……………………………25 Chapter 3: The Relationship between Moral and Aesthetic Evaluation....45 Chapter 4: The Collective Poems of Socioeconomic Orientation……….59 Chapter 5: Frames of Acceptance and Rejection………………………..73 Chapter 6: Transition Frames…………………………………………..100 Chapter 7: Symbols of Authority…………………………………..…..114 Chapter 8: Word magic as Meta-Rationalization……………………....146 Chapter 9: Pop Culture, Identification, and the Commodification of Values……………………………………………………..167 Chapter 10: Alienation………………………………………………...185 Chapter 11: Repossession……………………………………………..196 Chapter 12: Conclusion……………………………………………….214 v Chapter 1: Introduction In 1952, Marie Hochmuth Nichols argued that Kenneth Burke “has become the most profound student of rhetoric now writing in America” (M. H. Nichols 18), and in 1993 Edward Schiappa stated “forty years later, few would disagree” with Nichols’ assessment (401). For many, Burke’s effect on the field of rhetoric cannot be overstated. Edward Appel contends that he is “at the very least the most influential American rhetorician of the twentieth century” ("The Negative" 62), and Phillip Tompkins et al believe that “no reader of this journal needs to be convinced that the theories of Kenneth Burke have heavily influenced the practice of literary and rhetorical criticism” (135). He is seen by some as being ahead of his time as “one of America’s most prescient modern” critics (Jay 535). Specifically, Bernard Brock contends that “a brief examination of current communication journals will reveal that today Burke has become the most popular rhetorical theorist in the field” (347); Debra Hawhee goes so far as to note that many see him as “the father of contemporary rhetoric” (130). Even critics of Burke’s theories acknowledge the significant influence his work has had on the field. While they argue that his theories function “virtually hegemonicaly in the study of rhetoric,” Foss and Griffin (331), note that the creation of the Kenneth Burke society, the number of graduate seminars focusing on Burke’s theories, and the dominance of his theories in critical practice signifies the importance he has played in the field of communication studies (331). 2 Kenneth Burke achieved his reputation in the study of rhetoric by being one of the most prolific writers of the twentieth century 1 and by blending together a wide array of topics into a provocative theory of symbolic action. However, Burke was not merely a rhetorician as his works covered a vast array of topics, and one could argue that he was one of the original interdisciplinary scholars. As Herbert Simons notes, Burke was unique in the academy as a “college dropout who never held a tenured academic position” and who “resisted being ‘disciplined’” (4). This resistance to disciplinary structures is, in part, what makes Burke’s writings so fruitful. “[H]e invariably brings to each object of his scrutiny an overarching interdisciplinary framework, and he consistently takes from his engagements with the texts of a given field’s ideas that might help to fertilize another” (4). The profound effect that his holistic approach to his studies has had on the academy is best illustrated by the vast array of disciplines that have been touched by his writings. Scholars in fields as diverse as Sociology, 2 Philosophy, 3 Business, 4 Economics, 5 Anthropology, 6 1 The Kenneth Burke society has compiled a bibliography of 595 writings by Burke. 2 See for example Valerie Malhotra Bentz and Wade Kenny, ""Body-as-World": Kenneth Burke's Answer to the Postmodernist Charges against Sociology," American Sociological Association 15.1 (1997). Ann Branaman, "Reconsidering Kenneth Burke: His Contributions to the Identity Controversy," The Sociological Quarterly 35.3 (1994). James G. Carrier, "Knowledge, Meaning, and Social Inequality in Kenneth Burke," The American Journal of Sociology 88.1 (1982). Hugh Duncan, Communication and Social Order (New York: The Bedminster Press, 1962). Bruce E. Gronbeck, "Tradition and Technology in Local Newscasts: The Social Psychology of Form," The Sociological Quarterly 38.2 (1997). Joseph Gusfield, "The Literary Rhetoric of Science: Comedy and Pathos in Drinking and Driving Research," American Sociological Review 4 (1976). Michael A. Overington, "Kenneth Burke as a Social Theorist," Sociological Inquiry 47.2 (1977). Thomas Meisenhelder, "Law as Symbolic Action: Kenneth Burkes Sociology of Law," Symbolic Interaction 4 (1981). 3 See for example James G. Carrier, "Misrecognition and Knowledge," Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy and the Social Sciences 22 (1979). David L. Hildebrand, "Was Kenneth Burke a Pragmatist?," Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 31.3 (1995). David Lawrence, "The Mythico-Ritual Syntax of Omnipotence," Philosophy of East and West 48.4 (1998). Paul Meadows, "The Semiotic of Kenneth Burke," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 18.1 (1957). 3 Religious Studies, 7 Psychology, 8 Education, 9 and Geography 10 have utilized his theories. Burke resisted disciplinary boundaries because he saw the social world as a complicated web of interacting variables that did not fit neatly into the delimited boundaries established by the academy. His writings are difficult because “he is dealing with complex and subtle situations” (Warren 226) that cannot be easily reduced and simplified. His corpus of writings expands over most of the 20 th century, and to understand his theories a synthesis of many of his works is frequently required. One commonality among many of his texts is human symbol systems and the ways in which they shape human motivations and actions. He was greatly influenced by the tumultuousness of the century in which he lived (P&C xlvii), and he sought answers to numerous questions about the relationship between language use and the ways in which humans understand and act toward the social and physical world around them. I was drawn to Burke’s theories because of this aspect of his writing. I am interested 4 See for example Janis Forman, "Collaborative Business Writing: A Burkean Perspective for Future Research," Journal of Business Communication 28 (1991). Mark Simpson, "The Pentad as Map: A Strategy for Exploring Rhetorical Cases," Bulletin of the Association for Business Communication 49 (1986). 5 See for example Donald N. McCloskey, "The Rhetoric of Economics," Journal of Economic Literature 21 (1983). Donald N. McClosky, "The Dismal Science and Mr. Burke: Economics as Critical Theory," The Legacy of Kenneth Burke , eds. Herbert W. Simons and Trevor Melia (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1989). 6 See for example William Mishler, "The Question of the Origin of Language Rene Girard, Eric Gans, and Kenneth Burke," Anthropoetics 5.1 (1999). Karen Ann Watson, "A Rhetorical and Sociolinguistic Model for the Analysis of Narrative," American Anthropologist 75.1 (1973). 7 See for example C. Allen Carter, "Logology
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