The Philosophy of Literary Form: Studies in Symbolic Action
... It challenges us to reconsider the confines of academic exploration, suggesting that Burke's comprehensive theoretical legacy, when combined with contemporary AI applications, has the capacity to forge a landmark discourse. This fusion promises to navigate the ethical and practical quandaries technological progress presents, thereby reaffirming the Humanities' critical stance in the age of digital advancement (Burke, 1973;Hawhee, 2005). ...
... A Burkean response to the integration of AI within the Humanities invites a profound shift: we must view AI not merely as a technological tool, but as a powerful extension of our symbolic lives, with profound ethical implications. Drawing on Burke's understanding of humans as fundamentally "symbol-using animals" (Burke, 1945) and his notion of literature as "equipment for living" (Burke, 1973), we can see AI as more than a computational tool. When combined with humanistic insights, it possesses the potential to enhance our ethical decision-making, offer deeper understanding of complex cultural narratives, and make positive contributions to societal well-being. ...
This study delves into the intersection of generative artificial intelligence (GAI) and the Humanities, guided by the critical insights
of Kenneth Burke, a seminal figure in the study of rhetoric and a vocal critic of scientism and positivism. The skepticism of the
American literary theorist towards an uncritical embrace of science and technology, and his concerns over the inclination of the
Humanities to adopt scientific methodologies at the expense of traditional forms of inquiry, provide a critical framework for
examining the new role played by GAI within the Humanities. By framing these tools in the context of Burkean rhetorical theory,
this research argues that AI in general should not be viewed as a foreign invader to the Humanities tradition but as an opportunity
for them to reassert their indispensable role in guiding the ethical and purposeful integration of STEM into humanistic studies.
Drawing on Burke's concepts of humans as "symbol-using animals" and literature as "equipment for living," the study positions AI
as a sophisticated extension of human symbolic action, equipped to engage with ethical considerations and profoundly influence
human life. This theoretical grounding underscores the importance of maintaining a humanistic perspective in the development and
application of AI technologies, emphasizing the capacity of the Humanities to provide ethical direction and meaningful context to
technological advancement. By highlighting Burkean critique of the overreliance on scientific approaches in the Humanities, the
study advocates for a balanced integration of AI, where technology enhances rather than replaces traditional humanistic inquiry.
This approach not only honors the legacy of the theorist but also addresses contemporary concerns within the Humanities about
the ethical implications of these evolving generative technologies, suggesting a collaborative pathway forward that leverages the
best of both humanistic and scientific traditions. Through this lens, AI emerges not merely as a tool for innovation but as a catalyst
for reaffirming the Humanities' critical role in shaping a technologically advanced society with ethical depth and cultural
significance.
... Though it is possible for a perspective by incongruity to occur naturally, Burke (1973) identified what he called a planned incongruity, or "a rational prodding or coaching of language so as to see around the corner of everyday usage" (p. 400). ...
... 93). Burke (1973) similarly asserted that "even the most practical of revolutions will generally be found to have manifested itself first in the 'aesthetic' sphere" (p. 234). ...
... The joke builds on the fact that some fans attribute this change in Star Wars to far-left or communist political activities. The memes discussed present contemporary politics less through argumentation and more by producing "perspective by incongruity" (Burke, 1973), highlighting the inconsistencies of established political ideas (Metahaven, 2016). ...
Politigram (also Theorygram) is a loose subculture of pseudonymous meme accounts on Instagram, focused on debating political ideologies and theories using memes. Politigram’s memes often feature political positions that are either idiosyncratic (e.g. “Feminist-Monarcho-Primitivism”) or outside the so-called Overton window of publicly acceptable political ideologies (such as Leninism or Stalinism). While a growing amount of research addresses how online spaces such as 4chan produce and popularise memes featuring far-right ideology, memes that depict left-revolutionary themes are relatively understudied. Since some authors have begun to view anonymous or pseudonymous online spaces as inherently problematic, understanding the variety of practices and content in online spaces that focus on fringe politics is important. Our analysis follows memes that feature Lenin and Stalin through a large number of Instagram accounts posting memes. We concentrate on Lenin and Stalin because they represent fringe ideologies that remain indirectly relevant in contemporary political discourse. With a visual dataset from 45,000 accounts from 2021, we study the thematic variations, boundary work and political positioning performed by Lenin and Stalin memes. We describe how requirements of theoretical literacy, militancy as a communicative value and parody of conceptions of communism drive the discussion of fringe political positions on Politigram. We conclude by contrasting memetic logics in this context with established accounts of “dissimulative identity play” in anonymous online spaces.
... In this sense, scholarly writing is no different from any other communication. Just as much as it is inappropriate for a newcomer at a party to barge into a group conversation and start talking, it is inappropriate to send out manuscripts without understanding the current conversation in the field (see Burke [1941] for his metaphor of written academic exchanges as a parlor conversation). In this case, "listening" typically takes the form of reading other research articles and understanding the current state of knowledge in the field. ...
This paper examines the fundamental differences between school writing and scholarly writing. Despite their superficial similarities, the two genres serve different social functions and thus employ the same textual features differently. Through the lens of rhetorical genre studies (RGS), the article explores how genres mediate social actions and how understanding these actions can aid new scholars in transitioning from school writing to effective scholarly writing. The first part of the article introduces RGS, highlighting its focus on the pragmatic and social aspects of genres. The second part offers practical advice for new scholarly writers, emphasizing the shift from writer-centered to reader-centered writing, participation in scholarly conversations, and the importance of creating new knowledge. By understanding the social actions that scholarly writing performs, writers can make informed decisions about how to use textual conventions to serve their readers' needs.
... The analysis of this study is grounded in the critical cultural approach to communication and the interpretivist approach to international relations. First, cluster analysis helps understand the motives of the rhetor's text or speech, assuming the essential meanings are charted around the keywords in the rhetoric (Burke, 2023). Exploring which words fall into association with "human rights," the author manually identifies "what kind of human rights" and "whose human rights" are emphasised. ...
Human rights have developed into one of the most polarizing issues within the US-China relations, reflecting deeply-rooted ideological divisions between two powers. While current studies often focus on the human rights politics of each country in isolation, there is a lack of comparative analysis of their respective human rights narratives. This study employs an innovative narrative approach to contextualise the study of human rights in the US-China competition. By examining how the US and China have competed in human rights reports during the past two decades through cluster and linguistic analysis, this study reveals divergent strategies of both powers to conceptualise human rights, assign responsibility, delegitimise the rival political systems, and undermine the rival's global reputation on human rights. The findings have implications for the fields of foreign policy narrative and the US-China relations.
... En el corazón de cualquier intento de materializar un enemigo se encuentra el dispositivo de proyección, mediante el cual se busca la transferencia de los males internos de un grupo o sociedad hacia un chivo expiatorio. Este teórico de la retórica definió este proceso como dispositivo medicinal: si se puede entregar la enfermedad a una causa fuera de sí, se puede luchar contra un enemigo externo en lugar de luchar contra un enemigo interno (Burke, 1941). En lugar de ver los males internos como síntomas de problemas que exigen remedios, la estrategia de polarización los trata como el producto de enemigos externos que causan la enfermedad. ...
¿Cómo se comunican los líderes con sus seguidores? Los análisis presentados en este libro, proporcionan un respaldo empírico a la hipótesis: la principal herramienta de un líder es el framing. En el examen de la naturaleza del liderazgo, el modelo de análisis que se propone tiene sus fundamentos en la teoría de los frames y en la teoría del framing. No es posible entender una sin la otra, ya que forman parte de los esfuerzos por interpretar un mismo proceso cognitivo y comunicativo donde intervienen los frames del pensamiento y el framing de la comunicación. Framing significa hacer visible un frame invisible. El presidente logra visibilizar y comunicar el frame de la corrupción que permanecía invisible, legitimado por las élites simbólicas que monopolizan el discurso: periodistas, intelectuales, científicos, políticos, empresarios, líderes sociales. El modelo del framing de la comunicación política se aplica en el análisis de la comunicación presidencial durante los primeros cuatro años de las conferencias mañaneras.
... In this instance, Darr and Strine (2009) identified the purpose as enacting legislative change. Burke (1973) stated that "literature as equipment for living" are forms of art that promote attitudes, not necessarily direct action, for resolving social situations (pp. 293-304). ...
This essay applies environmental activist Robert Hunter’s conception of mindbombs to recent environmental activists throwing tomato soup, throwing mashed potatoes, and smearing paint on Van Gogh’s, Monet’s, and Degas’s works of art. Hunter’s mindbombs align with Hariman’s and Lucaites’s (2003; 2007; 2016; 2018) iconic photography while the defacing of priceless works of art adhere to Burke’s (1954) grotesque perspective by incongruity. In turn, iconic mindbombs relied on Burke’s (1969a) scene-purpose pentadic ratio, while incongruous mindbombs rely on Burke’s scene-act pentadic ratio.
... He is the doctor and "the man of Beauty" (190) at the same time. Similarly, Kenneth Burke (1941), drawing on his theory of the literary form as an "act," suggests that the poet is a "medicine man" (p. 64), who "immunizes" his readers by an attenuated version of the disease, a process similar to that of homeopathy (p. ...
يستعرض البحث العلاقة بين الادب والطب ويسلط الضوء على اهم الجوانب التي يتقاطع فيها هذان المجالان ومنها العلاج، التعاطف ونظرية المعرفة. ولقد استخدم الادب وسيلة علاجية منذ القدم حيث نظرية ارسطو المتعلقة بالتطهير (التخلص من العواطف). واستخدمت مؤخرا مصطلحات كـ(ببليوثيرابي) و(سيكربتوثيرابي) عندما استخدم كل من القراءة والكتابة لأغراض علاجية. وقد أقرت بعض المناهج الادبية في الكليات الطبية منذ بداية ثمانينيات القرن الماضي في معظم الدول المتقدمة، عندما اثبتت البحوث أثرها الايجابي على العاملين في المجال الصحي. لقد وجد الرواد في "الطب السردي" ان هناك تشابها بين التشخيص الطبي وعناصر السرد الادبي. كما ان كتابات المرضى والاطباء تساعد في فهم أفضل للمرض. ويعد الاطباء الكتاب من اهم الفضاءات التي يمتزج فيها الادب مع الطب ومن القضايا التي يتناولها البحث اهمية تلك الاعمال في مجال الانسانيات الطبية. ويرمي البحث الى تشجيع الباحثين في مجال الانسانيات الطبية الذي اثبت أهمية الادب وتوظيفه في مجالات علمية كالطب، وان الادب أوسع وأشمل في فوائده وأهميته من أن ينحصر في عده منهاجا يدرس في الاقسام الانسانية.
... There is an established relationship between rhetoric and argumentation, with renewed attention among scholars to the connection between these fields, for example, in rhetorical argumentation (see [49]). Following the work of Kenneth Burke [50][51][52] and Chaim Perelman [53,54], rhetoric can be seen as "equipment for living", and the skills of good thinking are its inseparable part [55][56][57]. In ancient Greek and Roman traditions, rhetoric and rhetorical education were seen as providing citizens (men) with the skills to think critically, advocate for themselves, and participate in democracy [58]. ...
Critical thinking is essential when navigating, evaluating, and interacting with media; therefore, it is important to investigate if adults’ critical thinking skills can be trained. This paper describes an experiment investigating the impact of video lectures about enthymemes and critical thinking skills on participants’ (N = 176) critical thinking skills, measured by the Watson–Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal (WGCTA) and on their ability to identify clickbait headlines. Participants were adults recruited through the Prolific Platform, and they were randomly assigned to one of three conditions: an enthymeme lecture, a general critical thinking lecture, or a control condition. The results indicated no significant improvement in critical thinking scores across the conditions, as measured by the WGCTA. Similarly, no significant differences were found in the participants’ ability to identify clickbait headlines. However, a significant positive correlation was observed between higher critical thinking scores and better clickbait recognition. These results suggest that a short lecture-based intervention may not be sufficient to significantly improve adult learners’ critical thinking. Perhaps this study indicates the need for more in-depth or interactive interventions to effectively support media literacy. The material presented here is a kind of counterexample of what should be done. For this reason, it may prove useful in future research to avoid certain experimental dead-ends.
... TC scholars are poised to jump into a conversation about surveillance because they have already conceived of their own work as contextual, or "situated." Communication scholars like those in TC regularly assert that we must look at different situations to understand and interpret phenomenon, as well as recognize our own positionality or ethos, and, as rhetoricians, communications scholars are always thinking of audiences and talk about the constant preoccupation of the situations, conversations, or "parlors" one walks in and out of (Burke, 1941), or the rhetorical context that surrounds any one instance of communication. The concept of being "situated" implies a "situation," and definitionally a situation is just an ephemeral assemblage of circumstances one finds oneself in. ...
... Similarly, linguists who choose a rhetorical or stylistic approach tend to claim that poetic or stylistic features -like rhyme or parallelism -are obligatory components, while those with a semantic or semiotic approach, namely Grigori Permyakov or Peter Grzybek, will give more importance to the role of the interaction situation. This is why proverbs have been characterised as "names" (Permyakov 1974, Kleiber 2019 or "strategies" (Burke 1941, Kuusi 1998 to describe or deal with situations. Scholars with a less linguistic and more cultural approach tend to choose widely different features, as with Winick (2011: 367), who puts the "communication of wisdom" at the centre of proverb definition. ...
This article serves two main functions: it warns about the complexity and risks surrounding proverb definition and also offers solutions to increase insight and avoid pitfalls. The first part analyses the reasons for the absence of clear consensus among scholars and includes a summary of the main trends or views in specialised literature, as well as a “scale of consensus” for definition criteria. The second part advocates for an optimistic approach and a strict methodology to define proverbs, including several principles to boost legitimacy and bypass common obstacles. The final part showcases, through concrete examples, how terminology and proverb definition can influence or distort results in several fields of paremiology.
... The article subsequently appeared in Burke's 1941 The Philosophy of Literary Form; it and another essay in that volume, "Literature as Equipment for Living," provide a rationale for a rhetorical analysis of both traditionally understood literary works as well as works like Mein Kampf. The article asserts that literary works are like proverbs, and that both proverbs and literature offer strategies "for consolation or vengeance, for admonition or exhortation, for foretelling" (293). ...
... Oral competence allows humans to express themselves clearly and understandably, helping them participate in a democratic society and navigate life (Burke, 1973). This competence is closely related to the ability to adjust to multiple social and cultural aspects and contexts. ...
The spring of COVID-19 forced teachers to restructure learning materials, content delivery, and learning environment, this leading to utilizing innovative course designs, high-tech learning tools, and engaging web-based learning environments. This shift affects, on the one hand, the perceptions of teachers and learners, and on the other hand, instructional practices, resulting in learned lessons and future envisions about the feasibility of utilizing the web in the context of English language education. In this introductory chapter, we present the background of this special collection on online English language teaching and learning, provide a summary of the expanding corpus of research on online English language education, and introduce the studies published in the collection. This collection of chapters covers the perspectives, implications, challenges, and opportunities of digital transformation in English language education prompted by the increasing accessibility of technology and the COVID-19 pandemic.
... Oral competence allows humans to express themselves clearly and understandably, helping them participate in a democratic society and navigate life (Burke, 1973). This competence is closely related to the ability to adjust to multiple social and cultural aspects and contexts. ...
This book focuses on English as a Foreign Language (EFL) and provides advice on how to approach EFL teaching in the online context. Coronavirus has accelerated e-learning significantly and has highlighted the need of appropriate web tools that will allow teachers to present their material either synchronously or asynchronously, while also adequately assess their students. At the same time, there is a need of tools that can engage the students and motivate them to actively participate in the lesson.
With e-learning being a rather new challenge for both teachers and students, this book provides research- and practice-based chapters with strategies, techniques, approaches, and methods which have proven to be successful in e-learning environments, maximizing their impact. Apart from presenting research results with strong pedagogical implications on online or blended English language learning and teaching, the book also trains educators on utilizing online tools and managing online learning environments and platforms.
... Oral competence allows humans to express themselves clearly and understandably, helping them participate in a democratic society and navigate life (Burke, 1973). This competence is closely related to the ability to adjust to multiple social and cultural aspects and contexts. ...
Online assessment practices have been affected by various factors ranging from teachers’ technological competence to devices and tools offered and made available both to teachers and students. The current study aimed at exploring challenges and issues experienced by language lecturers in Turkish tertiary contexts during their transition to online/distance learning and teaching. The participants of the study included seventy-five language lecturers at the School of Foreign Languages and the Department of Foreign Language Education at various state universities in Turkey. The study used quantitative data provided by the participants’ responses to the online survey which included several short-answer questions regarding how they assessed students during the pandemic. The survey was created through Google Forms and shared with the participants via emails and social networking sites. The major results of the study indicated that a great majority of the participants did not have any power in the selection of the assessment types as the university senates determined the main assessment to be assignments or projects. The results also showed that academic integrity and grading were other concerns during the online assessment, in addition to technical problems, limitations, and devices available to lecturers and students.KeywordsEnglish as a foreign languageOnlineAssessmentTestingChallengesOpportunities
... Oral competence allows humans to express themselves clearly and understandably, helping them participate in a democratic society and navigate life (Burke, 1973). This competence is closely related to the ability to adjust to multiple social and cultural aspects and contexts. ...
This chapter takes a snapshot of the current situation in terms of secondary school English teachers’ capacity to engage in teaching remotely, as has been necessary during the COVID-19 pandemic, in three distinct locations within Asia – India, Malaysia, and Taiwan. In addition, taking account of the potential effects of COVID-19, it seeks to uncover any mismatch between teachers’ theoretical understandings of what remote teaching of English language classes involves and what has been happening in practice. It is based upon a small-scale qualitative study that used questionnaire data from English teachers working in secondary schools in different locations and interview data from academics working in the field of English language teacher education in each location. Through the data, the study revisits how teachers’ capacity to teach remotely is modelled as well as making recommendations in terms of supporting and training teachers to deliver classes remotely and the need to pay attention to both teacher and student wellbeing in order to make remote teaching sustainable.KeywordsEnglish language teachingemergency remote teachingTPACKteacher support and trainingstaff and student wellbeing
... At the same time, it may be useful to consider how this particular characteristic figures in the rhetorical strategies of other demagogues in history. Kenneth Burke (Burke, 1974), in his analysis of the rhetoric of Hitler's Mein Kampf, argues that the author convincingly shows "the power of endless repetition" (Burke, 1974: 217) and the effectiveness of "the sloganizing repetitiousness of standard advertising technique" (Burke, 1974: 218) that was used in spreading the destructive Nazi ideology (Burke, 1974: 218). Now cognitive scholars are able to explain how exactly such repetitions work and what effect they have on our minds. ...
The paper is an attempt to explore some of the most distinctive and unique characteristics that define the linguistic representation of Donald Trump's communicative behavior as it manifests itself during his 2016 presidential campaign rallies, press conferences and various TV appearances and official speeches (delivered prior to and after assuming presidency). By means of critical discourse analysis (CDA), the author tries to identify what linguistic means might contribute to making Trump appealing to his base. Since he is commonly believed to appeal to emotions in his electorate, the author examines instances where he persuades and manipulates the public by generating an emotional response in them. More specifically, the study explores such affective components of communicative behavior as repetitions, hyperbole, attaching labels and, finally, his use of implicit meaning and presuppositions. Our corpus suggests that activating the affective component is strategic for Trump, although it is also true that appeal to emotions is natural and often intuitive on his part. Repetitions and negative labeling make sure that certain ideas become permanent in the minds of prospective voters and that opponents are subconsciously associated with something negative. Hyperbole is revealed to take different forms and serve several functions in his speech. Finally, the paper discusses implicitness in Trump’s language, notably existential, propositional and value assumptions, which help 'unpack' ideas embedded in his propositions.
... If the "feminist myth" (that women can have it all) has been tarnished for me recently, it is not because it has been replaced by the cautionary tale that my body is a biological time bomb. Rather, I find that neither the feminist myth nor the cautionary tale provide me with the "equipment for living" (Burke, 1973) that 1 seek from a good story. As I begin to ask questions about when, how, and under what conditions / will start my family, desiring to be "productive" as a scholar/mother, I am struck by the silences that surround anticipated motherhood and the lack of stories to help me navigate my journey. ...
Contemporary discourse about career motherhood reifies a public/private dichotomy that ignores the evolving obligations and desires in women's lives. Problems arise when complex private stories of pregnancy meet the inflexibility of public discourse and its concomitant social practices. A relational perspective reframes “public/private” from static binary to dynamic dialectic. Mirroring the proposed public and private dialectic, this essay integrates personal stories and critical analysis to illustrate the reciprocal relationship between objective and subjective knowledge.
After a short argumentation of the content, we synthetically highlight some of the main characteristics of Rožanc’s writing. Our interest is largely focused on his essays, as they reveal the most important characteristics of the author’s absorbed and subtle relationship towards the world. Through the notion of split character, the author furnished the basis of questions dealing with God and mankind, man and woman, games and sport, art and creativity, with a constant search for equilibrium and meaning.
The development of computer technology has greatly promoted the analysis and research of literary works, mainly in the aspects of information collection and data analysis. The analysis model of symbolism in literary works is constructed using the Word2vec algorithm and TextCNN text classification algorithm in this paper. Using computer vision-based OCR text recognition technology, text data is collected from poetic literary works related to a watershed. The dataset is analyzed using the constructed text analysis method to uncover the symbols and symbolic meanings in the sample literary works. Through the analysis of the sample poetic works, two categories of landscape symbols, natural and humanistic, are extracted, and the former is characterized by symbols such as “stream beach”, “shore tide”, “flowers and birds”, “fish and dragons”, etc. Fish and dragons” and other symbols, while the latter is represented by “city buildings” (0.11%), “boats” (0.41%), and “travelers” (0.59%). 0.59%). Five symbolic images are summarized, namely mountain climbing, hearing sounds in temples and monasteries, searching for antiquity in deep forests, boating in rivers and lakes, and fishing songs in idyllic gardens. The research in this paper explores a text-mining method for symbolism in literary works, which is conducive to the development of data-oriented and efficient analysis of literary works.
In this first of two articles on chanting and enchantment we introduce the problem of mass synchronisation via collective communicative action that works to eliminate or lessen independent and critical assessment. Chanting forges a singular 'collective' identity with little to no structure that would allow for logical tests such as falsifiability. We argue that this problem can be a fundamental threat to democratic polity, and we offer the Neo-Kantian theory of dimensional accrual and dissociation as an explanation. In Part 2, we will continue with examples and a discussion of the confluence of philosophical examination and social scientific explanations.
This article delves into Kenneth Burke's seminal essay, "Literature as Equipment for Living," presenting a fresh perspective on literary criticism that underscores the pragmatic, societal, and political roles of literature. Burke posits that literature functions as an active agent, offering viable courses of action in response to worldly matters. Departing from traditional analyses of form and structure, Burke advocates for classifying works based on shared strategies for addressing situations. He contends that literature acts as a navigational tool, aiding in comprehension and interpretation of the world while urging readers to engage with texts for insights and inspiration in confronting life's challenges. Burke's viewpoint underscores the subjective nature of language, reflecting our individual experiences and perspectives on the world. His critical methodology advocates for a comprehensive and nuanced approach to literary critique, expanding the horizons of scholarly considerations.
This research was conducted with the aim of identifying Anies Baswedan's populist political communication style as a government political actor and uncovering the motives and interests of power behind its use by using theory of populism and Burke’s dramatism. This research has a critical paradigm with a qualitative research design. The data collection method consists of in-depth interviews (in dept interviews); observation; literature and document study; and triangulation. The research quality criteria are based on historical situatedness. The research results show that the populist political communication style of government political actors is a symbolic action of a leader born from the democratic process. The component of the populist political communication style that is prominently used is the pro-people component. The motive revealed was the desire to build alternative political power through image and public opinion. Meanwhile, the interests of power are to protect and strengthen the legitimacy of the leadership to maintain power and pave the way for political career advancement. A number of findings which are novel in this research are the populist dramatism approach as a synthesis of the theories of dramatism and populism; audience's perception as an additional element in the analysis of the Burkeian dramatic pentad; and identification and cross-check methods to determine the appropriate scene for the rhetorical act of political speech.
Many of us learned to cite sources to avoid plagiarism or to give credit. Yet there are many more generative reasons to teach and learn citation. This essay offers a teacher’s perspective and a student’s perspective on our personal journeys toward viewing and practicing citation as a way of joyfully generating community with others. We describe our individual struggles, how anti-oppressive, anti-racist, and critical feminist scholars have shaped our thinking, and what we do within the classroom to practice a joyful, generative way of citing. We offer suggestions for how to hold ourselves and students accountable to more inclusive and community-oriented ways of citing by infusing reflective practice throughout the semester in college writing-intensive courses.
A central theme that emerged in the analysis of this study was the use of humanizing rhetoric, and the fundamental rhetorical concept underlying humanizing rhetoric was identification. Identification is a concept theorized by the influential rhetorician Kenneth Burke. In this chapter, I explicate Burke’s theory of identification and review the literature on humanizing and dehumanizing rhetoric. This chapter lays the conceptual groundwork for understanding the analyses in Chaps. 5 and 6.
Artikeln undersöker ritualisering i svensk politik. Den politiska rapporteringen är till en inte oväsentlig del upptagen med politikers symboliska handlingar, ofta strategiskt iscensatta av aktörerna själva: politiker visar upp sig deltagande i gemensamma måltider, ute på resa, i naturen. Symboliska handlingar får även en betydande roll i samband med kriser och skandaler, som i regel resulterar i dramer med upprepade handlingsmönster. Studien syftar till att demonstrera sådana mönster och peka på bakomliggande motiv. Den inleds med en diskussion av ritualbegreppet och presenterar termer som socialt drama, liminalitet och mimetiskt begär. Den avslutas med en diskussion om de legitimerande ritualer som präglar konstitutionen av politiska koalitioner i Sverige under de senaste åren.
Ian Bogost’s 2011 book How to Do Things with Video Games seeks to “reveal a small portion of the many uses of video games and how together they make the medium broader, richer, and more relevant (p. 7). I aspire to join Bogost’s conversation by offering another use for video games— the video game as a site of immersive witnessing. To showcase how witnessing can be meaningfully utilized in video games, I present case studies of two vastly disparate games: commercial entertainment game Telltale’s The Walking Dead and not-for-profit game Half the Sky Movement: The Game. My method of analysis traces rhetorical and design forms (including narrative, duration, immersion, choice, and reflection) that contribute to my conception of an immersive witnessing experience. Achieved through games’ immersive and agentic properties, witnessing through games involves different emotional and thought processes than other media. This model not only potentially appeals to new audiences but also engages those audiences in a distinctly different way from media of the past.
The one-shot library instruction model emphasizes skill training, which fits well into the transactional structure of higher education. Therefore, one-shots often perpetuate the status quo by focusing on individual skills rather than systemic barriers to information literacy. Slow librarianship radically counters these neoliberal values. This article provides a concrete model for how slow librarianship can empower librarians to develop a scaffolded series of information literacy sessions. The author explores how, rather than just a series of one-shots, these collaborative sessions provide space for librarians to journey with students by creating lesson plans which challenge racism and other biases.
Denna artikel presenterar en studie av attityder som visas i en medlingssituation i en svensk reality-teveserie om grannkonflikter. Syftet är att utveckla en teoretisk och metodologisk ram för retorisk analys av ickeverbala yttranden. I artikeln skisseras en teori baserad på retorikens actio och Kenneth Burkes syn på förkroppsligad attityd. Actio utforskas genom en multimodal analys, det vill säga genom hur olika mänskliga modaliteter – såsom gester, ansiktsuttryck, huvudrörelser, kroppshållning, röstnyanser etc. – samverkar och skapar mening åt den ickeverbala kommunikationen. Med hjälp av skillnader i actiokvaliteter identifierades två attityder vilka tydligt påverkade medlingen: nedlåtenhet och trots. Tillsammans bildar de en struktur som befäster konflikten. I artikeln dras slutsatsen att de teoretiska begreppen attityd och actio-kvaliteter tillsammans utgör en meningsfull modell för att analysera kroppsspråket i kommunikativa situationer och att tidiga iakttagelser av ickeverbala yttranden kan bidra till lyckad medling.
С. Geertz’s paying attention to the fact that late Wittgenstein’s network of concepts and images was always a guide for perfecting expression of his ideas. This allowed for exploring, in a new way, the sign of understanding an alien culture through returning to a man a feeling of friction under their feet. This mage of connecting to the everyday life of an alien culture has led C. Geertz to creating images of ethnographer’s everyday life in a “thick description” against a background of vivid images of “living a literary criticism” described by R. Wellek and A. Warren.With the very background of contemporary criticism’s expressive motives of excluding the studies in history of literature, which risked turning critics into antiquarians, and an imagined student’s cunning suggestion on accepting cryptographer’s operations as an equivalent of recognizing alien types of symbolic writing in a poet’s imagination, C. Geertz created an image of an ethnographer’s daily life in a form of “thick description.” This implies a non-mirrored similarity to reading a manuscript and criticizes the attempts to replace the interpretation of cultures to deсoding.C. Geertz’s appeal to K. Burke’s summing up of an ideal model of the strategy of transforming a literary description of an imaginary event into a description of the imaginary actions of the participants of this event under the name ‘Bovary’ emphasized the presence of only really existing events and actions in the descriptions of the old time cultures.However, C. Geertz’s appeal to S. Langer’s description of the influence of the “grande idée” on the development of sciences provoked the appearance of the most extensive description of the features of the presence of “rich description” in theoretical generalizations, which also contained instructions for protection against the seduction of “rich description” by ideas of this kind.
In this diffractively reflexive creative inquiry, a gaggle of creative arts therapists/educators/supervisors in Aotearoa New Zealand use arts-based research through autoethnography (abr+a) to tumble down the rabbit-hole of cognitive compromise caused by ongoing pandemic challenges. We render visible our variously manifested absences of the capacity to think clearly (a vital component when one's an academic within the tertiary sector facing adaptive upheavals into online delivery; a vital component when one's a therapist holding stable space within wobbly times; and possibly a vital component when one is oneself navigating unchartered experiences as a human during a global pandemic, widespread conflict and climate crisis). We ponder innate strategies we created to counter this cognitive-cramping. We therefore invite you into our meandering maze of trauma and neurobiological research, thick lived-experience descriptions and curated found-word poems, collages, mask-play, video-clips, photographs, and fabric and natural-materials artworks. These proliferating creative tangents initially jostled and skittered, before revealing an interconnecting theme of making-sense. Making-sense within abr+a is rhizomatic, entangling reflexive and diffractive practices. Each scholartist maps their own tunnel back to cognitive-sense, carved using embodied, ensouled, expressive-material and/or ethnographic-sym sense-making. The cumulative felt-destination of these journeys echoes beyond a simple 'return to…' tale. Thrumming through the bedrock of this topsy-turvy account is the call to whatever glowing sense-of-home we each yearn for.
Det første de fleste laegger maerke til, når de laeser en tekst, er de enkeltord, der bruges i en tekst. Nogle af dem "falder i øjnene" og man har allerede et første indtryk af hvilken "holdning" forfatteren til teksten har. Ofte vil det vaere nogle måske tilfaeldige ord, som ikke altid er bevidst brugt, som for nogle laesere er med til at skabe et førstehåndsindtryk, som kan vaere svaert at aendre. Brugen af enkelte ord kan både vise noget om, hvordan man vil beskrive virkeligheden og hvorledes man vurderer den. De fleste vil f.eks. hurtigt kunne registrere om et ord bruges som et plus-eller et minusord i en tekst. Ordvalg er ikke uskyldige, de viser, hvorledes man opfatter virkeligheden. I videnskabelige tekster kan man ofte straks se, hvilken teoretisk orientering eller tradition forfatteren tilhører, og i politiske tekster, vil ordvalg afspejle hvilket parti, gruppe eller "fløj" skribenten tilhører. I beskrivelsen af politiske konflikter vil man altid se i ordvalget, hvilken position en forfatter forsøger at indtage, hvilket perspektiv han forsøger at anlaegge. Hvorledes beskrives nogle aktører?-neutralt eller med en tydelig vurdering. I beskrivelsen af borgerkrigene på Balkan f.eks. omkring Kosovo-konflikten så man det tydeligt. Her blev nogle af de uformelle aktører af nogle betegnet som "terrorister", men af andre beskrevet som "frihedskaempere". Blev NATO's intervention beskrevet som "en humanitaer intervention", "en retfaerdig krig" eller som "et overgreb", " en regulaer "krig" imod et fjendtligt land. Valget af enkelte ord signalerer straks til laeseren af en tekst, hvor forfatteren til en reportage eller analyse er placeret.
В статье анализируются творческие стратегии новосибирских художников Н.Д. Грицюка (1922–1976) и К.А. Черных (1923–1968) в контексте тенденций позднесоветского искусства. В условиях нормативного дискурса художественная стратегия Н.Д. Грицюка имела двойственный характер. С одной стороны, он выстраивал траекторию поведения, ограниченную установками официального искусства: состоял в Союзе художников и пользовался его преимуществами (коллективные и персональные выставки, пленэры, творческие поездки), в начале творчества (конец 1950-х – начало 1960-х гг.) обращался к конъюнктурным сюжетам и темам (образу современного города, индустриальным мотивам). С другой стороны, создавал невидимые для публики гротески («грицюковины») — каракули и почеркушки в альбомах и блокнотах, ставшие для художника полем свободного самовыражения, которые во второй половине 1960-х гг. переросли в абстрактные композиции без названий, зачастую не выставляемые на публичных площадках, но демонстрируемые в пространстве мастерской для узкого круга из «своих». К.А. Черных, в отличие от Н.Д. Грицюка, был непрофессиональным, самодеятельным художником. Его маргинальное положение в обществе позволяло свободно обращаться к неожиданным темам, техникам и приемам: древнерусская проблематика, библейские сюжеты, карнавальное творчество, протоперформансы, коллажи. Выбранная стратегия художественного и повседневного антиповедения сближает его творчество с искусством аутсайдеров. Реализация в художественном сообществе Новосибирска в 1960–1970-х гг. двух разных творческих стратегий — сознательного, намеренного двоемыслия и антиповедения-юродствования — отражает сложное внутреннее устройство позднесоветского искусства, по сути своей многослойного, не ограниченного оппозицией «официального» и «неофициального».
The Pursuit of Style in Early Modern Drama examines how early modern plays celebrated the power of different styles of talk to create dynamic forms of public address. Across the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, London expanded into an uncomfortably public city where everyone was a stranger to everyone else. The relentless anonymity of urban life spurred dreams of its opposite: of being a somebody rather than a nobody, of being the object of public attention rather than its subject. Drama gave life to this fantasy. Presented by strangers and to strangers, early modern plays codified different styles of talk as different forms of public sociability. Then, as now, to speak of style was to speak of a fantasy of public address. Offering fresh insight for scholars of literature and drama, Matthew Hunter reveals how this fantasy – which still holds us in its thrall – played out on the early modern stage.
Although today’s psychology students are well versed in the early stages of the scientific method (developing a research question; designing an experiment), they are rarely asked to engage in the final stage of the scientific method: building and communicating an idea among scholars. As a result, students often fail to appreciate the “unending conversation” that is academic inquiry. To help students learn to think “like scientists” and join a scholarly conversation, we have tried mirroring elements of scholarly practices in the classroom (e.g., writing, collaboration). Evidence in the natural sciences has suggested that each of these pedagogical techniques, taken individually, can enhance students’ critical thinking. More recent work in chemistry education, however, has demonstrated that a holistic approach, engaging students in multiple scholarly practices, may lead to greater gains in critical thinking. In this article, I argue for such an approach in psychology—one that more closely mirrors how scholars operate in the real world. As a model, I present a scaffolded writing project that asks students to think like scientists by engaging in multiple scholarly practices—collaborative writing, inquiry-based research, and peer review. I hypothesize that students can make significant gains in critical thinking when they are placed in the role of scholar. I thus call for a new direction in how we approach today’s psychology students and highlight the critical need for empirical testing of this and other combinatory approaches.
If Paul Ricoeur had not developed a narrative theory for hermeneutics it would have to have been written at some point, so necessary is narrative to rendering the discursive character of hermeneutic being (see Arthos 2011). Yet although welcomed from many corners, it was also immediately controversial (Carr 1986). Since metanarratives were the target of postmodern theory as a strong signifier of the ideological face of hegemony, Ricoeur’s construction of narrative as a discursive medium of coherence and identity in the tradition of the hermeneutics of faith sat itself up like a bull’s-eye.1 But as Haydn White’s serial reviews of Time and Narrative show, the work was too good to dismiss out of hand (1987 (2007). In fact, it is possible to affirm much of what Lyotard, Foucault, and others laid at the feet of narrative and still welcome Ricoeur’s constructive theoretical contributions. To be sure, even friendly critics have noted that Ricoeur’s exposition is circumscribed too narrowly within an Aristotelian framework and tailored too closely to canonic texts. At the same time, feminist and other critical perspectives suggest the theory itself may be able to transcend these limitations.2 My goal in this essay is simply to ask whether new and less homogeneous narrative forms than those Ricoeur worked with can be comprehended through the lens of his concept of narrative.
Ricoeur’s narrative theory describes the porosity of the boundary between the artifice of the story and the contingent materiality of life, and their complex movement back and forth. The particular aspect of this movement I want to focus on is Ricoeur’s shift in the theory of reception over the course of the three volumes of Time and Narrative from what he calls “transcendence within immanence” to something called “transcending immanence.” This happens as Ricoeur passes from the reception of literature to a full-on ontology. By the end of his analysis, his tripartite model of mimetic prefiguration, configuration, and refiguration is conceived as a process that expands outward in a growing circle beyond the literary text to the construction of the phenomenological life-world. In the conclusion to volume 2 he affirms categorically that “the boundary between configuration and refiguration has not yet been crossed, as long as the world of the work remains a transcendence immanent in the text,” and only “after a theory of reading has been proposed in one of the concluding chapters of volume three will fictional narrative be able to assert its claims to truth, at the cost of a radical reformulation of the problem of truth” (1985: 160). This final version of reconfiguration ties its anchor posts over the course of volume 2, part 3, and then acts as the resolution of the major problem in volume 3 (part 4, section 2), which is to know how to draw narrative history and fiction into the same circle. Ricoeur’s final vision is that, to the extent that we can, we construct a life through the narrative capacity to fashion the materials of the interpreted past and the possible future. Mimesis has even more agency than I think Ricoeur accounted for, and I want to see if I can expand its range a bit further. I am going to explore one dimension of narrative pleasure that is not developed in Ricoeur’s narrative theory per se but which is not a correction to the theory either. This example will illustrate how Ricoeur’s theoretical model is robust enough to stretch well beyond its somewhat narrow grounding in conventional Western literature. It is because of new forms of storytelling, such as interactive fiction, fanzines, and cyberperformance, that we can see new possibilities for the work of refiguration.
Ricoeur’s theory of fiction conjoins three traditions: the phenomenological concept of life-world, the Kantian concept of productive imagination, and the hermeneutic idea of interpretation as projection. This combination yields a concept of narrative fiction that he describes as “a world capable of being inhabited,” a habitable space (1985: 100).3 At first (in volume 2 of Time and Narrative), Ricoeur’s theorizing about the text-reader relationship is yoked to a...
Departing from a recent article by R Llinás and D. Paré in Neuroscience the paper discusses the possibility that storytelling springs from the same "skill" that permits us to dream, that waking storytelling is simply "modulated by different constraints" on the imagination (among which are: responsibility to a reader, susceptibility to interruption or distraction, so-called double-mindedness, etc.), and that while creating the story the storyteller is, in a manner of speaking, really dreaming under different circumstances. The paper is divided into two topic areas: the first relates to our intrinsic capacity to invent stories and images (what creative processes make invention possible?), the second to the extrinsic structures (scripts, proverbs, etc.) we borrow from the waking world in order to make dream narratives (or: what features of waking experience go into the structuring of plots?). The prevailing assumption of the paper is that the creative process, in both dreams and waking fictions, is a form of remembering, or a remembrance of things learned and stored in associational memory.
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