Maria Granic-White's blog

Portrayal

Maria Granic-White — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 10:29:16 -0500

To Cicero’s three offices, docere (Lat. “to teach”), delectare (Lat. “to charm”), and movere (Lat. “to move”) Burke adds a fourth, one, “portray” (ETSM 41). According to Oxford Dictionary online, the term means: 1. Depict in a work of art or literature. 2. Describe in a particular way. 3. (of an actor) play the part of. The term derives from the Old French portaire, from traire “to draw.” Words relfect "reality"; therefore, it is important for one to utilize the right words (This sounds like Mark Twain) (effective rhetorical devices) in order to obtain certain responses from one's audience. As self-expression, portraiture depends on the “’moral principle’ in the agent” (ESTM 44). This poses a problem in that the speaker/writer will draw his/her view of a certain topic based on a certain motive in a certain setting in order to move his/her audience to action.

Unemployment and Pollution

Maria Granic-White — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 21:51:34 -0500

Overall, Burke seems to perceive technologism as an evil of humanity done to humanity itself as well as to the Earth. Although he admits that computers will help us to gather vast amounts of information (THTS 57), he also argues that the more sophisticated the software, the more hours of work to be put into them in order to maintain them functional (THTS 57). Moreover, Burke mentions that although we may be able to find out the answer to quite a number of questions with the help of the computer (THTS 57-58), he intimates that the information we will find will not be crucial or useful for us; additionally, the amount of information we will be able to find out will be directly proportionate with our effort to maintain them running (THTS 58). Another important claim Burke makes is that the computer (and I would argue technology in general) may cause unemployment (THTS 58).

Definition of Human

Maria Granic-White — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 08:16:25 -0500

In his second clause, Burke states that man is “Inventor of the negative” (LSA 9) but then he corrects his statement asserting that “language and the negative ‘invented’ man” (LSA 9). He emphasizes the futility and the absurdity of attempting to identify negatives in nature because “The negative is a function peculiar to symbol systems” (LSA 9). Then, Burke mentions that according to Bergson, one of the prime uses of the negative is related to “unfulfilled expectations” (LSA 9). Surprisingly, Burke offers examples from everyday life (such as what temperature the thermometer reads: not 54) and makes no reference to Freud’s “castration complex” (“Narcissism” 48). In the scene of seeing which he places at the heart of how the little boy, in his narcissistic investment in his organ, perceives the little girl as a castrated boy. His first reaction is one of lack of interest, but later he looks for what he does not see.

Barnyard

Maria Granic-White — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 08:53:17 -0500

I was puzzled by Burke's choice of the "Barnyard" (RM 23) as the place in which people engage in dialog. This locus replaces the more "bourgeois" one of the parlor. This term, related to farming, does not suggest highly intellectual preoccupations but rather it makes one think of more mundane, utilitarian purposes. Could it be that Burke was disenchanted with the way in which people utilize language?

Rhetoric as Symbolic Action

Maria Granic-White — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 18:10:13 -0500

Attempting to analyze ways in which we use symbols rhetorically, Burke refers to the difficulty of choice suggested by the word “Scramble” suggestive of a “distorted mass” (Merriam-Webster online). When we utilize language, we select words/symbols from the “distorted mass” of attitudes that will suggest a pattern of experience that will strengthen our argument. The term “Scramble” reminds me of the metaphor of the melted mass and the signifiers that congeal on the surface. Moreover, the word “wrangle” suggests that symbolic action takes place in a continuum, which brings to mind the parlor where people are engaged in a dialog that seems to be a prolonged dispute or “Wrangle,” an “argument that continues for a long period of time” (Oxford Dictionary online).

Tropes

Maria Granic-White — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 10:47:48 -0400

While reading RM, especially the part about identification and consubstantiality, I tried to apply the terms to Charlotte Bronte's novel Villette. I was trying to utilize Burke's concept of identification with reference to Lucy Snowe, the protagonist of the novel. Although she is not identical with M. Paul (female vs. male, Protestant vs. Catholic), Lucy may identify herself with him: both teach and both experience anxiety (she as an introvert; he as an extrovert). She intuits consubstantiality and at the same time she is aware that she is an unique individual. She has the sense of being both separate joined with M. Paul and separate from him, s a distinct substance (as she acts together with him and they have certain attitudes that make them consubstantial).

Lacan through Burke

Maria Granic-White — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 21:25:34 -0400

Burke’s explanation of the “four master tropes” (especially that of metaphor and metonymy) is useful to understand Lacan’s term the Name of the father/the law of the father. According to Lacan, the father is just a name, a signifier. Regnault sees it primarily as a signifier and only secondarily as a person, a man (in Reading Seminar xi: Lacan’s Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis 69). Burke mentions the relationship between metaphor (“a device for seeing something in terms of something else” GM 503) and perspective, which he explains in P&C; the two realms “are never identical” (GM 504). According to Lacan, the child encounters the desire of the mother but feels that the mother is obeying the law of the father; therefore, the mother becomes the law of the father as the child “sees the mother in terms of the father", he subsitutes perspective.

Marx through White through Burke

Maria Granic-White — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 21:18:18 -0400

Burke’s explanation of metonymy and synecdoche helped me better understand Hayden White’s proposal in Metahistory (1973) that Marx is the philosopher of history who apprehended the past in terms of metonymy. White makes use of Burke's master tropes in his work Metahistory. While he shows that Marx’s outlook is metonymic, he also explains that it comes to a full romance. However, White seems to be divided between comedy (which for him is the emplotment that corresponds to synecdoche) and romance (metaphor) because Marx’s imagination, in certain respects, fits the old Greek formulation of comedy: the hero is one of us, the aim is to achieve something, a setback occurs, and then a victorious revolution happens. Burke’s explanation helped me make more sense of White’s analysis of Marx’s view. According to Burke, metonymy is “a substantial reduction” (GM 507).

molten mass

Maria Granic-White — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 09:03:45 -0400

According to Burke, when we interpret motives based on acts that we perform we make judgments as to the scope of context (GM 90). Moreover, as Burke asserts, “To select a set of terms is…to select a circumference” (GM 90), which I suppose delimits the terministic screen which we utilize in order to describe “reality.” Consequently, in the terms we choose there are “circumferences” of varying scope. Industrialism however, Burke draws our attention, narrowed circumference in that it turned to monetary and financial aspects: money became a self-serving locus of motive. If we were to apply the pentad to this situation, could we identify the terministic screen in order to “see” the circumference which money created in the post-industrial era?

Metaphor

Maria Granic-White — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 23:18:08 -0400

Burke’s analogy of the “great central moltenness” (GM xix) out of which distinctions arise brings into light his idea of the function of rhetoric as the use of words to form attitudes or to induce actions. According to Burke, we are moved to action through language, through a dialectical exchange of symbols and through our desire for identification. The scope of the pentad is not merely the naming of elements (symbols) but the analysis of the interplay between the pentadic elements, or of the ratios, which may point us to places of ambiguity. In order to analyze the interplay, we seek vocabularies that “reflect reality faithfully”; however, by selecting certain words we implicitly deflect reality (GM 59).