rhetoric - culture & education · kenneth burke and the rhetoric of the human sciences ......

Rhetoric as Equipment for Living

Kenneth Burke, Culture and Education

Ghent University May 22-25, 2013

Programme


Kenneth Burke, Culture and Education

May 22-25, 2013, Ghent University, Belgium

Table of contents Introduction _______________________________________________________________ 1 Organization ______________________________________________________________ 2 General information ________________________________________________________ 3 Public transport ___________________________________________________________ 4 Maps ___________________________________________________________________ 5 Programme overview _______________________________________________________ 7 Keynote lectures __________________________________________________________ 15 Plenary sessions _________________________________________________________ 19 Paper sessions and Panels _________________________________________________ 23

Wednesday 22/05 (13.30 – 15.00) _________________________________________ 23 Thursday 23/05 (11.00 – 12.30) ___________________________________________ 32 Thursday 23/05 (13.30 – 15.00) ___________________________________________ 42 Friday 24/05 (11.00-12.30) _______________________________________________ 52 Friday 24/05 (13.30-15.00) _______________________________________________ 62 Saturday 25/05 (11.00-12.30) _____________________________________________ 71

Participants _____________________________________________________________ 81

Introduction

1

Rhetoric as Equipment for Living Kenneth Burke, Culture and Education

The second half of the twentieth century has witnessed a number of different but related turns in the humanities and social sciences: linguistic, cultural, anthropological/ ethnographic, interpretive, semiotic, narrative... All these turns recognise the importance of signs and symbols in our interpretations of reality and more specifically the cultural construction of meaning through both language and narrative. The aim of this conference is to introduce rhetoric as a major term for synthesizing all the above-mentioned turns by exploring how rhetoric can make us self-aware about language and culture. We will specifically focus on ʻnew rhetoricʼ, a body of work that sets rhetoric free from its confinement within the traditional fields of education, politics and literature, not by abandoning these fields but by refiguring them. Guiding source of inspiration in all this will be the international legacy of Kenneth Burke, one of the founders of this new rhetoric tradition together with scholars such as Wayne Booth, Richard McKeon, Chaim Perelman and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca. As a rhetorician and literary critic interested in how we use symbols, Burke described the human being as the symbol-making, symbol-using and symbol-misusing animal. He argued that our interpretations, perceptions, judgements and attitudes are all influenced and ʻdeflectedʼ by the symbols that we make, use and misuse, and that we are at the same time used by these symbols. This implies that we can approach the world either symbol-wise or symbol-foolish. This conference aims to explore how rhetorical concepts can be used as tools – equipment – to make students, teachers, scholars and citizens symbol-wise: to understand the way linguistic, cultural, narrative… symbols work, and to develop critical engagement with, as well as on behalf of, those symbols. It furthermore wants to explore if and how rhetoric can still be relevant in a world that is becoming ever more complex and paradoxical by political, economic and cultural differences on a global scale. In what will be the first major conference devoted to Kenneth Burke outside the United States, we aspire to introduce the ideas of this seminal thinker to disciplines that might benefit from them. We are therefore very happy to present paper sessions and panels that broadly explore the topic of Rhetoric as Equipment for Living from the perspective of education, citizenship, literature, literacy, technology, games, (new) media… and from the perspective of disciplines such as pedagogy, social work, psychology, cultural studies, management and communication. The varied programme consists of contributions that examine the possible use of rhetoric for education or educators, as well as contributions that explore affinities between Burke and European scholars or scholarship, or that apply new rhetoric to political, economic or social issues.

Introduction

2

Organization

Local organizing committee • Kris Rutten (Ghent University) • Ronald Soetaert (Ghent University) • Dries Vrijders (Ghent University) • Jeroen Bourgonjon (Ghent University) • Geert Vandermeersche (Ghent University) • Joachim Vlieghe (Ghent University) • Eliane Van Alboom (Ghent University)

Scientific committee

• Clarke Rountree (University of Alabama - Huntsville) • James Zappen (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute) • Barry Brummett (University of Texas at Austin) • Michel Meyer (Université libre de Bruxelles) • Hilde Van Belle (KU Leuven) • Jurgen Pieters (Ghent University) • Johan Braeckman (Ghent University) • Koen De Temmerman (Ghent University) • Kris Rutten (Ghent University) • Ronald Soetaert (Ghent University) • Dries Vrijders (Ghent University) • Jeroen Bourgonjon (Ghent University) • Geert Vandermeersche (Ghent University) • Joachim Vlieghe (Ghent University)

Practical information

3

General information Venue Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences - Henri Dunantlaan 2 - 9000, Ghent, Belgium Locations Registration: Ground floor Coffee, lunch& welcome reception: 2nd floor Auditorium 1: Ground floor Rooms 2B & 2C: 2nd floor Room 3B: 3rd floor Rooms 4B & 4C: 4th floor Extra venues NTGent – Ghent City Theatre: Sint-Baafsplein 17 – 9000 Gent Wireless Internet Access Network: UGent Guest Login: guestKerrel Password: HGKdNS5T


4

Public transport Taxis Taxis in Ghent are safe and affordable. There are taxi stops on several locations in Ghent (e.g. at Ghent St. Pieters train station). For a taxi service call 00329 222 22 22 Tram/streetcar From Gent Sint Pieters train station choose line nr. 4 or 24. Stop closest to Dunant: Martelaarslaan, name of the stop: "Bernard Spaelaan". Then walk for 5 minutes. There is a tram approximately every 5 minutes. For more information visit the website of "De Lijn”: www.delijn.be Bus From Gent Sint Pieters train station take bus 9 to "Beneluxplein". When you get out, you are exactly at the main entrance of Dunantlaan 2. From Gent Sint Pieters train station you can also take buses 14/15 or 65/67/69 to stop at "Einde Were". The red building you see when you get out at "Einde Were" is Dunantlaan 2, the main entrance is on the other side. For more information visit the website of "De Lijn”: www.delijn.be Tickets For both tram and bus, make sure to buy your tickets in the train station or outside at the dispensers (requires coins). On the bus or tram, it will cost you about 50% extra.


5

Maps From train station to conference venue


6

From conference venue to Het Pand and NTGent

Overview

7

Programme overview

Day 1 (22/05/2013)

9.30-10.45 Registration & Coffee

10.45-12.30

Opening & Plenary session 1

The Rhetorical Turn in the Human and Social Sciences

Kenneth Burke and the Rhetoric of the Human Sciences Herbert Simons (Temple University)

The Rhetorical Turn in the Study of Culture Ivo Strecker (Rhetoric Culture Project)

Chair: Kris Rutten

(Auditorium 1) 12.30-13.30 Lunch

13.30-15.00

Paper session 2B

Burke and European

scholarship

Bakhtin and Burkean New

Rhetoric (Don

Bialostosky) Burkeʼs

Entelechy, Perelmanʼs

Epideictic, and the

Transmission of Values

(Stan Lindsay) Negativity and

Perfection: Burke, Lyotard and Augustine (Hanne Roer)

Paper session 2C

Rhetoric and the Future of

the Humanities

A Kitbag of Rhetorical

Resources for Future Global Citizens (Juliet

Henderson) Productive

Rhetorics of Social Change: The Power of

Burkeʼs Linguistic Dialectic (James Klumpp)

Mobilizing Memories:

Palimpsests of Citizen and

Nation (Lori Amy)

Paper session 3B

Languages of

Power

The Interpretation and the

ʻReferential Maniaʼ - The Poetics of the Conspiracy

Theories (András Csaba) The Rhetoric of Hierarchy and

Scapegoating in the Reports of Stalinʼs Secret

Police: A Burkean Analysis (Dmitri

Stanchevici) Iraq's Combined

Security Mechanism: Iraqi Army and Kurdish

Peshmerga Soldiers'

Constitutional Equipment for

Living (Melvin Hall)

Panel 4B

(Post)totalitarian

Rhetoric

The Authorʼs Voice Misuse as a

Totalitarian Relic: A study into written

discourse affected by translation

(Mariya Fedoriv) The Authorʼs Voice

Misuse as a Totalitarian Relic: A Study into Oral

Discourse Affected by Translation

(Yaroslava Fedoriv) Christmas and New

Year Rhetoric as Manifestation of the Degree of Transition towards Democracy

(Vialentsina Holubeva)

Paper session 4C

Life Performances

The Role of a

Lifetime: Role as a Critical Concept in

the Works of Kenneth Burke, or, Towards a Rhetoric

of Role (Jacob Robertson)

Attitudes as Equipment for

Living (Waldemar Petermann)

Burke and Ellul on Technology:

Determinism and the Dialectical

Antidote (Paul Stewart)

15.00-15.30 Coffee

15.30-16.30

Keynote lecture 1

Burke, Perelman and Problematology: Three Different Views of Rhetoric? Michel Meyer (Université libre de Bruxelles - Belgium)

Chair: Ronald Soetaert

(Auditorium 1)

16.30-18.30 Welcome reception

Overview

8

Day 2 (23/05/2013)

8.30-9.00 Registration & Coffee

9.00-10.30

Plenary session 2

Videogames as Equipment for Living

Identification in Play: People, Processes, and Paratexts Christopher Paul & Jeffrey S. Philpott (Seattle University)

Burke, Bogost and Foucault in Colloquy on the Rhetoric of Games Gerald Voorhees (Oregon State University)

Discussant: Barry Brummett - Chair: Jeroen Bourgonjon

(Auditorium 1) 10.30- 11.00 Coffee

11.00-12.30

Paper session 2B

Representation and Otherness

Documentary Scene and the

Rhetoric of Evidence (Steven Schoen)

Atrocity, Image, and Others

(David Worthington)

Living Tuberculosis in the Era of the

“White Plague” (Jean Mason)

Paper session 2C

Burkean

Rhetoric and Critical Literacy

Speculative

Non/Fiction: The Generative Capacity of

Burkean Theory (Francesca

Marie Smith & Cheree Carlson)

Narrating Illiteracy and

Race: Contending Views from

Burke and Du Bois

(Peter Mortensen) Rhetoric for

Critical Literacy (Molek-

Kozakowska)

Panel 3B

Kenneth Burke and

Social Change; Selves and Society in Transformation

Kenneth Burkeʼs

Rhetoric of Transformation and

Dialectics of Transcendence (David Payne) Dramatism and

Democracy: Rhetorical Education

and the Art of Democratic Citizenship

(David Cratis Williams)

Magic, Irony and Recalcitrance in Kenneth Burkeʼs

Theory of Education (Michael Feehan) Transcending the

Limitations of Kenneth Burkeʼs Western

Orientation: Blessing Growth and Active

Revision (Mark Huglen)

Panel 4B

Rhetorical

Perspectives on Video Games

Telescopic Pentad:

Burke and Video Game Circumference

(Jason Thompson) Extending the body

in to the ur-Real: Somatic Rhetoric &

Video Games (Marlin Bates)

Exploring the rhetoric of change in (online)

discussion about video games

(Jeroen Bourgonjon)

Chair: Christopher Paul

Paper session 4C

Rhetoric and

Ethics

Advertisement as Rhetorical

Argument (Réka Nagy) To Use or to

Choose? Rhetoric as

Tool (Kristian

Bjørkdahl) Kenneth Burke, Rhetoric, and Reconfiguring

Ethics as Equipment for

Living (Kevin

McClure)

12.30-13.30

Lunch

Overview

9

13.30-15.00

Paper session 2B

Burke and

Popular Culture

Synecdochic Representation:

The Wire, Exemplars, and

Rhetoric as Equipment for

Living (Patrick Clauss)

"Civil Disobedience through Street Art:

Yarn Graffiti Protests and

Burkeian Perspective by

Incongruity" (Maureen Goggin) “Local” And “Slow”

Equipment for Living; Ideographs in Contemporary

Food Social Movements (Darcy

Mullen)

Paper session 2C

Rhetoric and the Virtual (Un)real

Instagram that!

The symbol-using animal as an

orator in digital photography (Pia Engel)

From Ethos to Identification to trust: theoretical

and practical implications for rhetorical theory

and digital communication (Laura Gurak) "Dramatistic analysis of

literacy narratives in a social media

environment" (Joachim Vlieghe)

Burkeʼs New Body:

The Problem of Virtual Material, and Motive, in a Post-Human Age (Steven B. Katz)

Paper session 120.047

DIGRA Flanders

Meeting

ZWERM: stimulating urban

neighborhood self-organization

through gamification

(Tanguy Coenen & Thomas

Laureyssens) Art Education's

Gameplay: some thoughts and

ideas by the art world

(Tom De Mette) World War II

Revisited. Traveling through time and space in

historical FPS-games.

(Pieter Van den Heede)

Physical serious games (Niels

Quinten)

Chair: Bob De Schutter

Discussant:

Gerald Voorhees

Paper session 3B

Corporate Rhetoric

Terministic

Screens and Entitlement as Equipment for Understanding

Corporate Social Responsibility in Global Contexts

(Constance Kampf, Martin

Speer) ʻYou are not my type, CEO Lars!ʼ Identification and non-identification in a social media

hype about leadership (Lena Lid Falkman) The Silent Manager

(Zahra Solouki)

Paper session 4B

Rhetoric and Education 1

Teacherʼs

Rhetoric in the Classroom- a

Pragmatic Approach (Hans

Gunnarsson) Toward a Practical

Application of Burkeʼs Rhetorical

Pedagogy (Annie Laurie

Nichols) Sustaining

Conversation: Rhetoric and challenges to

responsibility in the digital

age(Andrew Wojtkielewicz)

15.00-15.30 Coffee

15.30-16.30

Keynote lecture 2

A Burkean Framework for Rhetoric in the Digital Age

Barry Brummett (University of Texas at Austin - USA)

Chair: Kris Rutten (Auditorium 1)

17.00-19.00

Drink at NTGent - Ghent City Theatre

19.30 Guided walk through Ghent (registration required)

Overview

10

Day 3 (24/05/2012)

8.30-9.30 Coffee

9.30-10.30

Keynote lecture 3

Under the Sign of Theology: Kenneth Burke on Language and the Supernatural Order

Steven Mailloux – Loyola Marymount University

Chair: Dries Vrijders (Auditorium 1)

10.30-11.00 Coffee

11.00-12.30

Panel 2B

The Campus

Novel as Equipment for

Living. (1)

The Academic Novel and

Contemporary American

Fiction (Jeffrey

Williams) - · · · - - - · · ·

(SOS), or Student-Oriented Stories

(Marta J. Lysik) Towards a

Better Life: The Academic

Novel as Ironic Faculty

Handbook (Merritt

Moseley)

Paper session 2C

Authors and Authorship

Towards a

Rhetoric of the Author:

Theories of Poetic Action After Burke

(Gero Guttzeit) A Selph in

Crisis - Burke's Literary

Dialogues as Equipment for

Living." (Dries Vrijders) New Rhetoric: An Instrument

of Human Communication

(Rukma Vasudev)

Paper session 3B

Literary

Languages

The Use Of Poetry: the Vox Populi in

Poems (Odile Heynders)

Literary Ethics and the New Rhetoric:

Jack Kerouacʼs “Spontaneous Prose” as a “Structure of

Knowing” in On the Road

(John Wrighton) Youʼre not Going to Try and Change My

Mind?”: The Dynamics of

Persuasion and Identification in

Aronofskyʼs Black Swan

(Yakut Oktay)

Panel 4B

Grappling with Substance and

Motives: Burkean Lessons

forRhetorical, Ideological, and

Cultural Life

Toward the Next Phase in Pentadic

Scholarship: Theorizing,

Applying, and Extending

Burkeʼs Grammar of Motives

Clarke Rountree (chair) & John

Rountree Toward a New

Rhetoric (of Motives): Burke, Perelman, and the Analysis of

the Present David Blakesley

Identification with/in the New

Europe (Elizabeth Weiser)

Paper session 4C

Public discourse

Revealing Terministic

Screens through Cluster Criticism: The Case of the US Gun

Control Debate (Kim; Riendeau; Curtis;

Chavez; Itzkowitz) ʻOne Manʼs Terrorist is

Another Manʼs Freedom Fighterʼ: Kenneth Burkeʼs

Identification as a Tool for Constructing

Common Ground in Public Discourse (Anna Bendrat) “Unity without

Conformity” – The Parliamentary Babel as

Equipment for Living (Jouni Tilli)

12.30-13.30

Lunch

Overview

11

13.30-15.00

Panel 2B

The Campus

Novel as Equipment for

Living. (2)

The Worst Lesson that Life

Can Teachʼ: Philip Rothʼs

Campus Fiction. (Paul

McDonald) Widening the Universityʼs Embrace:

Comedy as a Frame of

Acceptance in the Campus

Novel (Barbara Ching) The Academic

Novel as Metafiction

(Corina Selejan)

Paper session 2C

Citizens and Citizenship

Pedagogies of Political Ethics:

Bridging the Rhetorics of Dirty Hands

and Democratic Citizenship

(Russell Bentley)

The Post-Communist

Citizens in the EU – a New

Symbolic Sphere

(Agnieszka Kampka) Imagining

Citizenship Genres as Spaces of Encounter (Jolivette Mecenas)

Paper session 3B

Media Rhetoric

The Rhetoric of Discussion In

Turkish Media: Argumentation and

Reason in Discussion

Programmes (Inan Ozdemir-

Tastan) "Who are you working for?

Political Propaganda as

Product Placement for Identification in

Contemporary American TV-

shows" (Laura Herrmann)

Burke, Misidentification

and Weather Rhetoric

(Kevin Risner)

Paper session 4B

Social Work and

Intervention

Symbolic Action as Equipment for

Identity Construction: language as postcolonial intervention

(Ursula Troche) Interpreting

Asylum Seekersʼ Dreams: Rhetoric as Equipment for Social Change

(Jef Van der Aa) The Practice of Writing Reports in Social Work: Truth-telling or Story-telling? (Griet Roets & Rudi Roose)

Paper session 4C


Rhetoric, Dialogue, and Intercultural Education: Global Literatures as Equipment for Living

(James Zappen) "Stories Teachers Live by": Exploring Narrative

and Rhetorical Concepts in Teacher

Education (Geert

Vandermeersche) Human textuality: Teacher identity

construction through the rhetorical equipage

of storytelling (Sonja Modesti)

15.00-15.30 Coffee

15.30-17.00

Keynote lecture 4

Kenneth Burke: Literary-Rhetorical Thinker Jennifer Richards (Newcastle University - UK)

Chair: Ronald Soetaert

(Auditorium 1)

19.00 - … Conference dinner – Het Pand

Overview

12

Day 4 (25/05/2012)

8.30-9.00 Coffee

9.00-10.30

Plenary session 3


Ronald Soetaert & Kris Rutten (Ghent University)

(Auditorium 1)

10.30-11.00 Coffee

11.00-12.30

Panel 2B

The Burke Difference

and the Difference It

Makes to American Scholars

“Whenever we

call something a metaphor, we

mean it literally,” or, a

McKeonesque Understanding

of Burkeʼs Rhetorical Realism

(Robert Wess) Metabiology: An

Ethical Step Away from ʻExplosive

Wordsʼ (Ann George) “Shouting ʻIce Creamʼ in a

Crowded Theatre:

Considering Comic Catharsis

in Kenneth Burke”

(Richard Thames)

Paper session 2C


Expanding the

Terministic Screen: A

Burkean Critique of Information

Visualisation in the Context of

Design Education (Anneli Bowie &

Duncan Reyburn) The Rhetoric of Contemporary Edutainment

(Tamás Csonge) A Critique of the

Paradigm of Culture:

Culturalization in Education (Saladdin Ahmed)

Paper session 3B

Spaces and

Identities

Incongruous Perspective:

Reframing the Picturesque in Island

Identities, and Rhetorics of Presence

(Peter Goggin) Rhetorical approaches to spatial orientation (Pierre Smolarski)

Redefining the Language of the

Trinidad and Tobago Calypso as Symbolic

Action (Everard Phillips)

Paper session 4B

Signs and Symbols

In Pursuit of Persuasion:

Rhetoric and the Artistic Practices

of the Painter Frank Auerbach (Derek Pigrum) “If one language is not enough to convince you, I will use two”: Rhetoric and

Symbolic Power as a Tool to

Interpret Code-switching"

(Marco Hamam) Rhetorics of

Dialogic Inquiry: Peirce, Dewey &

Burke in the classroom (Sébastien

Pesce)

Paper session 4C

Rhetorical Dialogues

Symbolic

Polarization in Turkish Society

(Secil Deren van het Hof)

Searching for Impartial, Common

Standards in Platoʼs

Protagoras (Jonathan

Lavery) Indexing and

Transcendence: Kenneth Burke's

Pedagogy of Ideology Criticism (David Isaksen)

12.30-13.30

Lunch

Overview

13

13.30-15.00

Plenary session 4

The International Legacy of Kenneth Burke

Chair: Clarke Rountree

15.00-16.00 Farewell Happy Hour

Keynotes

15

Keynote lectures

Keynote lecture 1: (22/05 - 15.30-16.30 – Auditorium 1) Burke, Perelman and Problematology: Three Different Views of Rhetoric? Michel Meyer (Université libre de Bruxelles - Belgium) Perelman deeply respected Burke's vision of rhetoric and resorted several times to the notion of a Burkean ethos, as found in Burke's several books on motives. But what does Burke say, which seems so relevant to Perelman's own conception? Probably a conception of the interacting person playing with identification at all levels, putting at work his or her own possibilities and dispositional characteristics. Nonetheless, if Burke offers a vision of man and his dramatic expressions through rhetoric, Perelman rather provides a vision of rhetoric. Their difference clearly appears in their respective views on tropes. My question is: can we reintegrate both views into one single vision of rhetoric, as presented in the question-view (the so-called problematological conception) of rhetoric I have developed in recent years? Without answering it here, let me say that the master-tropes and the way to conceptualize them will serve as a guiding thread to develop this integrative approach to rhetoric I have called the problematological approach. Bio: Michel Meyer is Professor of Rhetoric and Philosophy at the Université libre de Bruxelles. He succeeded Chaïm Perelman in 1982, to whom he was the assistant for many years. He has published many works covering philosophy, literary criticism, rhetoric, the history of rhetoric, the passions, art, theatre, ethics, and even Roman art. Several of his works have appeared in English. He is known to be the father of a new philosophy, developing the foundational nature of questioning in thought, problematology. He has taught at Berkeley, Mc Gill, the Sorbonne and the Collège de France. He is Editor of the Revue Internationale de Philosophie and of a book series at the Presses Universitaires de France. Keynote lecture 2: (23/05 - 15.30-16.30 – Auditorium 1) A Burkean Framework for Rhetoric in the Digital Age Barry Brummett (University of Texas at Austin - USA) In a key passage, Kenneth Burke argues that new rhetoric today creates an audience rather than appeals to a preexisting one. This paper takes that observation as a starting point to develop a general perspective on rhetoric in a digital age. The arguments connect to several of Burkeʼs observations and ideas along the way. Working at a metaphorical level, the paper claims that people today may be understood as terminals. Our consciousness is formed of the images grounded in the material pixels of the screen, yet the images are not physically real. These images must be cognitively integrated and assembled following culturally shared forms. The paper develops the ramifications of such a starting point, addressing issues of where the individual stands in connection to cultural discourses and others if the individual is a terminal. How are the “programs” on the terminal apprehended and controlled? In doing so the paper connects its argument to some key ideas of Burkeʼs as it goes along. The idea of recalcitrance, a sticky issue in Burkeʼs work, is explained by the perspective. The paper

Keynotes

16

argues that Burkeʼs ideas of form assume great importance from this perspective. What consubstantiality looks like from the perspective of a world of digital communication is explored. Other Burkean ideas are touched upon as the argument develops. Bio: Barry Brummett (Ph.D., University of Minnesota, 1978) is the Chair of the department of Communication Studies and Charles Sapp Centennial Professor in Communication. Brummett's research interests turned early to the theories of Kenneth Burke and to epistemology and rhetoric. In those studies Brummett laid the foundation for a research program that investigates the functions and manifestations of new rhetoric. One line of research took him into the study of apocalyptic rhetoric. Brummett's most recent, ongoing interests are in the rhetoric of popular culture. He has developed a general theoretical basis for understanding this rhetoric based largely on symbolic forms. Brummett has published a textbook, Techniques of Close Reading, and a third edition of his popular textbook, Rhetoric in Popular Culture. Brummett is the author of the scholarly book monographs A Rhetoric of Style, Rhetorical Dimensions Of Popular Culture, Contemporary Apocalyptic Rhetoric, Rhetoric of Machine Aesthetics, The World and How We Describe It, and Rhetorical Homologies. He has edited Landmark Essays: Kenneth Burke, Uncovering Hidden Rhetorics, Sporting Rhetorics, Reading Rhetorical Theory, and The Politics of Style and the Style of Politics. He is now at work on an edited anthology called The Rhetoric of Steampunk to be published in 2014. Brummett is the author or coauthor of numerous scholarly essays and chapters. Keynote lecture 3: (24/05 - 09.30-10.30 – Auditorium 1) Under the Sign of Theology: Kenneth Burke on Language and the Supernatural Order Steven Mailloux (Loyola Marymount University - USA) This paper will examine Burkeʼs rhetorical paths of theological thought in the 1960s. “Theotropic Logology” is one way of characterizing Burkeʼs approach in a series of publications and conference papers during that period. Through theotropic logology, or words about words about God, Burke developed a distinctive rhetorical hermeneutics in addressing questions at the intersection of what he called (in “What Are the Signs of What?”) the linguistic and supernatural orders. This paper tries to think with Burke on these what-questions using published essays and unpublished archival materials. Bio: Steven Mailloux is President's Professor of Rhetoric at Loyola Marymount University. He received his Ph.D. in Rhetoric, Linguistics, and Literature at the University of Southern California and has taught at Temple University, University of Miami, Syracuse University, and the University of California, Irvine. He is the co-editor of Interpreting Law and Literature (1988) and editor of Rhetoric, Sophistry, Pragmatism (1995) as well as the author of Interpretive Conventions: The Reader in the Study of American Fiction (1982), Rhetorical Power (1989), Reception Histories: Rhetoric, Pragmatism, and American Cultural Politics (1998), and Disciplinary Identities: Rhetorical Paths of English, Speech, and Composition (2006). Mailloux teaches courses in rhetoric, critical theory, political theology, and U.S. cultural studies.

Keynotes

17

Keynote lecture 4: (24/05 - 15.30-16.30 – Auditorium 1) Kenneth Burke: Literary-Rhetorical Thinker Jennifer Richards (Newcastle University - UK) In this lecture I will explore how a literary-rhetorical frame of mind might equip us not simply to live but to live well with each other. I aim to explore what Burke meant by describing ʻliteratureʼ as ʻequipment for livingʼ and to think about how this might also work for rhetoric. Initially, it is hard to see how his major contribution to rhetoric, A Rhetoric of Motives (1950), equips us for living, so difficult is its mode of argument. Burke knows but doesn't really use the terminology of the classical art. Instead he provides ʻliteraryʼ readings. He not only uses many literary examples from across the centuries, but also weaves his way around texts, teasing out meanings that authors something intended, sometimes did not. This is not rhetorical analysis as we know it. I will want to draw out what is difficult and, apparently, impractical about A Rhetoric of Motives by comparing it with a recent attempt to revive rhetorical analysis, Sam Leith's You Talkin' to Me (2011), which does set out self-consciously to ʻequipʼ readers with a method of rhetorical and political analysis. I make this comparison not to show up Burke but to try to understand what was different about the use of rhetoric he had in mind. Despite the difficulty of A Rhetoric of Motives, its mode of argument does aim to equip us to live well. To help explain how, I will turn to Burke's short essay on Literature as Equipment for Living that gave this conference its title, focusing on his conception of literary writing in terms of proverbial wisdom: strategies or attitudes for different situations. There is nothing about rhetoric in this essay, but Burke's comparison of literary genres to proverbs will provide me with a starting point for thinking about rhetoric again, and the rhetoric of literary experience that might clarify Burke's own style of thinking. What Literature can give us - and what Burke certainly does in A Rhetoric of Motives - is equipment for thinking. He furnishes us with a different style of thinking in utramque partem, i.e. on different sides. This, I want to suggest, really is essential for living well. Bio: Jennifer Richards is Professor of Early Modern Literature and Culture in the School of English Literature, Language ands Linguistics at Newcastle University. She is the author of Rhetoric: The New Critical Idiom (Routledge, 2007) and Rhetoric and Courtliness in Early Modern Literature (Cambridge University Press, 2003; 2007). She has published articles in Renaissance Quarterly, Criticism, Huntington Library Quarterly and The Journal of the History of Ideas. She is currently editing Thomas Nash, with Andrew Hadfield, for Oxford University Press, and she is writing a new monograph, Useful Books: Reading and Talking in the English Renaissance. This last project is supported by a Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship, 2013-2015. She is the Editor of the journal Renaissance Studies.

Plenaries

19

Plenary sessions

Plenary session 1 (22/05 - 11.00-12.30 – Auditorium 1) The Rhetorical Turn in the Human and Social Sciences Kenneth Burke and the Rhetoric of the Human Sciences Herbert Simons (Temple University) Kenneth Burke anticipated what has come to be called the Rhetorical Turn in the human sciences. This, broadly speaking, has been an intellectual movement to recast the human sciences in rhetorical terms, paralleling critiques of traditional philosophyʼs longstanding commitments to objectivism and to one or another foundationalist presupposition. Dilip Gaonkar credits Burke with having given the rhetorical turn a past, albeit an ignominious history rooted in Platoʼs critique of the Greek sophists. When used disparagingly, the term “rhetoric” is something of an ironic entitlement, inviting images of scholars as flatterers and deceivers, con artists and propagandists and raising all manners of embarrassing questions about relationships between science and ideology, scholarship and political practice.In Platoʼs Gorgias, for example, Socrates elicits self-damning boasts by Gorgias and his fellow sophists that by offering instruction to their students in how to create deceptive appearances, the students can achieve greater power than those of the experts they pretend to be. Never mind, then, that "rhetoric" is often used neutrally and even eulogistically as the study of how one ought to persuade; its very link to persuasion is a step down from images of "proof," "demonstration," "verification" and "falsification" that have been the watchwords of objectivism. And, while traditionalists might be heartened to learn that the project to re-conceive the human sciences has a reconstructive aspect - that it is not all criticism and deconstruction -still, our traditionalist might legitimately conclude that while the news from the rhetoric front is somewhat mixed, it is generally bad.Absent foundations and with objectivity called into question, how can there be progress in the human sciences? What can stand in their place? I address these questions in this paper. The Rhetorical Turn in the Study of Culture Ivo Strecker (Rhetoric Culture Project) This contribution honours Kenneth Burke who pioneered the rhetorical turn in the study of culture, and who demonstrated – perhaps more convincingly than anyone before him – that symbolisation and figuration play a crucial role in art, science and every-day-life. Interestingly, Burke hardly ever used the term “culture” but preferred to speak of “human relations”, the “human condition” or simply “ourselves and others”. For many reasons this may be preferable, but although it is an “ungainly bug” (as Stephen Tyler has put it) the notion of “culture” plays an important role in the contemporary world that needs to be understood. Enlisting Goetheʼs poem “The Sorcererʼs Apprentice”, the contribution first reflects on the metaphors encapsulated in “rhetoric as equipment for living” and then goes on to present two

Plenaries

20

new approaches to the study of rhetoric, which are greatly indebted to Kenneth Burke. (1) The homo rhetoricus project – mainly based at the university of Tuebingen - derives its innovative power from a new alliance between philosophical anthropology and rhetoric, and it argues that rhetoric is not only a tool to communicate with others but also to shape the human self (2). The rhetoric culture project – a venture that originated at the Johannes Gutenberg University (Mainz) and Rice University (Houston) but has now become thoroughly international and nomadic - derives its innovative thrust from a new alliance between anthropology and rhetoric. It explores the ways in which rhetoric moulds culture and culture moulds rhetoric. Plenary session 2 (23/05 - 9.00-10.30 – Auditorium 1) Videogames as Equipment for Living Identification in Play: People, Processes, and Paratexts Christopher Paul & Jeffrey S. Philpott (Seattle University) The concept of identification is at the core of Burkean notions of rhetoric. Identification is a key part of the process of bringing people and things together. Identification works to build a sense of ʻweʼ among individuals and, through consubstantiality, can demonstrate representations of what can bring a group together. In moving from an approach to rhetoric predicated on persuasion, a Burkean focus on identification facilitates a focus on connections and interactions. This kind of approach is particularly suited to analysis of video games and their multifaceted platforms for interaction. Rhetorical analysis of video games requires a critical look at how players come together, a substantial analysis of the technologies and platforms for interaction, and an examination of the discourse surrounding games. All of these frameworks of interaction are well suited by application of Burkean ideals of identification. Identification structures how players come together in and around games. Identification is at the core of how players think about particularly game systems and elements of game design. Identification is also a key part of how players and designers talk about games, which is a key aspect of what games get made and how they are played. Identification is a foundational piece of a Burkean approach to rhetoric. Applying Burkeʼs ideas about identification to the study of video games enables a deeper, richer understanding of the media form and the multifaceted ways in which it is integrated into our contemporary lives. Burke, Bogost and Foucault in Colloquy on the Rhetoric of Games Gerald Voorhees (Oregon State University) In this presentation I aim to put Kenneth Burkeʼs notion of literature as equipment for living in conversation with Ian Bogostʼs conception of procedural rhetoric and Michel Foucaultʼs theory of discourse, knowledge and power. Burkeʼs explanation of literatureʼs capacity to identify both recurrent situations and strategies for negotiating them has been applied to

Plenaries

21

study a diverse range of mediated communication, including games. Bogostʼs theorization of procedural rhetoric can enrich our understanding of how games function as equipment for living. Games allow players to interact with procedural models, or representations of how things work, and furthermore enable a range of different possible responses to the situation modeled. However, while players may respond by taking any number of actions with the space of possibility afforded by the rules of the game, I argue that procedural rhetorics make arguments by prioritizing certain actions above others as the more appropriate response to a situation and visually and narratively dramatizing the positive or negative consequences of player choices. Understood in this way, games operate as cultural technologies of power/knowledge. As Foucault explains, power operates on individuals who are free to act within a field of possibilities delimited by what is intelligible in a given domain of knowledge. Games not only teach players which ways of interaction ʻmake sense,ʼ they also assess player input and provide feedback evaluating the effectiveness of the playerʼs action. By dynamically modeling the outcomes afforded by different possibilities for action, games offer a more responsive equipment for living that communicates knowledge about recurring situations and advocating the effectivity of specific responses. Plenary session 3 (25/05 - 9.00-10.30 – Auditorium 1) Rhetoric as Equipment for Living Ronald Soetaert & Kris Rutten (Ghent University) In Cosmopolis. The Hidden Agenda of Modernity, Stephen Toulmin (1990, p. 187) wrote: “Since the mid-1960s, rhetoric has begun to regain its respectability as a topic of literary and linguistic analysis, and it now shares with narrative an attention for which they both waited a long time.” In this session we will focus on the question: How can rhetoric and narrative function as equipment for living? We will discuss how Burke argues for the importance of literature by focusing on his major concepts as: ʻequipment for livingʼ, ʻeverything is medecineʼ and ʻproverbs writ largeʼ. We will discuss some ʻrepresentative anecdotesʼ from recent literature, films and TV to illustrate how these concepts are thematized and problematized in recent fiction. And last but not least we will discuss how rhetoric and narrative can be equipment for education. Plenary session 4 (25/05 - 13.30-15.00 – Auditorium 1) The International Legacy of Kenneth Burke Chair: Clarke Rountree (University of Alabama - Huntsville) This final panel of the conference will be an informal panel that explores the current status and the possible future of the international legacy of Kenneth Burke. We will specifically focus on affinities between Burke and European scholars or scholarship, but also situate the work of Burke in a global context. The variety of papers that will be presented at the conference will form the basis for our discussion. The panel will consist of delegates from the US as well as from Europe. During this panel we will also announce the practical arrangements for publishing (a selection) of the conference papers in KBJournal.

Wednesday 22/05

23

Paper sessions and Panels Wednesday 22/05 (13.30 – 15.00) Burke and European scholarship (2B) Chair: Don Bialostosky Bakhtin and Burkean New Rhetoric (Don Bialostosky) In keeping with the call for papers that explore affinities between Burke and European scholars in the context of the New Rhetoric, I propose to work out affinities between Burkeʼs dramatism and Bakhtinʼs dialogism. Though Bakhtin is often mistakenly read as an anti-rhetorical thinker (I first read him that way myself), I have come to see him as a thinker who expands the province of rhetoric to cover a fruitful theory of discourse as delivered utterance. I have worked this theory out in relation to Aristotleʼs Rhetoric in an article in The Blackwell Companion to Rhetoric and Rhetorical Criticism and would like to work it out in relation to Burkean rhetoric for this conference. I have noticed that Burkeʼs treating language as action in his dramatism issue in a model from which utterances and speaker and listeners are absent, absorbed into one or more terms of the pentad instead of appearing among them. I would like to explore what difference it makes to foreground speaker, listener, hero/topic and precedent speaker, to think of the agent as speaker and to put the other participants in the utterance on the stage of dramatism. Reciprocally, Iʼd like to examine to what extent Bakhtinʼs utterance can be seen as a symbolic action and what difference it might make to highlight that aspect of the utterance from Burkeʼs perspective. I will speculate on whether the equipment for living generated by thinking these models in relation to one another offers any life-enhancing potentialities. Burkeʼs Entelechy, Perelmanʼs Epideictic, and the Transmission of Values (Stan Lindsay) Chaim Perelman rediscovered the values aspect of epideictic oratory, two millennia after Aristotle wrote his Rhetoric. Perelman's observations regarding the connection between epideictic oratory and values are not difficult to grasp. He states, "since argumentation aims at securing the adherence of those to whom it is addressed, it is, in its entirety, relative to the audience to be influenced” (New Rhetoric, 19) and "Epideictic oratory has significance and importance for argumentation because it strengthens the disposition toward action by increasing adherence to the values it lauds" (50). Burke's concept of entelechy as a process of development in which the telos or goal of the individual is implicit throughout the process is more difficult to grasp. Burke uses the Aristotelian biological entelechy of a seed, growing to maturity, and then makes human symbolic extensions. Essentially, Burke claims that humans unconsciously act upon themselves (in a manner analogous to the seed growing to maturity) in accordance with the implicit value systems of the entelechies/stories with which they identify. Both Perelmanʼs

Wednesday 22/05

24

and Burkeʼs approaches supply metarhetorics explaining how values are transmitted implicitly to the audience. While epideictic oratory primarilyutilizes historical persons and events, entelechy is present in both historically-based stories and in fictions. Since, according to Aristotle, both historical and invented examples serve to persuade, we may expect both epideictic oratory and literature (whether historically-based or purely fictitious) to be persuasive. What then do both epideictic oratory and literature persuade? They subconsciously persuade auditors and readers to internalize the values they represent. To provide illustrations of how epideictic rhetoric and entelechy operate, this paper examines a few of the explicit epideictic topoi to be found in the Gospel According to Matthew and a modern-day example of entelechy--the Walt Disney movie Pinocchio--to demonstrate the usefulness of applying both metarhetorics. Negativity and perfection: Burke, Lyotard and Augustine (Hanne Roer) Kenneth Burkeʼs The Rhetoric of Religion is recognised as a key to the understanding of Burkeʼs thinking on symbolic language, and in this paper I shall try to interpret it from two different angles, Augustineʼs Confessions and F. Lyotards La Confession dʼAugustin (1998). In the section on Augustineʼs Confessions (”Chapter 2: Verbal Action in St. Augustineʼs Confessions”) Burke defines theology as language about language (lolology), hence essential to reflections on rhetoric. I shall confront Burkeʼs reading of Confessions with Augustineʼs text, in the light of scholarship on Augustineʼs rhetoric (Mazzeo, Pollmann et al.). There are two ways of interpreting Augustineʼs rhetoric, depending on a rather literal close reading (e.g. Conley 1990) or on a broader philosophical interpretation (e.g. Fumaroli 1980), leading to discussions about Augustine being either a Platonist or a Ciceronian. Burke shows that this is a false dilemma. He analyses the dialectic pairs structuring the Confessions leading him to stress the performativity of language and its fundamental negativity. The other way round, Augustineʼs own text suggests that Burkeʼs negativity is a concept still suffused with metaphysics. Burkeʼs notion of negativity is what sets him apart from classical rhetoric and relates him to Augustine as well as modern French phenomenological theories of language. I shall discuss Lyotardʼs posthumous essay on Augustine and compare his basic notions of event, performativity and language as action with Burkeʼs reading of Augustine. The point is that Burkeʼs thinking in The Rhetoric of Religion has some similarities with French poststructuralism. Burkeʼs notions of negativity is also useful when analysing political rhetoric, a last point that I shall briefly illustrate with examples from the present French debate about marriage for homosexuals (”mariage pour tous”). Rhetoric and the Future of the Humanities (2C) Chair: Juliet Henderson A Kitbag of Rhetorical Resources for Future Global Citizens (Juliet Henderson)

Wednesday 22/05

25

This paper presents a case study of an undergraduate course developed in dialogue with an institution-wide curriculum re-legitimising project, centred on developing pedagogical opportunities for students to develop the graduate attribute of ʻglobal citizenshipʼ. Rather than taking a default response of passive resistance to the corporate rhetoric used to define the generic qualities and values of graduates, the author of this paper and designer of the course approaches the symbol of ʻthe global citizenʼ as an opportunity to advance student understanding of language use as a complex form of social action in context. Drawing on models of human interactions with social constraint on the one hand, and with an economics of need and hunger on the other, the course invites students to critically engage with ancient and modern rhetorical concepts apt to challenge notions of a fixed intelligibility of language. More specifically, course content and activities are configured with the aim of opening up debate about two apparently contradictory agendas linked to the graduate attribute of the global citizen: employability and interculturality. The paper begins with an overview of the authorʼs critical view of these agendas, both seen from the ʻotherʼ side, and then presents a case study of her course which uses the terms ʻrhetoricʼ and ʻpersuasionʼ as the starting point for raising student (self) awareness about the wide repertoire of culturally and contextually determined persuasive strategies they already possess. Using Burkeʼs understanding of human persuasion as straddling the purest and most selfless of human motives as well as the most base and self-serving (Burke, 1969 [1950]) she argues that explicit consideration of the simultaneity of the agendas of employability and interculturality embedded within normative and critical rhetorics of global citizenship can provide students with a kitbag full of tools of symbol-wisdom to live by and with. Productive Rhetorics of Social Change: The Power of Burkeʼs Linguistic Dialectic (James Klumpp) That notions of dialectic lie at the heart of Kenneth Burkeʼs theory of communication and social order is well established. But with its myriad uses, and even its disparate origins, the term “dialectic” can be slippery. The purpose of this project is to turn an exploration of Kenneth Burkeʼs understanding of dialectic into a productive perspective for engaging the role of rhetoric in social change. First of all, I will argue that Burkeʼs dialectic is distinctive because it is a linguistic dialectic, rooted in the inherent characteristics of the human capacity for language. Linguistic dialectics are distinct from philosophical dialectics and historical dialectics that are perhaps more familiar. I will examine Burkeʼs discussion and use of dialectic to outline the power which he attributes to his construction. As a framework for capturing the powers which a facility for language provides, a linguistic dialectic opens into rhetorical possibility. Second, to track that possibility, I will extend the Burkean ideas into a consideration of the problem of social change within a particular Burkean dialectic: permanence and change. I am interested not only in how the power of linguistic dialectic defines the tension between these two terms, but also how the energy of the dialectic assures that this tension is productive.

Wednesday 22/05

26

Examination of rhetoric in action working this dialectic will illustrate the potential that linguistic dialectic has as a motif of social change. Finally, I will locate the resources in rhetoric to tie dialectics to one another to provide the“equipment for living.” Within the intellectual tradition of contextualism, the power of rhetoric to shape society inscribes our relations with others. The implicating of a number of different dialectic tensions in rhetorical moments provides a framework for societyʼs negotiation of adaptation in the midst of familiar constancy. This rhetorical power represents the potential of Burkeʼs linguistic dialectic. Mobilizing Memories: Palimpsests of Citizen and Nation (Lori Amy) This paper uses the October 2012 hunger strikes waged by a group of ex-political prisoners in Tirana, Albania, to analyze the contradictory and conflicting deployments of the rhetorics of “rights,” “justice,” and “democracy” within Albania and the region. As symbols of the traumatic history of Albaniaʼs totalitarian regime, the strikersʼ demands to be paid the compensations legally awarded to them in the early days of post-communist transition can be understood as a demand for justice and legal rights – indeed, this is how the strikers framed their demands. But the strike and the conflicting responses to it can also be read in terms of Albaniaʼs position as a “transitional” economy in the post-cold war landscape. From this perspective, the figure of the political prisoner symbolizes not only a history of violent state repression within the country, but also a history of isolation and exclusion in the region. Under the totalitarian regime, Albanians were prisoners of borders enforced from within, subject to death for trying to “escape.” After transition, borders were enforced from without. Read historically, through the global dynamics of policing borders, the figure of the ex-political prisoner simultaneously invokes the communist-era ʻinmateʼ as well as the post-communist asylum seeker, refugee, illegal immigrant, or victim of trafficking – all instances of what Giorgio Agamben terms bare life, life that is included in the juridical order as exclusion, subject to but without recourse to the law. The exclusion of the ex-political prisoner from the community of citizens with rights in the state thus parallels the exclusion of Albania from the community of Europe with rights as a member. In both cases, (sovereign) power polices, disciplines, excludes, and regulates populations. These operations of surveillance and exclusion belie the language of “freedom” and “democracy” legitimating state and regional claims to power. Languages of Power (3B) Chair:András Csaba The Interpretation and the ʻReferential Maniaʼ - The Poetics of the Conspiracy Theories (András Csaba) In my presentation I will talk about the conspiracy theories and some of their main mechanisms. Nowadays this phenomenon has a great impact on everyday life and political talking, especially in Hungary. Iʼm interested in the paranoid interpretation strategies, being practiced by the “followers” of these theories. In my opinion there is a fundamental similarity

Wednesday 22/05

27

between paranoid interpretation of the “reality” and the interpretation of fictions. For demonstration purposes I interpret the short story Signs and Symbols by Vladimir Nabokov, but I also use literary texts by Jorge Luis Borges, Danilo Kiš and Umberto Eco, and theoretical texts by Roland Barthes, Paul de Man and Slavoj Žižek. The Rhetoric of Hierarchy and Scapegoating in the Reports of Stalinʼs Secret Police: A Burkean Analysis (Dmitri Stanchevici) This paper applies Burkeʼs rhetoric to an analysis of Stalinist discourse. Stalinʼs government received information about the political and economic situation in the countryside from the reports prepared by the security service VChK-OGPU-NKVD. Through a discourse analysis and a rhetorical analysis, this paper reveals that these reports (svodkas in Russian) strain to rhetorically construct a social classification of the peasantry by dividing it into the kulaks (wealthy peasants hostile to Soviet power), the bednyaks (poor peasants supporting Soviet power), and the serednyaks (peasants of average means with uncertain attitudes to the regime). The svodkas persuaded their audience—the secret police and the government—of the reality of this tripartite classification through three conditions: massiveness, secretiveness, and mixture of ideological and technical language. Since these conditions inhere in modern governmental, technical, and scientific discourse, the writers for these fields should be aware that when they engage in constructing order through classification, they face temptations of what Burke calls rhetoric of hierarchy (or bureaucracy) with its scapegoat principle. Heeding Burkeʼs observation that as a symbol-using animal man is necessarily a classifying animal, this paper suggests that the temptations for exclusion and repression arise not only from socio-political conditions, but also from the very nature of language. Iraq's Combined Security Mechanism: Iraqi Army and Kurdish Peshmerga Soldiers' Constitutional Equipment for Living (Melvin Hall) Not only is Kenneth Burke's rhetorical theory relevant today, it is an ideal method for diplomats and scholars to apply to international political conflicts - especially Burke's concept of constitution. Many Rhetoric scholars are familiar with Kenneth Burke's pentad as a synoptic method for understanding and analyzing human motives as acts of verbal placement. Less well discussed among scholars is Burke's summational anecdote for all five terms: constitution. Constitution is the ultimate dramatistic term that sums up humans' symbolic (political) conflicts. The following paper provides a real-world example of Kenneth Burke's dramatistic and rhetorical theory of constitution applied to understand the cultural and ideological complexities of northern Iraq in the wake of the American occupation. In the fall of 2010, the U.S. Army established a “combined security mechanism” (CSM) within the territories of the north disputed by Kurdish and Arab communities (the “mutually claimed region” or MCR). The security mechanism united two rival armies: the Iraqi Army and the Kurdish Peshmerga. In essence, the CSM was a large-scale rhetorical (symbolic/dramatistic) act that sought to constitute the soldiers' motives so that they would act consubstantially - their partisan way of life unified by the CSM constitution. This paper presents an analysis of interviews conducted with soldiers throughout the CSM communities between January and June of 2011 in order to understand their constitutional unities and divisions. The paper provides an empirical example of Burke's dramatistic pentad made present in the soldiers'

Wednesday 22/05

28

conversations as their constitutional equipment for livingand means for confronting their political conflict and paradoxes. It demonstrates that by rhetorical acts the two soldiers could be "standing side by side performing the same motions but different acts." Iʼll conclude by making clear how Burke's theory of constitutional dramatism is relevant for use by diplomats and scholars as a way of contending with today's complex international (constitutional) conflicts. (Post)totalitarian Rhetoric (4B) Chair:Yaroslava Fedoriv The Authorʼs Voice Misuse as a Totalitarian Relic: A study into written discourse affected by translation (Mariya Fedoriv) The proposed research of the written discourse misuse is focused on the linguistic analysis of fiction translation into Russian, the hegemonic language of the Soviet Empire. It is generally accepted that, with the translator's skilful touch, the writerʼs message is to be transmitted into a differing setting with a dissimilar historical background, economic level, cultural environment, system of beliefs, and linguistic tradition, still preserving the artistic value of the original work and retaining the authorʼs voice. Under ideological pressure, however, the translator's task is different. The work of art, in order to reach the wider audience, must be combed and dressed to satisfy the demands and restrictions imposed by those in power.Our case study methodologically rests on the concept analysis, with a special attention paid to the author's representations in the textual portrayal of the world and their correlation with ideologically prescribed values. The examination proves that with the soviet-conditioned way of rhetorical expression, the translated text turns out to be reshaped so as to meet the ideological restrictions. Namely, it presents not merely an interpretation of a written product to the Russian speaking audience, but rather the work of the totalitarian machine whose primary aim was to reduce the emotional and intellectual potential of the original text, thus negatively affecting the style of the work and ruining the authorʼs credibility as such. In other words, our study of written rhetoric representation under totalitarianism reveals that destructive intrusion into pathos and logos can ultimately undermine the ethos. The results of the research are described in terms of linguistic parameters of reshaping the author's idiostyle under the influence of ideological and cross-language text transformations. Proceeding from the research findings and outcomes, perspectives of further studies can be delineated, with reference to the rhetorical instruments of power. A Study into Written Discourse Affected by Translation: A study into Oral discourse affected by translation (Yaroslava Fedoriv) The present study into the spoken discourse misuse focuses on the cognitive matter of the public address. We hypothesize that this approach allows assessing the oratorʼs (in)authenticity and (in)consistency of the employed key concepts which are culturally preconditioned and therefore significant for the audience. In particular, this report reflects a case study into a ceremonial speech lacking rapport and involves descriptive, comparative, quantitative, and qualitative methods of investigation. The data are drawn from the texts of speeches delivered by American and Ukrainian public figures. Instrumentally based

Wednesday 22/05

29

examination of the failed public speech under the study, alongside of the negative coverage of this event by the mass media, proves that the text of the address has been plagiarized (a popular inside-the-Iron-Curtain practice to present a translation as one's own product and hope nobody would notice or prove the theft), with the actual authorʼs rhetorical style identified. The inference to be made is that infringement of the communicative event harmony, detected on the level of aural perception, can catalyze the content analysis of the empirical material in order to determine the authenticity of the oratorʼs voice. Furthermore, application of the quantitative methods of the text analysis allows marking out the most significant components of the material which determine the emotional background of the oratorʼs message transmission to the listeners, thus creating the basis for developing the probability models of (un)successful speech behaviour. This proves that misuse, no matter how skilful, of rhetorical tools in a public speech can be aurally detected by sensitive listeners and instrumentally verified, furthering and diversifying the applications of the public discourse research. Christmas and New Year Rhetoric as Manifestation of the Degree of Transition towards Democracy (Vialentsina Holubeva) The evolvement of the nations from totalitarian regimes to more democratic set-ups is reflected in the speeches of national leaders. This reflects a shift in values, the improvement of interaction both between the leader and the nation, and between the leader and other countries. The paper presents the comparative and contrastive analysis of Christmas or New Year addresses delivered by the leaders of some countries from the “capitalist” and “socialist” blocks in the 1970s, the period of the Cold War, and of the speeches pronounced in 2011- 2012. This type of speeches, which do not carry any direct pragmatic charge, unlike the ones during election campaigns or other events, are comprehensive in nature and reflect general trends in the national policy. The functional similarity of the chosen situations allows identifying the points of similarity and difference in values, attitudes and declared intentions. The analysis reveals different degrees of the shift towards person to person communication, from abstract lexis with a high degree of generalization to concrete words with emphatic charge, as well as more appeal to personal sentiments, more references to everyday life situations, common human values and virtues, a lower degree of formality and acrimony. This trend towards democracy is observed in all analyzed speeches; however, some of them still reveal viewing people as workforce, who are expected to implement the plans of the government. Life Performances (4C) Chair: Dries Vrijders The Role of a Lifetime: Role as a Critical Concept in the Works of Kenneth Burke, or, Towards a Rhetoric of Role (Jacob Robertson) When a critic as aware of words as Kenneth Burke employs a particular term with regularity, it behooves us to take notice—especially when that word is employed in an increasingly

Wednesday 22/05

30

specific manner over the course of the criticʼs works. Burkeʼs use of the term “role” (a term which, despite its relevance to his “dramatistic” critical method, has gone largely unexamined in the context of Burkeʼs works) is an example of such a term. In this paper, I trace Burkeʼs use of the term “role,” and the development of this concept in his terminology, over the course of his major works, beginning with Counter-Statement, where the concept appears in embryo, through Burkeʼs unfinished A Symbolic of Motives, where we see the concept coming to fruition in Burkeʼs discussion of entelechy and imitation and their relation to “human types within the species” (10). Using Burke as a scaffold, I argue for a definition of role within the context of rhetorical theory as “symbols of action” corresponding to literary genres in the dialectic of social interaction. I illustrate this specifically by an appeal to Burkeʼs life-long exploration of the role of the poet—defined broadly in Permanence and Change as “imaginative authors in general” (58)—whose “role” in society, Burke suggests, is to provide “equipment for living” by dramatizing social roles, manipulating existing or creating alternative “frames of acceptance” (or rejection), in order to forward the social dialectic. Though Burkeʼs concept of role was never theorized explicitly, being supplanted by the concept of “agent,” Burkeʼs use of the term “role” (particularly in connection with the terms “character” and “agent”) suggests “role” is a key theoretical concept, not only for Burke, but for rhetorical theory generally, one deserving more thorough investigation concerning its “role” in the art of persuasion. Attitudes as Equipment for Living (Waldemar Petermann) Throughout the works of Kenneth Burke, the concept of attitude plays a somewhat shifting, but always important, role in his theory of symbolic action. Burke included it in the title of his Attitudes toward History and in the 1955 foreword to the volume, he called the comic frame an attitude of attitudes. In A Rhetoric of Motives he declared attitude a target for persuasion and in an addendum to A Grammar of Motives he added it to the Pentad. This paper proposes that the observation and analysis of attitudes not only can facilitate rhetorical criticism, but also that the awareness of attitudes can provide an important tool for identification and understanding in the every day rhetorical acts that make up our lives. This paper grounds the concept of attitude in Burke's dramatistic theory by a quick overview of its use and then considers it in the light of the comic frame. The resulting picture will then be connected to research on the practical impact the use of attitudes may have on rhetorical situations, such as Mral 2011, in order to show that attitude can be seen as important equipment for living. Burke and Ellul on Technology: Determinism and the Dialectical Antidote (Paul Stewart) American Kenneth Burke and Frenchman Jacques Ellul articulate similar perspectives on the condition of humans who are living in the Modern and contemporary era. The ideological Marxism that motivates both Burkeʼs scientific rationalization and Ellulʼs technological epoch suggests radical constraint on human freedom. Massification, rationalized efficiency, scientific expertise, and the “advance” of progress coopt the human, making us increasingly objectified components of a vast social machine. Burke is optimistic that humans can fight

Wednesday 22/05

31

fire with fire, using technological tools to resist the calcification of technological structure, but Ellul, who is routinely labeled not only a pessimist but a hopeless fatalist, places little confidence in the power of technology to save us. Indeed, much of our technological prowess is given to solving the problems of our technological prowess. For Ellul technology mindlessly self-augments and in doing so, creates its own ethical force we are virtually powerless to resist. While both scholars point to discursive solutions, Ellulʼs claims about the totalizing power of rationalized efficiency seem to suggest Burkeʼs optimism is unwarranted. Ellul states that “propaganda ends where simple dialogue begins,” but the dialogic power is rendered inert when given over to the technologies that Burke identifies. The technologies that we trust so optimistically in our own day, such as the internet and social media, are repeatedly cannibalized by economic forces. The living qualities of dialogue and conversation are rendered lifeless by the control necessary to achieve political and economic efficiency. If there is any hope for human freedom, we must protect the very relational and locally grounded rhetorical spaces where human interaction is encouraged and protected.

Thursday 23/05

32

Thursday 23/05 (11.00 – 12.30) Representation and Otherness (2B) Chair: Steven Schoen Documentary Scene and the Rhetoric of Evidence (Steven Schoen) Documentary is a genre of film that portrays “real” events using depictions that connote the objectivity and facticity implied by the processes of photorealism. Many contemporary documentary theorists and critics observe a constitutive problem in this ethos: despite the apparent constructions and agendas of documentary filmmaking, the framing and assumption of documentary as a window on the world tend to naturalize its own constructions as “real.” Critics who engage in documentary trace the multitude of ways this problem plays out in particular films. These projects yield many important insights, but they most often approach documentary as a form of inherently deficient representation fraught with ethical questions—questions created by the frame and ethos of objectivity it fails to achieve. Are events portrayed truthfully? Are people depicted fairly? Are filmmakers misrepresenting? In this paper I seek to show that a rhetorical approach to documentary shifts the critical focus to instead examine how documentary constructions and images work as evidence in the claims and rhetorical agendas of documentary. I will analyze selected recent film texts that explicitly and primarily structure their documentary materials as evidence for the truth of an argument or interpretation, and I argue that documentaries, when they work as documentary, establish and verify their depictions as evidence by drawing on the elements of their “scene.” I will use Kenneth Burkeʼs dramatistic approach to observe that the “real world” as depicted in documentary is at once experienced as representation of the world outside the documentary, but also constructed as the scene of a dramatization. I will examine examples of documentary “scene” interacting at key moments and particular ways to locate the events of films in the “real world,” not just as evidence that something is real, but also as meaningful for particular arguments and rhetorical moves. In other words, I use dramatism as a tool for tracing the way documentary films rhetorically structure their depictions as evidence of “reality,” and argue for the value of this as a way to understanding the structure of documentaries as documentaries. Atrocity, Image, and Others (David Worthington) This essay focuses on the most troublesome “others.” It grapples with the problem of how we imagine Nazis—as monstrous—while simultaneously understanding that they were only human and that the atrocities they were responsible for were the product of human action. The western tendency to see Nazis as “only” monstrous problematizes the issue of perpetrators precisely because it constructs them outside the bounds of American experience and blinders the effective examination of Americaʼs own bloody past. In

Thursday 23/05

33

particular the essay addresses Auschwitz adjutant commandant (May-December 1944) Karl Höcker's photograph album, sometimes referred to as the “Blueberry” album, that was made public by the United States Holocaust Memorial museum in 2008. This album features Nazis “at play” and received emphatic and negative public response upon its release. In his well known essay, “The Rhetoric of Hitlerʼs Battle,” Kenneth Burke states: “[L]et us try to discover what kind of “medicine” this medicine-man has concocted that we may know, with greater accuracy, exactly what to guard against, if we are to forestall the concocting of similar medicine in America.” Burke recognized that failure to be vigilant in watching the rhetorical tendencies of powerful political actors might well narrow the terministic options available and reduce the multiple voices necessary for robust democracy to flourish. This essay, working in this spirit of Burkeʼs critical caution, addresses the rhetoricity of the Hocker album in a post-Shoah, American exceptionalist world. Living Tuberculosis in the Era of the “White Plague”. (Jean Mason) This paper will use a Burkean perspective to examine a rhetorically related set of tuberculosis pathographies written prior to effective drug therapy (1890-1950). The proposed paper is part of a larger multidisciplinary study of a collection of tuberculosis pathographies written by patients in a specific and significant historical setting (Mason). TB—also known as the “white plague”—was historically considered incurable and was situated in a complex social, economic and political matrix. The case under study involves two parallel pathographies written by two female patients who cured simultaneously in a unique and isolated location: the Adirondack Mountains of northern New York—North Americaʼs “magic mountain.” One patient chose the accepted sanatoria route and allopathic treatment (Smith), while the other chose an alternative and naturopathic course of action in a remote woodland camp accompanied only by her mountain guide (Reben). Both patients followed their respective regimes for many years and both wrote extensive journals chronicling their illnesses. Both women later published revised versions as autobiographies. A Burkean “dramatistic” reading of these two narratives provides a frame within which to explore “clusters” of terms and subsequent patterns. This critical analysis of text suggests new perspectives from which to consider the bio-cultural model of illness and offers particular insight into the challenge of “writing a womanʼs life” (Heilbrun) within this significant historical context. Burkean Rhetoric and Critical Literacy (2C) Chair: Peter Mortensen Speculative Non/Fiction: The Generative Capacity of Burkean Theory (Francesca Marie Smith & Cheree Carlson) Kenneth Burke's dramatistic theory explores and informs scholarship ranging from literature and philosophy to (proto-)cultural studies; in communication studies, much of this work takes the form of rhetorical criticism focused on practical applications of his theoretical constructs in a variety of persuasive forums. In this essay, we argue that dramatism can do more than

Thursday 23/05

34

simply describe the symbolic. It can also serve as a potent generative force guiding critics to adapt a Burkean double-vision: to see the world as it is, yet also imagine what a different world, better or worse, might look like. Specifically, we review Burkeʼs major methodological tool, the pentad, to explore how it can be used pedagogically to help students and teachers re-imagine symbolic visions, facilitating critical thinking and setting the stage for advocacy and social change. Placing Burke in dialogue with recent work from Henry Jenkins on new media literacies and participatory cultures, we seek to expand Burkeʼs notion of symbolic “tinkering” by linking it to a cultural studies tradition. We then apply the pentad to a constellation of works, focusing on the universe of Sir Arthur Conan Doyleʼs Sherlock Holmes franchise, in order to identify and suggest exemplars of empowering speculation, or what we call illustrative activism. We argue that dramatism provides concrete mechanisms for furthering Jenkinsʼs goals of facilitating deeper student-text, student-teacher, and student-world engagement. It may also invite critics at more advanced stages of scholarship to move beyond analysis towards productive speculation. Responding to calls from across the academy to infuse our work with a stronger commitment to real-world applicability, we lay out a roadmap for evaluating, manipulating, and producing rhetoric that serves as productive “equipment for living.” Narrating Illiteracy and Race: Contending Views from Burke and Du Bois (Peter Mortensen) Illiteracy, no less than literacy, is an inevitable product of the rhetorical curriculum that teaches us to be ʻsymbol-using animal[s]ʼ (Burke 1966). I have pressed this claim in studies of particular ʻliteracy narrativesʼ that have been produced in English for consumption by mass audiences (Mortensen 2012, Eldred and Mortensen 1992; see also Verdoodt et al. 2010). In these narratives, the illiterate subject is often racialized, although subtly so from the perspective of intended audiences. To better understand how racialized conceptions of illiteracy figure in literacy narratives, this paper examines how illiteracy functions in representations of epidemic lethal violence against African Americans in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Central to this examination is W. E. B. Du Boisʼs The Quest of the Silver Fleece (1911), a novel in which the noted sociologist (The Philadelphia Negro, 1899), essayist (The Souls of Black Folk, 1903), civil rights activist (The Niagara Movement, 1906), and editor (The Crisis, 1910) challenges white commentatorsʼ assertions that pervasive illiteracy among African Americans is a causal factor in the alleged criminality that prompts extralegal killings of black citizens by whites. In The Quest, Du Bois surfaces and dismantles the perverse economic logic that fosters actual illiteracy among African Americans while concealing extreme violence against African Americans whose conspicuous literacy attainments are deemed a threat to white economic interests and political order. I offer my analysis of The Quest as an example of the ʻbrood[ing]ʼ on ʻdefinitive literacy text[s]ʼ advocated by Burke in ʻLinguistic Approach to Problems in Educationʼ (1955). In this brooding, I juxtapose Du Boisʼs theorizing of illiteracy and racial violence with Burkeʼs writing about lynching (e.g., Permanence and Change, 1935; see also Hawhee 2009, Crable 2011). In doing so, I am critical of Burkeʼs conception of a national literary tradition in the U.S. (as in ʻToward Looking Backʼ, 1976) that largely ignores the violent ʻproblem of the color-lineʼ, so long a preoccupation of Du Bois. This criticism is of pressing importance to an international audience: with Hawhee (2004) and many others, I contend that uptake of Burkeʼs rhetorical

Thursday 23/05

35

theories should be tempered by an understanding of the historically specific origins of his thinking. Rhetoric for Critical Literacy (Molek-Kozakowska) Under the communist system, people in Poland were skeptical with respect to broadcast messages in public media, and often engaged in negotiated or oppositional readings of government propagandas. As regards artistic output, both producers and audiences knew how to write/read between the lines and to circumvent censorship. This contrasts starkly with how uncritically many students that now come to humanistic faculties – over twenty years after Polandʼs transition to democracy – seem to approach mainstream media. My experience as a tutor and supervisor of undergraduate research projects in Cultural and Media Studies (CMS) at the Institute of English Studies of Opole University is that some students find it difficult to critically interrogate some of their everyday cultural practices and routine media uses. They have been raised in a heavily media-saturated world, often without much awareness of the cultural construction of reality and ideological preponderance of consumerism. My concern with this shortage of critical literacy skills has led to undertaking two projects so far: one was an action research devoted to identifying and remedying some of the problems students face when writing research papers in CMS, the other was an evaluation of selected CMS textbooks with regard to their potential for fostering critical reflection. The present project aims at reviewing selected rhetorical traditions (including Burkean rhetoric) from the educational perspective of accumulating a set of analytic categories/tools that could be helpful in fostering studentsʼ critical awareness of linguistic, semiotic and argumentative devices used in mediated discourses. Examples will be drawn from CMS students writing and rewriting critiques of (multimodal) public texts before and after they were introduced to some rhetorical concepts that hopefully enabled them to approach media messages more “symbol-wise.” Kenneth Burke and Social Change: Selves and Society in Transformation (3B) Chair: David Payne Kenneth Burkeʼs social criticism begins in the 1920s, calling for an ethic of change and adaptability in our aesthetic sensibilities. Burke conceived of the social role of the artist-as-rhetor, one who speaks to and counters the prevailing psychosocial needs of her times (Counterstatement, 1931). By the mid-30s and the world depression, Burke was less an advocate of social change than concerned with its inevitability, prophetically worried about the “technological psychosis” of modernism, fashioning critical methods to sort amid the virtues of Permanence and Change (1935) and arguing for new ʻcomicʼ Attitudes Toward History (1937). Burke describes his subsequent work as a treatise on “human relations” which embodies a “theory of comedy.” His famous (proposed) trilogy featured a foundational view that language use is at the heart of social order and a theory of language pragmatics that seeks to describe symbolic “transformation.” Accordingly Burke offered a Grammar of Motives (1945) that

Thursday 23/05

36

explores the basic “resources for transformation” found in language, where by virtue of our inherently rhetorical purposes, identities are inevitably transformed according to the principles of a dramatistic logic. In the extended analysis of A Rhetoric of Motives (1950), Burke considers how our capacity for transformation plays out in the “scramble and the wrangle” of social exchange, the “state of Babel after the fall,” wherein selves seek mobility and social groups seek transcendence in and through the transformational potentials of language. In the papers of this session, each scholar explores a different dimension of symbolic transformation and what it implies for individual and social well-being. David Payne identifies the centrality of transformation in Burkeʼs work, focusing on his views of transcendence and social unification. David Williams examines the implications of symbolic action for democratic society. Michael Feehan locates transformational language in our originary magical thinking and discusses how education may address its implications, and Mark Huglen examines the “guilt-purification-redemption cycle” at the heart of western social order and possibilities for social and spiritual transformation. Kenneth Burkeʼs Rhetoric of Transformation and Dialectics of Transcendence (David Payne) The purpose of this paper is to clarify the concepts of “transformation” and “transcendence” and demonstrate their centrality to Burkeʼs theories and critique of rhetoric. Burkeʼs “grammar” and rhetoric are focused on the mutability of symbolic identities. In the case of the grammar of transformation (GM, 3), Burke tries to identify the fundamental dialectical resources for transformation (GM, 402) possible in our languages of symbolic “substance.” In the rhetoric based on that grammar, Burke directs us to the socio-political enactments of our technologies of identity transformation: a rhetoric that permits or fosters symbolic transformation of selves and social groups in accordance with the demands of a complex social organization and democratic pluralism, coming to head in an ongoing dialectic of identification and division. One consequence of this accelerated technology of transformation, in both theory and practice, is a refigured and redefined notion of “transcendence.” Transcendence, within this ethic of transformation, offers only a moment of symbolic unification--the ability of our rhetorical resources to rise above and reach beyond social division is only a frail and emergent phase in our ongoing struggle to define and redefine “who we are” in this moment of emergent history. The limitations of Burkean transcendence imply the ongoing necessity of actively constructing and reconstructing our unifying ideas and identities, accepting the pragmatic reality of their ultimate transformation over time, and the need to critically understand and to constantly sort the pressures of “permanence and change” in our social dialectics.

Thursday 23/05

37

Dramatism and Democracy: Rhetorical Education and the Art of Democratic Citizenship (David Cratis Williams) Although Kenneth Burke is not typically viewed as a theorist of democracy, in many ways democracy is at the heart of his “dramatism.” And although Burke has not traditionally been viewed as a theorist of education, in many ways education is at the heart of dramatism as well. This paper proposes to “read together” Burkeʼs orientations toward democracy and toward education as a project to animate the art of citizenship. In doing so, it will extend work in this area that has begun in the past decade (Enoch; Smudde; Williams). The paper advances three related claims: 1) from a Burkean perspective, “democracy” is enacted as an “institutionalized dialectic” whose success depends upon the capacities and attitudes of the people; 2) Burke's “linguistic approach” to education is a fruitful route for preparing democratic citizens.; 3) both “emerging” and “renewing” democracies tend to be overly reductionistic in their nurturance of “democracy,” focusing on institutional procedures (voting, legislative forums, etc) and economic forces (“free market”) instead of “human resources.” A dramatistic educational program is advocated as a corrective to such reductionism and as an avenue toward the fulfillment of democratic ideals. Magic, Irony and Recalcitrance in Kenneth Burkeʼs Theory of Education (Michael Feehan) Kenneth Burke argued that language should be placed at the center of education theory and practice. Although he provides extensive discussions of the ways in which his conception of language as symbolic action can structure programs and relations among disciplines and even redefine disciplines, Burke does not provide a deep understanding of the relations among language, educational programming and maturation. Burke argues that our acquisition of a first language at a time of extreme immaturity results in our experiencing symbols as magical, as having power to summon food, touch, and diaper changing. This originary sense of magic is tempered by contacts with the nonverbal world, in Burkeʼs vocabulary, recalcitrance. Burke sees maturation in the realm of symbolic action as progressive deepening of our sense of irony, deepening our investment in the “genius of the negative” – the distinguishing characteristic of symbol systems. A program of education based on language as equipment for living would appear as a systematic chipping away at our originary magical thinking through contact with both the nonverbal world and our inherited system of symbols. For contact with the nonverbal world, we might study patterns such as: Magic tells us that we can use symbols to make anything happen, make anything appear or disappear, but recalcitrance confronts us with the distance between planting trees and signing about planting trees. For symbol systems, we look at distancing itself, the ways in which contact between magical thinking and recalcitrance alters our expectations and the emotions associated with those expectations. Burke takes proverbs to be ideal for such learning about learning. For young children, teachers will dramatize beliefs on the basis of the children'sʼ emotional investment. Later, teachers will ironize “common sense” -- opinions that form the unshakable base of our everyday lives.

Thursday 23/05

38

Transcending the Limitations of Kenneth Burkeʼs Western Orientation: Blessing Growth and Active Revision (Mark Huglen) Some scholars have indicated that the teachings of Kenneth Burke reflect a distinctively Western orientation, deeming this a limitation (Chesebro, “Extending” and “Extensions”; Condit). This essay reviews the theme of victimage, especially the guilt-purification cycle as a distinctively Western social structure, and examines scholarship that suggests possible avenues of transcending and revising this historic and mythic limitation in our symbolic orientations. In particular I will review Bernard Brockʼs idea of “Blessing Growth” as an alternative to victimage and propose that “Active Revision” is yet another way to transcend the Western orientation of Burkeʼs teachings. Blessing Growth: Brock has indicated that the teachings of Kenneth Burke can be extended to reflect a distinctively eastern orientation (Brock; Huglen and Rountree). The scholar associates a “Blessing Growth” model with that orientation. The non-fall, non-negation, and hence non-confrontation with an external aspect includes an acceptance in the form of activity, affirmation, befriending the negative, creative response/responsibility, and transformation. Active Revision: Burkeʼs Ladder of Learning – from cult of the kill, study the Other to defeat the Other, appreciation of the Other, and a willingness to learn from the Other, to the extension “Actively Seeking Revision from the Other,” – requires a blessing growth orientation to do its work (Huglen and McCoppin). Rhetorical perspectives on Video Games (4B) Chair: Christopher Paul Telescopic Pentad: Burke and Video Game Circumference (Jason Thompson) In his familiar epigram to the Grammar of Motives Burke wrote ad bellum purificandum, “toward to purification of war”; Iʼd like to preserve the ambiguity of this phrase and transfer it, mutatis mutandis, to the present-day scene of symbolic war, a global barnyard in which millions of digitally-connected human beings collaborate and compete, via laborious play, in mimetic, perpetual war. Specifically, I take the pre-9/11 US game developer insistence on WWII as a “representative anecdote” (with the European theatre as its scene) in order to index an early ludic terminology. I then adopt Burkeʼs method, Pentadic analysis, and telescope it out, from one video game, to the playing of the game, to the reading about the playing of the game, to the analysis of readings that talk about the playing of the game. My aim is to widen the circumference of game studies, a burgeoning field in which transdisciplinary scholars whose disparate motivations/ terminologies/circumferences suggest an alembic affordance for “perspective by incongruity” not-yet rotten with disciplinary perfection.

Thursday 23/05

39

Extending the body in to the ur-Real: Somatic Rhetoric & Video Games (Marlin Bates) Online videogame rhetoric is now crafted in a way that it ensnares the physical body of the player-character into the ur-real environment. No longer is the gamespace one in which the player passively exists outside of the characterʼs world. Burkean identification is such that the rhetoric is used to create on identity of self in addition to becoming that identity amongst others. This identity is located in a crossroads of culture - both Real and ur-Real -to the point that the gamespace is educating the player-character not only how to act but how to be! Prior research (Bates, 2012) has described this as a “sonorous envelope.” In an effort to extend the notion of the sonorous envelope of the ur-Real world to pseudo-offline play, this research will apply a grounded theory to analyze how Blizzard is using a unified platform to bring the same somatic rhetorical experience to the online and offline player. In specific, this paper analyzes the rhetoric used to elicit physical bodily responses in player-characters in both Diablo III and World of Warcraft. In demonstrating how the stylistic tokens present within Diablo III and World of Warcraft, the paper demonstrates how Blizzard is once again blurring the line between the corporeal and the ur-Real. This time, however, the experience is crossing genres, from the MMORPG to the stand alone “hack and slash” RPG. Using an intersection of theories from Black, Burke, and Charland, this paper collects and intersects rhetoric from Blizzard forums as well as in game chat sessions from Diablo III and World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria. The argument is that Blizzard uses elements that have been shown to be somatic catalysts in World of Warcraft and employs them to the same effect in Diablo III. Exploring the rhetoric of change in (online) discussion about video games (Jeroen Bourgonjon) Ever since the classical era, people have argued about the social impact of arts. In our own work, we explore this tradition via the New Rhetoric in general and the work of Kenneth Burke in particular, who described literature as “equipment for living”. More recently, Martha Nussbaum put literature at the heart of liberal education, arguing that literature will make us more empathic towards each other, thus creating a cosmopolitan identity. The question we have to ask ourselves today is whether these functions can be taken over by other media. People have become cultural omnivores, who not only read books, but also watch television, and play video games. In this paper, we explore whether video games can be described as “equipment for living” as well. Burke emphasized the necessity of rhetorical criticism, by arguing that literature has sociological meaning because it helps the reader in strategically naming recurrent situations and by providing insight in how other people manage these patterns of experience. Similarly, video game scholars are building their field of study on a foundation that stresses the importance of gaming. The predominant argument is that video games can be described as “teaching tools”, which has led many to the belief that games should be used as instruments in education. While we indeed concur with James Paul Gee that video games possess a lot of qualities that align with contemporary learning theories, we argue that it is necessary to

Thursday 23/05

40

think about games from additional perspectives, that is, if we want to approach video games symbol wise. We therefore decided to shift our analytical scope from the scholarly debate to the ongoing conversation about video games in online forums. There we can find many stories of how gaming has changed or influenced the life of the players. According to Buckingham, these narratives can be read as a form of social action. Therefore, we believe that these stories of change as they appear in the digital conversation can teach us something about how people make sense of their experiences with games, but also about what kind of “equipment for living” video games can be. Rhetoric and Ethics (4C) Chair: Kevin McClure Advertisement as Rhetorical Argument (Réka Nagy) A new field of studies has just arisen not long ago out of the need to understand the media and its persuasive characteristics. If someone had to name one of the most persuasive genres of television, print or audio mediums, it certainly would be: advertising. This (re)new(ed) field of studies mostly deals with visuals. How can still or motion images be created with the help of rhetorics to be able to formulate a pictorial speech act that persuades people to buy, to believe or if not, at least to like the products or service. Can advertisers convey valid arguments with pictures? Media rhetoric is a product that individuals make by using visual symbols, metaphors, etc. for communicating their thoughts, but it can also be considered as a process by which different mediums communicate. This presentation will strive to approach the problem of delivering advertising messages, how they become interpretable, and how they can convert to pictorial speech acts based on arguments. It deals with effective use of verbal and visual elements in advertising, wishes to find out which are the necessary and sufficient conditions for a successful performance and also gives possible answers to questions like: how can rhetoric help in formulating persuasive arguments? To Use or to Choose? Rhetoric as Tool (Kristian Bjørkdahl) In his article, “Literature as Equipment for Living,” Kenneth Burke suggested that we should place literature in a sociological space, and study how literature functions as a strategic resource in our attempts to cope with real life situations. Burkeʼs preoccupation was later picked up by a scholar who is still largely unrecognized as a neo-Burkean: Richard Rorty. In his slogan, “Language is for coping, not for copying,” Rorty encapsulates an attitude very much like Burkeʼs; he adjusts our gaze towards what language does, as opposed to what (and how) it represents. They both urge us to see language as tools. To speak in a particular way is what allows us to see, feel, and act in a particular way – not to mention, to become a particular someone.

Thursday 23/05

41

But just as Burke was confronted with the connotations of the word “strategy,” Rorty was criticized for his use of the “tool” metaphor. Although we can see rhetoric as “equipment for living,” we can still worry about whether that equipment is something we use or something we choose. My argument is that Burke and, especially, Rorty overestimate the degree to which tools and strategies are chosen, and that both scholars need to be tempered by an eye for how various social imperatives largely predetermine choice. A carpenter surely uses a hammer, but in what sense – if any – does he choose it? Is his use of the tool not already predefined by the task at hand? By the designed fit between task and tool? By the conventions of tool use?What is at stake in this distinction is the discipline of rhetoric itself – it is the question of whether (and how far) we by consciouslychoosing a particular language can attain certain effects. To put it differently: if the shared legacy of Burke and Rorty is an “idiom of purposes,” what purpose does that idiom serve? Kenneth Burke, Rhetoric, and Reconfiguring Ethics as Equipment for Living (Kevin McClure&Julia B. Skwar) The field of ethics, an area of primary interest to “new rhetoric” theorists, has been particularly impacted and challenged by the linguistic and poststructural turns in the humanities and the social sciences. Among the troubling challenges that poststructural thought poses for ethics are the decentering of the subject as the locus of meaning and action and the subversion of the metaphysical grounds of traditional ethical theories. For some the upshot of these challenges has led to a certain ethical malaise that involves the loss of shared moral standards and notions of the good, and a search for new grounds upon which to construct ethical theories. For others, the demise of ethics is viewed as a liberation that presents an opportunity for a variety of critical unmaskings. Nevertheless, ethics remains vitally important in virtually all human endeavors. Burkean scholars have long noted the centrality of ethics in Dramatism, yet, as both Smith (2003) and Crusius (2005) note, scholars have collectively missed the potential in Burkeʼs work to develop a Dramatistic ethics, and challenge scholars to begin to flesh-out the possibilities for a Dramatistic ethics. This essay, then, presents a tentative response to these challenges by considering the possibilities that Dramatism offers in reconfiguring the field of ethics. We begin with a review of the status of ethics after the linguistic and poststructural turns. Next, we consider the contribution that dramatism can offer to the contemporary conversation on ethics, including both the affinities and disparities of Burkeʼs thought with that of poststructuralists. A pentadic meta-theoretical analysis that charts the contemporary landscape of ethical thought and inquiry follows. Building on that analysis we argue that dramatism invites a shift in the conversation that transcends both modernismʼs universalizing impulses and poststructuralismʼs deconstructive desires toward a discussion of ethics as equipment for living.

Thursday 23/05

42

Thursday 23/05 (13.30 – 15.00) Burke and Popular Culture (2B) Chair: Patrick Clauss Synecdochic Representation: The Wire, Exemplars, and Rhetoric as Equipment for Living (Patrick Clauss) A central purpose of rhetoric is to change perspectives: no matter the genre or medium, rhetoricians attempt to modify the thoughts, feelings, and actions of their interlocutors or audiences. Mechanisms for change are multifaceted and various, but a common strategy is the use of specific cases or representative examples to support claims. In such instances, rhetors implicitly ask audiences to make ampliative inferences, moving toward a richer understanding of larger phenomena and, consequently, an acceptance of the arguerʼs thesis. We see such exemplars in The Wire, a complex, sprawling television serial humbly described by creator David Simon as “stories that, in the end, have a small chance of presenting a social, and even political, argument.” Taking Simon at his word—that The Wire does in fact present social and political argument—I examine the means by which select characters and plotlines advance Simonʼs tacit claims about, among other things, stifling poverty, political corruption, Americaʼs failed “War on Drugs,” and institutional inertia and hegemony. Kenneth Burkeʼs discussion of synecdoche informs my analysis. Also relevant is Chaim Perelman and Lucy Olbrechts-Tytecaʼs conceptualization of argumentation via the particular case, which is one means by which an arguer can “establish the structure of reality.” About The Wire, critic Jacob Weisberg claims, “no other program has ever done anything remotely like what this one does, namely to portray the social, political, and economic life of an American city with the scope, observational precision, and moral vision of great literature.” The Wire is great literature, but it is also great rhetoric, deserving our attention as we grapple with rhetoric as equipment for living. Moreover, examining synecdochic representation in The Wire affords a richer understanding of the trope itself, so central to Burkeʼs rhetoric that he identifies it as one of the four “master tropes.” Civil Disobedience through Street Art: Yarn Graffiti Protests and Burkean Perspective by Incongruity (Maureen Goggin) Yarn graffiti, also known as yarn storming, yarn bombing, and guerilla crocheting or knitting, is a contemporary form of street art that is popping up all over the world in unexpected places, for unexpected reasons, and to unexpected ends. Women and men are taking up their needles and crochet hooks to make political, social, cultural, and artistic material expressions; that is, to claim full rights as rhetorical citizens worth listening to, seeing, and feeling. In this paper, I examine protest yarn bombing as practiced across different countries concerning: war, political decisions, economic problems, and environmental sustainability.

Thursday 23/05

43

Of these four types of public protests in yarn, I ask: What meanings are circulated in this new rhetorical medium? What are the purposes of these pieces? How does yarn graffiti make claims for and about rhetorical citizenship? What are the underlying subversive, transgressive, and political aims of this protest street art?Drawing on Kenneth Burkeʼs concepts of “perspective by incongruity” and the “grotesque,” I explore how throughout the globe yarn graffiti practitioners juxtapose the softness of yarn against the hardness of the issues to which it is put to use and the spaces on which it is installed--the beauty of the colors and design against the ugliness of the detestable issues at hand. While one guerilla knitter points out, “this style of folk craft renovation is . . . integral to altering and beautifying ugly aspects of urban architecture,” the public has mixed reactions to this illegal form of street art. Some see the whimsy of it and appreciate the art and its message; others see it as vandalism and a nuisance. Yarn bombing is best understood as the “grotesque” as Burke defines it: “the cult of incongruity without the laughter.” Also grounded in “thing theory,” these pieces can be understood to constitute a materialist epistemology, what Davis Baird has termed “thing knowledge,” “where the things we make bear knowledge of the world, on par with the words we speak.” As Deadly Knitshade (a pseudonym) points out about yarn bombing, “Change and making the world a better place can be done with a grin instead of a grimace, a whisper instead of a bellow. What we do can alter the way people look at their world. How it alters it is up to them. Thatʼs really our point.” This paper examines how this aim is accomplished and thus, contributes to our understanding of a new rhetorical genre for global citizens. “Local” And “Slow” Equipment for Living; Ideographs in Contemporary Food Social Movements (Darcy Mullen) Taking the American Local Food Movement and European Slow Food Movement as my case studies, I argue that Kenneth Burkeʼs representative anecdote as “equipment for living” is insufficient when representative anecdotes are ideographic (1967; 293-304). As Michael Calvin McGee states in “The “Ideograph”; A Link Between Rhetoric and Ideology,” whenever a social form or idea is called ideology, it is done with a political agenda—to identify that form or idea as a falsity, that “the political language which manifests ideology seems characterized by slogans, a vocabulary of “ideographs” (1980; 426-427). Masquerading as “technical terminology of political philosophy,” I suggest that ideographs complicate Burkeʼs idea of the representative anecdote because of how discourse communities often employ representative anecdotes as “equipment for living.” However, when masquerading as representative anecdotes, ideographs preclude specific virtual discourse communities from having the tools for both synchronic and diachronic engagement. Through examples of texts central to the Locavore Movement and the Slow Food Movements (Gary Paul Nahbanʼs Coming Home To Eat (2002) and The Slow Food Manifesto (1989)) I argue that both “local” and “slow” must be considered as ideographic because of how they equip eaters/activists/citizens for, respectively, temporally and spatially based national belonging. Emerging at times when national and cultural boundaries were tested, the ideographs of “local” and “slow” provide vastly different models for citizenship. In these

Thursday 23/05

44

ideographs there is a shared conception of how both space and time function within “cultural patterns” (such as how concepts such as “home” test and rely on spatial and temporal imagining). Rhetoric and the Virtual (Un)real (2C) Chair: Joachim Vlieghe Instagram that! The symbol-using animal as an orator in digital photography (Pia Engel) “How does meaning get into the image? Where does it end? And if it ends, what is there beyond?” Those questions are not new but were raised by Barthes in 1964. Today everybody agrees that it is possible to communicate via images. But is it that easy? What can the bare image achieve without any explanatory linguistic text? As Burke defines the man as a symbol-using and misusing animal I want to discuss the pictorial system of notation that is motived by reality differentiating it from other pictorial systems of notation that are for example used to express abstract nouns such as love or luck. This theoretical foundation makes it obvious: images are texts and as such communicative facts. Even Aristotle points out that a painter has to outline figures because it is not enough just to splatter some color on canvas (cf. Poetics, 1450b). Barthes describes an image as “discontinuous”: that is why no image can argue. This paper considers the one-dimensional single image, neither sequences (e.g. comics) nor moving images (e.g. movies, videos). The photographer is an orator in the making of an image that aims for persuasion. The pictorial text transmits information, a message, and shows in which specific semiotic way it is made. Anticipating the context in which the image is shown and considering the background knowledge of the addressee, I will talk about involvement and the power of association. Furthermore I debate in how far Burkeʼs identification can arise from images that so often are claimed to be evident. The online photo sharing and social networking service Instagram encourages its users to post pictures and add digital filters to them. Letʼs find out if there are orators among them! From Ethos to Identification to Trust: theoretical and practical implications for rhetorical theory and digital communication (Laura Gurak) Identification is a central concept in Burke's larger project on understanding the dynamics of human persuasion. Introduced in A Rhetoric of Motives, identification is key to effective communication and requires a common understanding, often built around a story or shared life experience. In this way, it can be argued that identification provides a way to remediate, or enrich, the traditional rhetorical appeal of ethos. Ethos, in its traditional form, is based on a one-way dynamic (e.g. "finding in any case the available means of persuasion") and has been described as both managerial and agonistic, while identification, on the other hand, requires a shared perspective (illustrated most commonly by the "I was a farm boy myself" example) and thus more dialogic and two- way. Identification is thus a valuable enhancement of the traditional rhetorical concept of ethos. But even enhanced (and with years of additional commentary and scholarship to build on),

Thursday 23/05

45

the larger rhetorical concept at work here is still lacking a central piece, and that piece is trust. For in order to establish credibility, and in order for identification to occur, a speaker must inspire trust, and speaker and audience must trust each other. This paper is part of a larger project attempting to enrich rhetorical theory in this area by engaging key sociological literature on the dynamics of both dyadic and group trust. For this presentation, I will connect ethos, Burkean identification, and trust via theoretical discussion as well as several micro-case examples. Trust is a central "piece of equipment for living" in our age. All forms of human communication depend heavily on trust. We could not function as individuals, and we could not have functioning communicative exchanges without trust; indeed, trust is foundational to all rhetorical acts. As Luhmann has stated, “[t]rust, in the broadest sense of confidence in oneʼs expectations, is a basic fact of social life. . . . a complete absence of trust would prevent [a person] from even getting up in the morning.” (1973, p.4). Athorough understanding of the underlying features and functions of trust is essential and is especially important in our digital age, when identities can be anonymous or unknown and when messages can have powerful social effects across political, social, and global boundaries. To date, little scholarship has focused on the fact that trust is established by rhetorical means; that is, trust is at the heart of any successful rhetorical exchange. Yet trust as a concept has been overlooked by traditional rhetoric scholarship. This paper looks at four key analytic areas: ethos and credibility; identification and identity; time and duration; and proximity/community. Next, this paper shifts to Internet communication and the complexities of trust as a rhetorical dynamic in global online settings. Two micro-case examples will be provided to illustrate the relationship between rhetoric and trust in global, digital settings. As Sztompka has noted, trust is often established in relation to social proximity, thereby creating "cultures of trust" (128); one of the cases presented here analyzes the role of ethos in an online social action and the relationship between the classical conception of ethos and a more contemporary understanding of trust. A second case examines U.S. and European perspectives on Internet privacy. It is urgent that we understand the rhetoric of trust, both broadly and in online settings, if we are to have any success with the global challenges of our digital age. Dramatistic analysis of literacy narratives in a social media environment (Joachim Vlieghe) Human interaction is characterized by the creation, use and misuse of symbols (Burke, 1966, p. 16). Symbols gain meaning and become communicative means only through deliberation by the community in which they are circulated and tested as useful descriptions of the reality perceived and collectively constructed by that community(Walter, 2004). In addition, the use of symbols across different situations adds a certain level of ambiguity to their meaning as no two situations are ever exactly alike (Burke, 1945/1969, p. xix). Therefore research within social sciences must consider “what is involved when we say what people are doing and why they are doing it?” (Ibid, p. xv).

Thursday 23/05

46

Literacy studies and literacy education have relied on similar social constructivist considerations to define and redefine its core concept: literacy. The term literacy was originally derived from the word literature and was used to refer to “both an ability to read and a condition of being well-read” (Williams, 1983, p. 184). Since the concept was introduced its meaning has undergone several transformations as “each technological advance has seen a corresponding change in how literacy is practiced and its social role understood” (Snyder, 2003, p. 14). The most significant changes followed the vast increase of communication channels and media during the 20th century (e.g. radio, television and the world- wide web). In light of these developments, the New London Group (1996) argued for using of the term literacy in the plural form: (multi)literacies. This transformation accounted for the complex challenges faced by learners when dealing with the multitude of communicational means and representational forms, including, but not limited to printed texts alone. An understanding of literacy as plural and contextually dependent allows policymakers and educational practitioners to create flexible curricula and learning opportunities that equip learners for full and equitable participation in socio-cultural and economic life (Ibid, p. 61). Despite greater opportunities for flexible design, broadening of the concept of literacy also complicates matters for educators and policymakers. By frequently incorporating new practices in the domain of literacy, the concept grows ever more ambiguous. It becomes a container for a myriad of conflicting and confusing meanings. For people who have been entrusted with the task of creating learning environments and providing educational support, the increased ambiguity thwarts attempts to operationalize the goals and means of literacy education (Street, 2003). This is further intensified by the rapid succession of technological developments which continue to broaden the spectrum of media and literacy. In this paper I explore how teachers and policymakers can learn to deal with a broad concept like literacies in todayʼs multi-mediated societies by taking a social constructivist approach to educational design processes. As suggested by Kris Rutten (2011), I consider how literacy narratives – particularly peopleʼs reflective accounts about participation and experiences in informal sociocultural settings – can become ʻequipment for livingʼ for learners as well as teachers and policymakers. Based on a case study of literary practices within social media environments, I examine the merits of immersion and reflection through participant observation (see: Heath & Street, 2008) and dramatistic analysis of literacy narratives (see: Rutten, 2011). Burkeʼs New Body: The Problem of Virtual Material, and Motive, in a Post-Human Age (Steven B. Katz) Cosmetic surgery, prosthetics, cybernetics, social medias, virtual realities, digitalities, object oriented philosophies, online literati, electracy, avatars, are all created, supplemented, enhanced, and supported not only by science and technology but also by rhetorics and poetics. However, these “new material bodies” are not ones that Kenneth Burke might recognize or account for in his pentad of dramatistic motives (Grammar of Motives); yet these new bodies are characterized, like sentient life forms, as having agency. That is, these new material bodies, “as actants” in the language of Objected Oriented Philosophy, are objects that donʼt merely act according to sheer mechanical causation or motion as postulated by

Thursday 23/05

47

science, but do not posses motives either, as understood in the rhetorical tradition, “the Parlor,” from which Burke emerges and to which he contributes (Rhetoric of Motives). In a post-human age, the physical body, and the human as the focal point of study, is being replaced by a rhetoric/poetics of objects. As Katherine Haylesʼ states in How We Became Post-Human:

The contemporary pressure toward dematerialization, understood as an epistemic shift toward pattern/randomness and away from presence/absence, affects human and textual bodies on two levels at once, as a change in the body (the material substrate) and as a change in the message (the codes of representation). The connectivity between these changes is, as they say in the computer industry, massively parallel and highly interdigitated. (29)

How can dematerialized or virtual objects act with agency but not motive? (Do they possess free will?) What is the physical experience of being such an object? Can Kenneth Burkeʼs work help us comprehend the implications for rhetoric and poetics in the twenty-first century? Having briefly explored the (t)issues of the “new body” in a post-human age, as hinted at above, this paper will examine Burkeʼs own struggle to account for the physical human body. Burke often referred to himself as “ʼa word manʼ,” and his own poetry as a “ʼwordy human body,” by which David Blakesley said he meant “a word-being. Who ʻheʼ is—the cluster of physiological and motivational drives—is indistinguishable in the molten center of being but emergent in his distinguishable becoming” (Late Poems, xvii-xviii). But according to William Ruekert (Toward a Symbolic of Motives), one of Burkeʼs students and close friends, Burke wrestled with the symbolic of basic bodily functions, the “coacal motives,” his whole life (see esp. “Thinking of the Body”), and that struggle arrested the development of Burkeʼs projected third book, a Symbolic of Motives, in his rhetorical trilogy. My paper will suggest that Burkeʼs own struggle with the symbolic of the physical body might help us understand the place of “literate bodies,” whether in textual stasis or the topoi of moving argument, in an age of diffused electracy, and new prospects for talking about and interacting with post-human objects in a virtual world. DIGRA Flanders Meeting(120.047) Chair: Bob De Schutter Discussant: Gerald Voorhees ZWERM: stimulating urban neighborhood self-organization through gamification (Tanguy Coenen and Thomas Laureyssens) Art Education's Gameplay: Some Thoughts and Ideas by the Art World (Tom De Mette) World War II Revisited. Traveling through time and space in historical FPS-games. (Pieter Van den Heede)

Thursday 23/05

48

Physical serious games (Niels Quinten) Corporate Rhetoric (3B) Chair: Lena Lid Falkman Terministic Screens and Entitlement as Equipment for Understanding Corporate Social Responsibility in Global Contexts (Constance Kampf & Martin Speer) This paper will use Burkeʼs concepts of entitlement and terministic screens to compare and contrast the manner in which Corporate Social Responsibility is constituted and interpreted from culture to culture as it grows into a global movement. We compare and contrast the use of this reciprocity with McLuhanʼs use of the global village as the implosion of time and space within a complex multi-perspective situation. Kenneth Burke brings together the function of rhetoric as both a constitutive and interpretive process through his notions of terministic screens and entitlement. Terministic screens allow for user agency, whereas entitlement appears to be focused more at the cultural level, with the agency shared by the ʻtribe,ʼ the language itself, and the context of situation. In other words, “terministic screens” appear to be extrinsic, while “entitlement” appears to be intrinsic. Carmichael summarizes Burkeʼs essay, “Antinomies of Definition,” from a Grammar of Motives as demonstrating that ʻthe intrinsic and the extrinsic can change placesʼ “such that to define is always to contextualize and to uncover the absence of a solid ground for a claim to knowledge.” So if the intrinsic and extrinsic can change places, the interpretive process of “terministic screens” and the constitutive process of “entitlement” may well be reciprocal. The implications of this reciprocity can be used as a basis for understanding the linguistic and cultural components of Corporate Social Responsibility as portrayed in corporate web presences around the world. The comparison with McLuhan helps situate Burke in contemporary European Media Studies. ʻYou are not my type, CEO Lars!ʼ Identification and non-identification in a social media hype about leadership (Lena Lid Falkman) “You persuade a man only insofar as you can talk his language by speech, gesture, tonality, order, image, attitude, idea, identifying your ways with his.” Kenneth Burke 1945/1969:55 In the thinking of Burke, identification is essential to the understanding of meaning and rhetoric, identification being a “key” term for new rhetoric (Burke 1951:203). Identification can be the means of communication, but identification can also be an end in itself; a search for belonging. (ibid) Social media can be a fruitful place for empirical case studies. Here is not only the message from the “sending” agent visible, but also the reaction from the “receiving” agent is public. Since social media, it will be argued, is an oasis of political incorrectness, reactions are also

Thursday 23/05

49

blunt compared to face-to-face reactions. A leader of a large company can as well be an agent deliberately searches for identification, as an agent who, without trying, can be the target of identification or non-identification. A bank, we can call it Euronet, has made an effort to communicate via social media. During a political campaign, CEO Lars and Euronet donate money for every new follower they get on social media. The donation is for the fight against racism, as a political stand against the extreme movement in Europe. The reaction on social media is strong. Many applaud the move – identifying with Lars and Euronet. But many also react fiercely in the opposite way, non-identifying with the political action and with CEO Lars. The research questions are: How can identification and non-identification act out? What can this teach us about rhetorical identification? And what can it teach us about leadership through social media? The purpose of this case study and paper is to explore the identification process, as understood by Kenneth Burke. The Silent Manager (Zahra Solouki) There are hierarchies of all sorts: "the big guys" could have their luxurious offices on the top floor, have their golden-framed degrees from some ivy-league school, or simply carry the same surname as the local senator. No matter what their affiliation suggests, they have to actually "say" something in order to get a reaction from people. It is usually the same aggregate reaction that is considered as getting support from others or having influence over them; power and hierarchies are bestowed over the big guys by all those under them. As Foucault (1983) rightly asserts, power is not an asset that one could keep and then take advantage of now and then, but it is embedded in communicational relationships, when one takes it and the other gives. Believers are in abundance in each and every community, and believing is a widely common practice; whether it is confirming or rejecting, people have their opinions and, quite paradigmatically, stick to them. What makes people believe? Social rank, expertise, physical strength, or even military power must first be understood an interpreted before meaning anything to anyone. Persuasion is the key. In a firm where expertise is valued most, the manager who "manages" to seem and act as skillfully as possible, would win the "hearts" and, of course, support of the majority. Revolutionary power (Russell, 1938), as merely a means to an end, in comparison with Lukes (2005) third dimension of power, where subjects are dominated without even realizing the fact or the reasons for their obedience is possibly an intriguing lens to look at successful persuasion as power. The major question now, for a firm, is how to manage communication without or with minimal power, when it comes to fostering novelty in the organization(s). Rhetoric and Education 1 (4B) Chair: Hans Gunnarsson Teacherʼs Rhetoric in the Classroom- a Pragmatic Approach (Hans Gunnarsson)

Thursday 23/05

50

My paper contributes to the conference theme that welcomes contributions that examinethe possible use of rhetoric for education or educators. In Sweden the content of schoolʼs teaching programs in rhetoric has considerably changed during the last years. The program for teaching Swedish in upper secondary school is now based on rhetoric principles. My paper concentrates on the pragmatic use of rhetoric as teachers in all subjects and especially teaching of rhetoric as a subject in secondary school. How can we make a good progression in teaching rhetoric? How can we help students who are afraid to speak? What exercises can be useful in different steps of the progression? How can we make our students better listeners? How can we use rhetoric as a tool for learning in subjects as Natural and Social science, History, Religion, Economy, Music and Art? How can we use rhetoric in conversations with parents and pupils? The paper is based on my book Lärarens retorik (The teacherʼs rhetoric) Liber 2012. Toward a Practical Application of Burkeʼs Rhetorical Pedagogy (Annie Laurie Nichols and Michael Steudeman) As interest in Kenneth Burkeʼs pedagogical ideas begins to surge and align with pedagogical trends, it is important to consider how dramatistic concepts can be articulated usably and pragmatically to educators. To this end, this essay follows a structure based on Burkeʼs metaphorical “ladder” to place competing perceptions of dramatistic education in dialogue. The authors speak from perspectives advocating public schooling or homeschooling as superior conditions for cultivating a dramatistic curriculum. Each author offers a critique of the opposing perspective and a defense of their own, providing a set of practical considerations for dramatistic education along the way. They conclude together by arriving at the “fourth rung” of Burkeʼs educational ladder and synthesizing the aspects of homeschooling and public schooling most conducive to dramatism. Together, they advocate for a concrete curriculum of dramatistic education to facilitate the introduction of dramatism at scale in both homeschool and public educational environments. Sustaining Conversation: Rhetoric and Challenges to Responsibility in the Digital Age (Andrew Wojtkielewicz) Increasingly, our technological landscape is forcing rhetorical studies to contend with a linguistic environment that is ever decreasingly hospitable to what we here call the rhetorical. The rhetorical, the twin modes of affective response-ability and symbolic (re)configuration, is more and more at odds with the imperatives of speed, quantification, and classification generated by our use and contact with the latest information and communication technology. The confluence of our posthuman algorithmic universe epitomizes this trend as automation supplants our all-too-human powers of judgment. Where our ability to respond to otherness is deposed, exercising a critical mindset becomes a moot ambition. It is precisely at this disjuncture where a climate of conversation that maintains a space for an ethico-rhetorical approach to identity, discipline and epistemological (de)formulation can take place. Burke warned against the dangers of too much identification, and that coexistence depends on our capacity to resist it. We see conversation as the rhetorical antidote against stultifying sedimentation in these respective realms. It is the disruptive force to “semantically fixed”

Thursday 23/05

51

uses of language and its effects and the primary mode in which we expose ourselves to others and enact a mutually deconstructive response-ability. Exposure and responsibility are the conversational elements vital to a healthy rhetoricity, but we suggest they are limited by the technics of the discursive environments in which they take place. If assuming a posture of openness and disfiguration regarding identity, discipline, and knowledge is what lends vitality to figurative movements of appropriation and intersubjective understanding, we attempt a reply to the following questions: Given our technical mediums of communication, how do we generate discursive spaces within digital environments for thriving conversation, and perhaps as important, how may we learn to cope with these environments, where ethico-rhetorical conversation risks being subverted, silenced or simply made impossible?

Friday 24/05

52

Friday 24/05 (11.00-12.30) The Campus Novel as Equipment for Living (1) (2B) Chair: Marta J. Lysik The campus novel, an Anglo-American genre, having as its protagonists alternately students, teaching staff, and full professors, acts as a barometer measuring the state of the nation and education. While critically commenting on campus life, often spotlighting subversive behaviors and contesting the status quo, the campus novel portrays the individualʼs struggle for personal advancement and definition of oneʼs own identity and values. It serves as a battleground for concepts and ideologies pervasive in the times it limns. Many established American and British authors, and some international writers living and working in America explored the potential of this genre, especially its satirical penchant, in order to comment on contemporaneous issues. Campus novels will thrive as long as organizations of higher education exist. Depending on their focus, be it institutional, or individual, they provide recipes for ineffective and effective functioning in the academic context. Taking the cue from Kenneth Burkeʼs concept of literature as “equipment for living,” I assert that academic novelsʼ raison dʼêtre could be describing strategies for handling various, mostly critical, situations in the ivory tower. Campus novels can be viewed as manuals for students and professors alike, catalogues of doʼs and donʼts; toolboxes for critical self–analysis and self–reflection. They can console, warn, and entertain – all in an effort to educate. The sessionwill tackle formal and thematic concerns: what makes a novel a campus novel (an umbrella term for academic, college, and university novels)? What themes do the narratives of the university foreground? What other genres do they meld with? What types of campus novel can be discerned? Case studies of novels (from the Anglo-American context), as well as comparative studies of campus novels will be presented, as well as attempts at coherent definition and categorizations of this (sub?)genre. The Academic Novel and Contemporary American Fiction (Jeffrey Williams) Expanding on his influential essay, “The Rise of the Academic Novel” (American Literary History [2012]), Jeffrey J. Williams will argue for the centrality of the academic novel to contemporary fiction in the US. Rather than its being a quaint or coterie genre, it has actually become a major genre in American fiction, drawing on many prominent writers born after World War II. It has also simply been one of the more populous subgenres of contemporary fiction, with over 100 literary novels from 1990-2010 (and many more mysteries and less literary entries). This proliferation part stems from the vast expansion of higher education in the US over the past fifty years: university is no longer a special experience, but a common part of American culture. Likewise, professors are no longer peculiar beings, but a familiar cultural model of the professional in American culture. Furthermore, their portraits are more vexed over the past decade because of the fraught standing and declining control that professions exert, in the face of heightened commercial standards.

Friday 24/05

53

One subsidiary argument is that critical discourse on the academic novel mistakenly gravitates toward seeing the genre as a distinctly British one, with highlights such as Lucky Jim and David Lodgeʼs series of Small World novels. Rather, the American version has been most prominent over the past two decades and the British more a limited, residual genre. Williams has distinguished several strands of recent academic fiction, among them culture wars fiction, mid-life crisis fiction, and adjunct fiction. For this talk, he will explicate two further strands: one that features women graduate students and one that features multicultural academics. Some examples of the former include Michele Hunevenʼs Blame and the latter Jhumpa Lahiriʼs “Interpreter of Maladies.” (SOS), or Student-Oriented Stories Marta J. Lysik Academic novels, i.e. professor-oriented narratives of university, can nowadays often be termed “anxiety narratives” (Williams), but I argue this pejorative aura also pervades student-oriented novels, college novels. Especially graduate student-oriented narratives since graduate students inhabit an academic limbo fraught with many hurdles to prove themselves worthy of leaving the studentsʼ and joining the professorsʼ “tribe.” These narratives of higher education tend to be pessimistic or satirical, such as Alex Kuderaʼs Fight For Your Long Day, James Woodʼs A Book Against God, Elif Shafakʼs The Saint of Incipient Insanities, Jhumpa Lahiriʼs The Namesake. Elisabeth Brinkʼs Save Your Own constitutes the rare positive and inspirational example spotlighting a graduate student who analyzes and works her way out of academic and personal culs de sac. I argue that campus novels exhibit a proclivity for taxonomy: composing lists, (brand)name-dropping, and enumerating academia-related accoutrements. In this vein, I list the problem areas concerning the lot of graduate students:

1. financial 2. psychological 3. personal 4. ethical 5. intellectual 6. professional 7. age-, race-, ethnicity- & gender-related 8. quotidian

I will quote examples of the crises from the novels I enumerated, depicting all sorts of scenarios an actual graduate student can identify with. By seeing them from a perspective, by naming them, one can analyze them, so they become solvable, less scary. One can recognize oneʼs own frailties in these novels and probe them from a safe distance and with a sympathetic chuckle. These novels are about education and provide education, lessons one can learn, discard, or modify. They are life belt-like: a pretext for self-reflection, rather than self-absorption, I view these novels as self-help books, sink or swim (SOS) manuals, “equipment for living” for graduate students in distress in their crucial, formative years.

Friday 24/05

54

Towards a Better Life: The Academic Novel as Ironic Faculty Handbook (Merritt Moseley) University faculty handbooks are a useful, or at least necessary, guide to what the academy, the professoriate, and the profession ought to be. Academic novels, by contrast, often provide a satirico-comical account, sometimes exaggerated for effect, of what they really are. This presentation will address several features of the university teaching experience from these two perspectives: how they ought to be, according to faculty handbook guidelines, and how they are in the works of academic novelists. For instance: one faculty handbook declares that “Amorous relations between students and employees of the university with whom they also have an academic, mentoring or evaluative relationship are fraught with potential for exploitation”; that “Faculty are expected to post and maintain regularly scheduled office hours for purposes of advising students and offering assistance to students enrolled in their classes”; that “Effective quality teaching is first priority for faculty”; and that “Each faculty member should demonstrate continued efforts toward professional development.” These statements of the ideal will be contrasted with depictions of academic life offered in a variety of novels of university life, to include some or all of these texts: Kingsley Amis, Lucky Jim; Howard Jacobson, Coming From Behind; Ishmael Reed, Japanese By Spring; Francine Prose, Blue Angel; Richard Russo, Straight Man; and Anne Bernays, Professor Romeo. Authors and Authorship (2C) Chair: Dries Vrijders Towards a Rhetoric of the Author: Theories of Poetic Action After Burke (Gero Guttzeit) This paper focuses on the possibilities of rhetorical thinking for understanding literary authorship and the symbolic effects literary texts can exert. Even after the debates on the death and the return of the author in recent cultural and literary theory, the role of the author remains unclear, especially in light of current medial developments. It is the aim of this paper to develop further foundations for a rhetoric of the author on the basis of what Robert Wess has called Kenneth Burke's “rhetoric of the subject" (xi). The question of literary authorship will be framed by examining Burke's general concept of symbolic action and reconstructing the specific difference of literary writing. Burke engaged with this problem throughout his career, for example stating in A Grammar of Motives that "poetic forms are kinds of action" (240). Specifically, I shall highlight the rhetorical notion of literary writing as a goal-oriented as well as self-reflexive action founded on principles – as it is implied in Burke's models such as the dramatistic pentad. At the same time, I shall draw out the difficulties of the term purpose as critiqued, for instance, by Fredric Jameson, and try to further develop them via theories and methods of rhetorical narratology (esp. James Phelan). The conceptualisation of the type of symbolic action performed by literary authors is to shed light on both the production and the reception of literary texts. This represents an attempt to contribute to both rhetorical poetics and rhetorical hermeneutics as modes of thinking about literature as equipment for living.

Friday 24/05

55

A Selph in Crisis - Burke's Literary Dialogues as Equipment for Living. (Dries Vrijders) With his essay on “Literature as Equipment for Living” (1938), Kenneth Burke wanted to sensitize scholars to the sociological dimensions that determine a textʼs creation and subsequent cultural persistence. By pointing out analogies between proverbs and literary texts, Burke sought to establish a place for literature among the texts that aid the language-using animal in dealing with the various situations in which it finds itself. Unfortunately, this way of seeing the genus of literary texts has the effect of minimizing their differentia: looking for a method that “breaks down the barriers erected around literature as a specialized pursuit,” Burke leaves little standing that would account for the unique formal and existential qualities traditionally attributed to literature. Restoring Burkeʼs essay to its polemical context in the literary debates of the late 1930s, I will argue that “literature as equipment for living” should be valued for the aphoristic force with which it draws attention to the social life of the text, rather than for its ability to serve as a representative metaphor for the whole of literary practice. I will do so by confronting the essay with two instances in which Burke himself used literature to deal with difficult moments in his own life: The Anaesthetic Revelation of Herone Liddell (1957) and Eye-Crossing – From Brooklyn to Manhattan: An Eye-Poem for the Ear (1969) Showing how Burkeʼs ʻliterature as toolʼ metaphor falls short of accounting for the complex – dialogic– exchange that takes place in these late literary works, I will argue that Burkeʼs generalist attempt to “give [literature] a place in a general sociological picture” needs to be supplemented with an account of how literary texts work to ameliorate individual lives. New Rhetoric: An Instrument of Human Communication (Rukma Vasudev) Communication of any type aims to inform, educate, motivate or persuade. Rhetoric is the effective use of communication for persuasion. The importance of rhetoric had been emphasized by the Greek philosopher Plato and later by his student Aristotle, and also by other philosophers. Earlier, it was seen to be suitable largely for political communication. Over a period of time, considering its interdisciplinary nature, the concept of new rhetoric emerged. Human communication has different levels to it: intrapersonal communication -> interpersonal communication -> group communication -> public communication. The paper aims to discuss how new rhetoric acts as an instrument of human communication, citing suitable examples. The author has spoken with a group of people from different age groups and backgrounds to understand how they viewed new rhetoric in relation to the different levels of human communication. It was interesting to see that rhetoric acted as a persuasive tool in intrapersonal communication to achieve goals in oneʼs life. It was noted that Maslowʼs hierarchy of needs theory had more to do with individual perception of oneself in comparison to the external world. The values, beliefs and attitudes of individuals were largely shaped by people around them, determined mostly through interpersonal and group communication. These were reinforced through engaging oneself in public communication. Thus people carved out selective positions/statuses for themselves based on how society perceived them and how they perceived society to be. Those impressions and perceptions were formed on

Friday 24/05

56

the basis of new rhetoric that relies on symbols created by humans over a period of time. Thus rhetoric was invariably used n all levels of human communication. It is only reasonable to continue to view rhetoric as an important aspect of communication studies. Literary Languages (3B) Chair: Odile Heynders The Use Of Poetry: the Vox Populi in Poems (Odile Heynders) In the third part of A Rhetoric of Motives (1950) Kenneth Burke discusses three elements of vocabulary: positive terms (things having a visible, tangible existence), dialectical terms (referring to ideas, concerned with action and attitude) and ultimate terms (unitary principles behind the diversity of voices). He uses these terms to analyze (modernist) poetry as form of persuasion, and discusses work of T.S Eliot, W.B. Yeats, Gerard Manley Hopkins and others.In this paper I will take up the triad in regard to the poetry of Dutch Poet Laureate (Dichter des Vaderlands) Ramsey Nasr. The main question addressed is how the engaged poems and the clearly polemical prosaic statements in the volume Mijn nieuwe vaderland, gedichten van crisis en angst (My New Homeland, Poems of Crisis and Fear 2011) operate together in offering a critical perspective on the political conjuncture in the Netherlands. The Poet Laureate can be considered a public intellectual (Small 2002; Collini 2006) in showing his commitment with social and ethical issues and ʻtranslatingʼ them into poetry offered to a general audience (since he is the Poet Laureate – he is invited to write poems on special occasions and these poems are published in the NRC newspaper). Nasr brings in the voices of the people in his poems, he summarizes words of politicians, and reiterates a public lecture in the context of this volume, thus underlining heteroglossia (Bakhtin) and the hybridity of literature. From a Burkean perspective it is clarifying to see how positive (ʻrealʼ and ʻtangibleʼ words and phrases) and dialectical (ideologies and sympathies) terms are connected, and how one ultimate principle is recognizable: the principle of an artistʼs responsibility. One critic concluded: This ʻpoetry sounds like televisionʼ as if poetical and television discourses have become equivalent. In following Kenneth Burke, however, I will show that the ʻsounding likeʼ in this poetry reveals a complex rhetorical strategy, underlining the pure persuasiveness of poetry. Literary Ethics and the New Rhetoric: Jack Kerouacʼs “Spontaneous Prose” as a “Structure of Knowing” in On the Road (John Wrighton) This paper uses a tripartite, three-dimensional model of the ethics of fiction that is both cognitive (emotional and affective) and hermeneutical (rational and interpretative) in order to critically reappraise Jack Kerouacʼs popularly influential 1957 novel, On the Road. Kenneth Burkeʼs interpretation of man as “the symbol-using animal” is a vital and considerably overlooked component in ethical criticism, one that may bring into constructive alignment the neo-Aristotelian moral philosophy of Martha Nussbaum, and the “other-oriented” (or

Friday 24/05

57

“deconstructive”) ethics of Emmanuel Levinas. By combining, but not forcibly resolving, these three philosophical apparatuses, I describe how the ethical imperatives of literary fiction – in aesthetic contemplation, narrative, and representations of alterity – triangulate respectively the three points of reading: vision, evaluation, and obligation. Combining a close reading of the jazz descriptions, American landscapes, and inter-human subjectivities in On the Road, with unpublished notes and philosophical essays from the Kerouac archive, I demonstrate how the unique contribution of Kerouacʼs fictional writings is an “activity of consciousness” or “structure of knowing” (Gayatri Spivak) that appeals to an emotional and rational dialectic between the text and the reader, and that is radically invested in the rhetorical, political, and ethical spheres. On the Road may thus be interpreted in three dimensions: from the inside out, as signs built up for affective persuasion (following Burke); from the outside in, using a humanist teleology (following Nussbuam); and, as responsible to the difference of its telling (following Levinas). Kerouacʼs experimentations in “spontaneous prose,” I conclude, develop these three dimensions of literary ethics to wager a unique, cognitive poesis – an ethical orientation of being in its organic whole – counter-cultural to the behavioural expectations of a normative prosody. It is in this way, I suggest, that the “new rhetoric” can be used to re-vitalise ethical criticism in the humanities, offering an original approach to the rhetoric, politics, and ethics of one of the most prominent American writers of the twentieth century. Youʼre not Going to Try and Change My Mind?”: The Dynamics of Persuasion and Identification in Aronofskyʼs Black Swan (Yakut Oktay) In Black Swan, Darren Aronofsky flavours the fiction by demonstrating, as if in a documentary, how, as an art form, ballet requires a degree of persuasion of oneʼs body for the achievement of figures that are against the human nature, and how it has rhetoric of its own. On the other hand, the film challenges the notion of “the heroʼs journey”, established by Joseph Campbell in The Hero with a Thousand Faces, by attempting to merge the two main characters of the production within one human body, hence creating a multiplicity of rhetoric for Nina, who is to play both Odette and Odile, and a twisted road for the hero to take. This paper focuses on the dynamics of the Aristotelian persuasion and the Burkean identification, as argued in A Rhetoric of Motives, in the movie Black Swan, and examines how, through the rhetoric of the authority figures and ballet itself, the process of Ninaʼs identification with the Black Swan in addition to the White Swan affects the monomyth of the heroine. It follows the entelechial journey of Nina as she struggles to identify herself with two opposites in the same body so as to achieve a perfect means of persuasion, her substitution of the Black Swan by projecting it onto Lily, the multiplication of Ninaʼs identity, and the death of the body thereof, by making a close-reading of the film as well as the screenplay. Grappling with Substance and Motives: Burkean Lessons forRhetorical, Ideological, and Cultural Life (4B) Chair: Clarke Rountree Burkeʼs Grammar of Motives examined the logical underpinnings of our assignment of motives—a pentad of terms, substantively related, that offer answers to universal questions about human action. His Rhetoric of Motives explains how humans become consubstantial, rising above our lonely, neurological separateness to proclaim ourselves unified through a

Friday 24/05

58

fundamentally rhetorical process. The papers on this panel explain these fundamental processes of assigning motives and of identifying with others by bringing Burkeʼs concepts into conversation with other scholars and with examples of human symbolizing. The Rountrees provide an explication of Burkeʼs conception of the pentad and its use by American rhetorical scholars. They argue that those using Burke have only scratched the surface of the pentadʼs potential as a tool for understanding human symbolizing, illustrating the possibilities with an analysis of the American controversy over global climate change. Blakesley and Weiser both consider identification. Blakesley connects the attribution of motives to Perelmanʼs concept of identity and presence, providing a bridge between Burkeʼs dramatism and ideology critique. Weiser, who is currently studying European museums, draws upon identification, Burkeʼs dialogic emphasis, Mead, and Habermas to consider the possibility for developing museums into spaces that promote the attitudes of rational critique, tolerance, and transnationalism that are central to the European cultural project. Toward the Next Phase in Pentadic Scholarship: Theorizing, Applying, and Extending Burkeʼs Grammar of Motives (Clarke Rountree & John Rountree) Kenneth Burkeʼs 1945 book A Grammar of Motives starts with an innocent enough question: “What is involved when we say what people are doing and why they are doing it?” That question inaugurates Burkeʼs trilogy of books on the question of motives. Burke complained in the 1980s that he thought his Grammar had not received adequate attention from scholars. Yet by that decade, rhetorical critics from speech communication departments in the United States had made the pentadic approach adapted from his book one of the most commonly used methods for analyzing persuasive texts. Nevertheless, as this paper argues—and perhaps as Burke assumed—we have just begun to scratch the surface of the potential of the Grammar and the pentad. We begin with an overview of Burkeʼs pentad explaining what it is and how he used it. Next we review scholarly work on the pentad, explaining current views of the nature of the pentad and pentadic ratios, the ubiquity of motive in human symbolizing, the role of the pentad in rhetorical criticism, and the ways in which Burkeʼs original work has been extended. We particularly note Clarke Rountreeʼs development of what he calls “multipentadic” analysis, whereby motives are analyzed with focus not simply on the construction of a given act, but of multiple acts and their “grammatical” relationships. Finally, we pose unresolved questions concerning the nature and application of the pentad to suggest productive avenues for future research. We illustrate issues raised by these key questions with an extended example: the surprising controversy over global climate change in the United States. In the U.S., a handful of scientists and conservative politicians still dispute the threat of climate change and impugn and reconstruct the motives of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, environmentalists, a majority of scientists, and even big businesses that have gone green.

Friday 24/05

59

Toward a New Rhetoric (of Motives): Burke, Perelman, and the Analysis of the Present (David Blakesley) Burkeʼs and Perelmanʼs interest in methods of rhetoric—particularly with respect to identification and presence—suggest that they were in sync, even if attention to each otherʼs work was scarce. Perhaps it was their mutual interest in Francis Bacon—who defined rhetoric as a technique of applying reason to the imagination, for the better moving of the will. Both were also drawn to the findings of contemporary psychology, including Gestaltism, which held that interpretation was present even at the level of perception. Ultimately, Burke and Perelman seized on the role of presence in persuasion and identification, a method or phenomenon that directs the attention, fosters identification, and, in concert with reason, reifies an attitude or bends the will. In this presentation, I associate Burke and Perelman to develop a new rhetoric of motives in which presence—that which deconstructionists say is always already absent—plays a central role, for better or worse, in the attribution, disguise, and elaboration of motives. For Burke, the interpretation of motives is present at the perceptual level because terms direct the attention (e.g. in terministic screens). For Perelman, we are preoccupied with establishing presence “by verbal magic alone, what is actually absent but what [w]e consider important to [our] argument or, by making them more present, to enhance the value of some of the elements of which one has actually been made conscious.” To illustrate this trace, to show what difference it makes to imagine presence as an interpretive and thus rhetorical phenomenon, I discuss examples from Erik Larsonʼs In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin (2011), which depicts a moment in time, place, and relation in which the machinations of rhetoric (as propaganda), the attribution of motives, and the affectations of presence converge with momentous impact. Identification with/in the New Europe (Elizabeth Weiser) In the recent final report of the European Union National Museums project (Eunamus), we noted that “national museums, their collections of objects and their architecture, formed in Europe as an ʻagreedʼ performance, have effectively brought Europe into being as a defined cultural form and most particularly as a material language that permits cultural diplomacy” (National Museums Making Histories 11). Kenneth Burke would have understood this. As Greg Clark describes in Rhetorical Landscapes in America, for Burke “rhetoric is the process of negotiating with others our notions of individual and collective identity” (3). In A Rhetoric of Motives, he famously argues that this “identification” is necessary because “you persuade a man only insofar as you can talk his language by speech, gesture, tonality, order, image, attitude, [or] idea, identifying your ways with his” (21). Only when people perceive shared commonalities can they become persuaded to dialogue and act. Burkeʼs analysis of how we as individuals are persuaded to identify our essence with that of others enhances the work of continental semioticians, such as Johan Fornasʼs recent Signifying Europe, while Burkeʼs belief in the primacy of dialogic action promotes its own dialogue not only between Burke and Chaim Perelmanʼs hierarchy of values, but also

Friday 24/05

60

between Burke and Jurgen Habermasʼs cosmopolitan society. Exploring Burkeʼs postwar considerations of the attitudes and communicative actions necessary for the redevelopment of community, therefore, can not only mean a better understanding of how museums engage citizens in the rational critique, tolerance, and transnationalism that are central to the European cultural project, but also how that engagement might itself be expanded in a truly dialogic museum “for the purification of war.” As the House of European History prepares for its 2015 debut in Brussels, such an understanding may never be more pertinent. Public discourse (4C) Chair: Matthew Kim Revealing Terministic Screens through Cluster Criticism: The Case of the US Gun Control Debate (Matthew Kim; Michael Riendeau; Caroline Curtis; Gonzalo Chavez; Justin Itzkowitz) Kenneth Burkeʼs theory of identification is a powerful tool for rhetoricians to educate students and publics on how to become agents of social change by first identifying multiple parties engaged in discourse and then moving those parties toward action by narrowing divisions and highlighting common ground. In Language as Symbolic Action, Burke makes it clear that to begin the identification process rhetoricians must be able to identify a rhetorʼs terministic screens, or worldviews, on social issues. Burke emphasizes that the terms we select to describe the world constitute a kind of screen that directs attention to particular aspects of reality while simultaneously deflecting from others. In this presentation, we will display a cluster criticism, a map of the frequency and placement of a rhetorʼs most invoked terms in a text and the terms located around those key terms, thereby creating clusters that reveal the rhetorʼs terministic screen. The subject of our cluster criticism will be the responses surrounding the Newtown, Connecticut, USA school shooting, where twenty students and six female faculty members were massacred by a lone gunman. Our cluster criticism focuses on responses to the shooting from President Barack Obama and the National Rifle Association, as well as the publicʼs impassioned response through social media. By closely examining the terministic screens of each rhetor and then charting the clusters in the responses, we desire to accomplish two objectives: (1) to locate stasis amongst the speakers and (2) to actively engage conference participants in thinking through best practices for using Burkean rhetorical criticism and this cluster criticism methodology to teach our students and inform the public about deliberating social issues across communities. ʻOne Manʼs Terrorist is Another Manʼs Freedom Fighterʼ: Kenneth Burkeʼs Identification as a Tool for Constructing Common Ground in Public Discourse (Anna Bendrat) In his rhetorical criticism Kenneth Burke does not only explain the mechanisms governing human communication, but, above all, he creates research tools, including terminology, which allow us to analyze the process of communication from the rhetorical perspective. The

Friday 24/05

61

paper explores Burkeʼs notion of identification, defined as the gradual process of persuading the audience to the interpretation of reality as proposed by a particular agent (speaker). The author argues that deeper understanding of the stages involved in the rhetorical strategy of identification (creating a definition → activating cultural memory → building a substance) may prove useful in analyzing various aspects of social interaction, such as, for instance, the factors enhancing the effectiveness of persuasion in consumer or voter behaviour. In the paper the mechanism of identification is tested against the political context of President Reaganʼs fight against the communist regime in Nicaragua. The rhetorical strategy crafted by the Reagan administration was based on a gradual development of a consistent definition for the term terrorist and freedom fighter in presidential addressesreferring to the situation in Central America. On the basis of suchsubstance emerging from Reaganʼs speeches between the years 1984-86 the president attempted to convince the Congress and the public to support the decision about the financial aid for the anti-government opposition in Nicaragua, commonly known as Contras. In sum, the analysis of Reaganʼs speeches highlights the value of identification as a valuable and easily applicable rhetorical strategy, aimed at building the widest common ground between the speaker and his audience (in this case between the politician and the public). “Unity without Conformity” – The Parliamentary Babel as Equipment for Living (Jouni Tilli) Criticizing fascist tendencies towards abolition of parliamentary democracy, Kenneth Burke wrote in 1939 that the parliament is at its best a babel of voices, based on “the wrangle of men representing interests lying awkwardly on the bias across one another, sometimes opposing, sometimes vaguely divergent”. As such, this “babel” shows the conflicting interests, wills and emotions of various groups – not of mere wrangling but of the teasing out of various interests, setting one against the other to come to some novel, as-yet-undetermined plan of action. Burke emphasizes that the parliamentary babel may not be pretty, but it may be the best available safeguard against false unities and the false clarity of monologue. There is, as the term implies, an element of unity in the babel. It offers a ground in common between different voices. They are to be considered neither true nor false but contributory. As a result, the purpose is not to beat the opposition, but to produce a viable policy. Thus the realm of the parliament lies in prioritizing strategies – choosing to act in a particular way while being aware of other paths, both contributory and possible. And language is what the parliament uses to induce others toward any one priority. Accordingly, this paper discusses Kenneth Burkeʼs conception of dialectical agon of the parliamentary “cooperation in competition” as a way to understand, not only rhetoric, but the act of living in a human community. It will be argued that Burkean parliamentary babel is the representative anecdote of the rhetorical realm which we, humans as “symbol-using animals”, live in. Accordingly, I shall claim that the babel of voices can be aptly described as equipment for living in the sense that it names the constitutive element of human action and suggests a strategy for dealing with it – this being especially timely in a situation in which the so-called grand narratives have given way to a myriad of voices amidst clashing cultures and religions.

Friday 24/05

62

More specifically, the topic will be examined via Kenneth Burkeʼs concepts of dialectical order and ultimate order, which, in turn, shall be discussed in relation to dialogue as a dimension of human life as it has been presented by for example Martin Buber, Paulo Freire and David Bohm. Friday 24/05 (13.30-15.00) The Campus Novel as Equipment for Living (2) (2B) Chair: Martha Lysik The Worst Lesson that Life Can Teachʼ: Philip Rothʼs Campus Fiction. (Paul McDonald) The university campus has featured regularly in Philip Rothʼs writing: the University of Chicago provided the background for his first full-length novel, Letting Go (1962), for instance, while the conservative Winesburg College is the setting for his last but one book, Indignation (2008). My paper will discuss how the university signifies in Rothʼs fiction, and what can be learned from the experience his heroes have on campus. Time and again, particularly in recent fiction, Roth reiterates his view that the best education teaches what Milan Kundera terms, “the wisdom of uncertainty;” certainly novels such as American Pastoral (1996) and I Married a Communist (1998) critique absolutist narratives, and seem to advocate doubt as a healthy alternative. I will examine how this notion finds expression in his campus writing, and argue that Roth uses the university, and the concept of higher education, to underscore his principal message. The latter is articulated most eloquently by Rothʼs alter ego Nathan Zuckerman, when he says of one character “he had learned the worst lesson that life can teach - that it makes no sense.” Of course, while itʼs the worst lesson for this particular character, it is a salutary one in Rothʼs scheme, a point he makes most strongly in his late campus novel, The Human Stain (2000). Here the heroʼs life is effectively ruined by someone who feels she knows how the world works – the university professor, and staunch advocate of campus-style political correctness, Delphine Roux. My paper will show that while Roth uses the campus to reinforce his critique of certainty, he never loses sight of the importance of traditional values, and his ultimate lesson relates to this. Widening the Universityʼs Embrace: Comedy as a Frame of Acceptance in the Campus Novel (Barbara Ching) In the campus novel, literature merges with education as “equipment for living.” In this presentation, I will focus on Kingsley Amisʼ Lucky Jim (1954) and Jane Smileyʼs Moo (1995). Although 40 years and the Atlantic ocean separates these two novels, both, I will argue employ a comedic “frame of acceptance” as Burke outlined it in Attitudes toward History; both are set in academic institutions founded with the intention of democratizing access to higher education (the provincial British “red brick” university, and the essentially rural American Land Grant university, respectively), and both end, in true comedic form, with a marriage.

Friday 24/05

63

The ultimate point of the comparison, however, is to explore how the possibilities of higher education form part of the frame of acceptance in Moo, whereas leaving the university is integral to Lucky Jimʼs ability to advance in society, remain true to his values, and marry the woman he loves. Conversely, the central couple in Moo makes more compromises in order to arrive at their happy ending. That happy ending, however, is mirrored in by the ability that the university community has to effectuate change in the university, something that Amisʼs Jim canʼt imagine. Jimʼs luck is his escape; in Moo, luck widens the universityʼs embrace. Indeed, in Moo, the land grant university is a mirror of the happy marriage, a societal institution that nurtures the next generation. As an exploration of the campus novel as genre, then, my focus on the non-elite campus and comic form looks at the role of the campus itself as a community that can celebrate new life and a new social order, or that may fail at creating this equipment for living. The Academic Novel as Metafiction (Corina Selejan) This paper will argue that academic (also termed campus novels, depending on the chosen classification) novels are singularly able to make their readers aware of the various discourses they are subjected to, in fiction as well as in (academic) life. It will highlight the way in which discourses, conventions and concepts are ʻusedʼ and ʻabusedʼ, deliberately and systematically ʻinstalledʼ and then ʻsubvertedʼ (to use Linda Hutcheonʼs terminology) in the attempt to expose their constructedness and to ʻeducateʼ and enlighten the reader. Various academic novels ranging from Nabokovʼs Pnin and Pale Fire to David Lodgeʼs academic trilogy (Changing Places, Small World and Nice Work), A.S. Byattʼs Possession and Zadie Smithʼs On Beauty will provide for the illustration of the argument. While Lodgeʼs novels focus, respectively, on cultural/national (British vs. American) discourse, the discourse of literary theory and criticism (including theoretically ʻinnocentʼ discourse) and the discourse of the academe vs. the discourse of industry, Byattʼs novel foregrounds history and literature (and feminist, psychoanalytical, etc. readings thereof) and Smithʼs novel can be read (albeit reductively) as a re-making, in fictional terms, of the argument of New Aestheticism. This is an oversimplified view, however, as these novels are (in a manner typical of the academic novel genre) fraught with issues of gender, class, race, politics and religion, which are foregrounded in order to equip the reader with an awareness of their presence and treatment in contemporary discourse at large. Citizens and Citizenship (2C) Chair: Russell Bentley Pedagogies of Political Ethics: Bridging the Rhetorics of Dirty Hands and Democratic Citizenship (Russell Bentley) This paper describes a way of bridging conflicting rhetorics in pedagogical activities about democracy and political ethics. The rhetoric of political ethics relies on a certain symbol, dirty hands, to make vivid a conflict between politics and morality. Political action is judged by an ethical standard different from that which governs private action. This rhetoric has an

Friday 24/05

64

unexpected consequence for teaching political ethics. While it suggests something profound about politics, it also leaves an unbridged gap between the rhetoric of political ethics and the contemporary rhetoric of active democratic citizenship. The image of political ethics associated with dirty hands escapes simultaneously present narratives of democratic accountability and of engaged citizenship. Teaching about political ethics using this potent symbol, therefore, reinforces a framing of politics that distances rulers from the ruled and, thus, biases the pedagogical aims towards a conception of democratic citizens as disempowered. My paper addresses this problem by describing how an alternative rhetoric of citizenship, one that has an Aristotelian pedigree, can reframe political ethics as a 'demotic' problem, not just a problem of leaders. Starting from the idea of dirty hands as a feature of office holding, pedagogic activities focus on office holding as a symbol of political authority and accountability. Emphasis is placed on the identity-conferring effects of holding office and the subsequent moral psychological transformations this involves. The rhetorical step that Aristotle makes possible is the recovery of citizenship as a kind of political office (he calls it an 'indefinite' office), which reconceptualises the problem of political ethics as a feature of democratic citizenship itself. This challenges the bias that conceives citizens as subjects of political authority, rather than its authors, and helps challenge cynical dismissals of politicians as inherently corrupt 'others' who are not like their fellow citizens. The Post-Communist Citizens in the EU – a New Symbolic Sphere (Agnieszka Kampka) My paper is focused on the images of the European Union that are used by politicians and journalists in Poland during the accession process. The main question is if these images are useful for citizens. Do the political metaphors of the UE help to create of civil engagement? What is the EU? An institution or a space? A community or a business? Polish politicians and citizens needed new rhetorical skills after 1989. Democratic political rhetoric is completely different from the communist one. The analysis of the selected parliamentary debates about the UE accession shows that the rhetorical quality of parliamentary speeches was a very important issue in the public debate. Members of Parliament were conscious of the importance of citizensʼ engagement during the accession process. The images of the EU were the tools for building the definition of the situation. But most of them didnʼt provoke a civil involvement. Democratic institutions expect the active citizens, the people who know a lot and who understand the complex issues. The EU membership creates a new context for civil and political work. A special role of the media is that the journalist should explain and elaborate political rules. What is the symbol of the EU in Polish press? An image can be very helpful sometimes, but it always is persuasive. One of the rhetorical skills is an ability to read the definition of the situation. Imagining Citizenship Genres as Spaces of Encounter (Jolivette Mecenas) In Rhetoric of Motives, Kenneth Burke compares public address with romantic courtship, which he defines as “the use of suasive devices for the transcending of social estrangement” (208). Burkeʼs theory of identification poses communication as an act driven by a desire to overcome differences in order to find our commonality as socially viable human beings. Like

Friday 24/05

65

other philosophers haunted by the Holocaust and world war, Burke theorized how language and identification impelled societies to cooperative action, whether in service of peace or violence. Contemporary rhetoricians continue to examine the role of identification in the everyday problem of communicating “across the divide” that exists in pluralist democracies (Hauser). In this talk, I make the case that rational deliberation is not always the aim of civic discourse; rather, some forms of civic discourse allow spaces of encounter and engagement in order for identification across differences to take place. These possibilities are brought to light by performance artist Coco Fusco, who illuminates how globalization has shaped the lives of people living on the San Diego, California – Tijuana, Mexico border. Her online parody of a video game, Turista Fronterizo, enables her audience to experience her argument about the exploitative effects of global capitalism through identification, rather than through deliberation. Fusco confronts her audience with the irrationality of border life, and the capitalist logic that organizes its policies and identities, through an interactive and performative protest. I examine her protest using genre theory, an approach to teaching students how to identify, read, and compose a wider range of civic discourses than what is recognized in nationalist public spheres. By emphasizing identification in addition to deliberation as rhetorical processes, I argue for wider and more transnational participation in civic discourse. Media Rhetoric (3B) Chair: Kevin Risner The Rhetoric of Discussion In Turkish Media: Argumentation and Reason in Discussion Programmes (Inan Ozdemir-Tastan) TV discussions and commentaries deal with the main issues of (inter)national agenda, point the main sides and perspectives on it and present a well-organized scene for debate. Accordingly these programs not only provide information about the current issues, but also settle prepared arguments and a reason -or “terministic screens” in Burkean way- for audience. This study aims to analyze this feature of -the rhetorical reason of- discussion programs in Turkish media. The paper asserts that the “new rhetoric” tradition which was announced and founded in the first half of the 20th century by thinkers and scholars like Kenneth Burke, Ernesto Grassi, Stephen Toulmin, Chaim Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca, gives us a communication perspective and methodological tools for understanding the reason of media -TV debates in this circumstance. New rhetoric tradition puts forward the convention between people rather than universal truths; gives importance to emotions, morals and practical reason over formal logic and identification\cooperation over persuasion. Concisely it tries to show people how to construct an argumentation and reason to cooperate and identify with each other in contingent situations. From this point of view, the study will analyze the five most popular discussion programs throughout a one-week period and focus on the way discussants figure out the issue, the type of arguments they use, the structure of supportive, legitimatizing or opposing statements they present and the main cultural resources they apply for persuasion.

Friday 24/05

66

"Who are you working for? Political Propaganda as Product Placement for Identification in ContemporaryAmerican TV-shows" (Laura Herrmann) Praised as a ground-braking format, the TV-show ʻ24ʼ, centered on federal agent Jack Bauer and his fight against terrorism, also attracted criticism in regards to the depiction of national and international political and military action. Times-author James Poniewozik may have put a point to these public discussions, in which even politicians such as Bill Clinton participated, when he asked: “Is 24 just a TV show or right-wing propaganda? Or, to turn Jack Bauer's frequent refrain on him: Who are you working for?” The idea of political ʻproductʼ placement in American war movies, of course, is not a new one. However, inspired by Adornoʼs critical thoughts on culture industry in his Dialectic of Enlightenment, as well as Burkeʼs concept of identification, this paper proposes a different perspective on contemporary film and TV-productions as an equipment for living. In his Rhetoric of Motives, Burke defines rhetoric as rooted in the “use of language as a symbolic means of inducing cooperation in beings that by nature respond to symbols”. Furthermore, cooperation is induced through identification. Considering contemporary television shows as a portrayal of America through symbolic and ideological ʻproduct placementʼ, this paper examines how identity may be constructed and how political values may be promoted. This also includes a critical examination of traditional US narratives in contemporary TV-shows, which create multiple identities of who we are, think we are or might become. Burke, Misidentification and Weather Rhetoric (Kevin Risner) According to Burke, “a speaker persuades an audience by the use of stylistic identifications… to establish rapport between himself and his audience” (46). I am applying Burkeʼs concept of identification to what I call “weather rhetoric” to explore how broadcast meteorology attempts to form connections with viewers. The topic of weather persists across various media, and its influence on global and individual concerns makes it an ideal area for rhetorical analysis. In this paper, I focus on how The Weather Channel (TWC), a popular American weather station, combines scientific information and narrative to reach the public. TWC mixes science and narrative to illustrate the gravity and widespread intrigue of certain weather events. Ultimately, I argue that TWCʼs attempts at identification undermine the larger rhetorical goals of their messages. The main goal of TWC is to spread important weather information to the public in a timely manner. Meteorologists, in this context, represent trusted specialists who translate jargon into understandable language. However, TWC meteorologists are both scientific experts and broadcasters, creating programming that typifies what Meister labels as weathertainment: “an entertainment-based discourse” (416) where expertise meets visual communication. It is this mix of rhetorical aims – to inform and entertain – that forms the crux of my project. Meisterʼs rhetorical analysis of TWC, published

Friday 24/05

67

in 2001, is still relevant as a launching point for assessing the TWC today. I will use Burke's concept of identification to explore TWC's current program narratives and recent naming of winter storms. I argue that, though TWC wishes to provide essential, relatable information to its audience, weathertainment threatens to overshadow the stationʼs goals of weather alertness and public safety. I further argue that analysis of weather rhetoric internationally and across media might yield fruitful discussion regarding the relationship between meteorology and public communication. Social Work and Intervention(4B) Chair: Ursula Troche Symbolic Action as Equipment for Identity Construction: language as postcolonial intervention (Ursula Troche) In this paper I show how Burke's notion of language as symbolic action applies to postcolonial endeavours in cultural studies, which focus on challenging hierarchies of inequality and 'race'. I do this by showing that postcolonialism achieves its focus through a concern with identity: it is an effort to define or redefine a mode of being that is independent of the hierarchies that the system of society provides (i.e. Hall 1996, Loomba 2008). I am interested here in how the power of language manifests itself as being an equipment for living, due to its opportunities to challenge hierarchies and inequality. This is, as I will argue and show, because language, as a form of action (i.e. symbolic action) has the capacity to interfere with such hierarchies, whereby the hierarchies themselves are seen as a form of motion. Hence language, as expressed thought, can be used to yield change and intervention within a social set-up, here identified as a cycle of motion. In pointing out this process of language as intervention, I consult insights from psychology: Jerome Bruner's (1991) notion of life as narrative, comparing it to Burke, and then Carl Rogersʼ (1961) notions of becoming a person. These findings attest to the need for language as a tool for identity construction due to its opportunity to be a tool of intervention in (social) systems. Due to the power of language to yield change and intervention, the use of language is 'liberating', which also makes it a tool for self-actualization (Rogers 1961). The point of the challenge to hierarchies of inequality has been implicitly taken up by Richard McKeon and Cheney, May and Munshi (2011). Lastly, I will make suggestions of how this function of language can be recognized as an educational tool, and give examples of creative writing groups in London. Interpreting Asylum Seekersʼ Dreams: Rhetoric as Equipment for Social Change (Jef Van der Aa) In Counter-Statement, Kenneth Burke writes that “(f)orm in literature is an arousing and fulfillment of desires” (1931:124). When dissecting narrative form following certain poetic principles, one arrives at a narrative profile which shows exactly how formal aspects of a story have been able to arouse particular expectations in an audience. Dell Hymesʼ ethnopoetics (1981) became an analytical instrument to show how the form of narratives,

Friday 24/05

68

and the way in which particular rhetorical devices were positioned in it, actually resonated within a particular cultural logic. When doing fieldwork in a family care centre in Antwerp (Belgium), I came across narrative instances in which asylum seeking families were asked to re-tell stories from their past back home. They were asked to do so in the context of counseling sessions, in order for the care provider to get a better handle on their trajectories and histories. The “social work” frame generated a particular form: a question- and- answer structure with very rapid turn-taking. In a second fieldwork period, I asked a Congolese asylum seeker and an Iraqi-Belgian woman to tell me the dream they had had the night before. In both cases, an elaborate story followed, in which the different rhetorical devices I identified in their earlier conversations with the care providers were differently positioned. They were formally organized in order to “arouse expectation”, and an ethnopoetic toolkit allowed me to present the stories as such. The rhetorical resources of their dreams resonated with their real-life experience as told to the care provider, but formally they were organized on their own terms. As Fromm (1951:28) writes: “Sleep experience is not lacking in logic but is subject to different logical rules, which are entirely valid in that particular experiential state”. In interpreting asylum seekersʼ dreams, where rhetorical resources are organized on oneʼs own terms, one can identify useful rhetorical resources much more clearly than when told under pressing institutional frames. The Practice of Writing Reports in Social Work: Truth-telling or Story-telling? (Griet Roets & Rudi Roose) Social work is essentially a language-centered activity (Parton & OʼByrne, 2000), and a diversity of authors has stressed the importance of placing the changing language used into a relational (Van Nijnatten, 2006) and a socio-political context (Margolin, 1997; Gregory & Holloway, 2005). Inserting a rhetorical perspective can enable social workers to broaden and reorient established systems of knowledge as well as their interpretations of particular situations in social work practice (Blakesley, 2002; Taylor, 2006). In our contribution, we theorize the practice of writing reports from a rhetorical perspective, since reports provide social workers with opportunities to influence complicated situations and report writing skills are essential in social work practice (Healy & Mulholland, 2007). We report on a study conducted with students in which we focus on the ways in which students construct reports. Report writing can be seen as a way of “truth-telling” or “story-telling” (Vlaeminck, 2005). As a truth-telling practice, social work is in search of the correct way to represent realities in reports. As a practice of story-telling, social work is aware of the complexity and ambiguity of creating realities while writing reports. In that vein, we address quality criteria for the practice of writing reports (Roose et al., 2009). Stressing the rhetorical nature of social work theory and practice, for example inspired by the work of Kenneth Burke as a tool to keep the ambiguity of social work practices open (Rutten, Roets, Soetaert & Roose, 2012), holds potential for students to bring underlying problem definitions of social work interventions in the spotlight and to understand the myriad ways in which their presence and perspective will influence the knowledge and actions that are created and enacted (Fook, 2002).

Friday 24/05

69

Rhetoric and Education 2(4C) Chair: Geert Vandermeersche Rhetoric, Dialogue, and Intercultural Education: Global Literatures as Equipment for Living (James Zappen) In “Literature as Equipment for Living,” Kenneth Burke sketches a sociological approach to literary criticism based on proverbs and conceived as strategies for addressing social situations—including the rhetorical strategies of admonishing, exhorting, commanding, instructing, and the like (Philosophy of Literary Form, 293-96, 301-4). In his later work, Burke merges rhetoric with dialectic in a process that he calls “transcendence” (Rhetoric of Motives, 199-201; “Rhetoric—Old and New,” 203). In this context, the rhetorical strategies become not so much means of admonition or exhortation as the basis for collaboration or “cooperative competition”—the initial steps by which “competing rhetorical partisans” may, through processes of mutual self-correction, develop better ideas than any one person alone could produce (“Linguistic Approach,” 283-84; Philosophy of Literary Form, 107; Rhetoric of Motives, 200). Burke evidently intends these processes to have global reach, for he observes that Aristotleʼs Rhetoric, though the greatest work of its kind, had “but comparatively trivial examples of verbal wrestling to analyze (trivial, that is, as compared with the symbolic ways of the great world religions)” (“Linguistic Approach,” 300). In the context of his later work, Burkeʼs sociological approach to literary criticism might be re-envisioned as less admonitory and more conciliatory, less rhetorical and more dialectical or dialogical. As such, it would support educational practices of mutual self-correction and reciprocal learning and an intercultural as opposed to multicultural or transcultural approaches to education. In literary study, it would encompass comparative literatures on a global scale and the lessons that each of these literatures has to offer to the others. Recent Russian and Chinese literatures, for example, offer lessons of heroic resistance to the horrific abuses suffered by their peoples even in the post-Soviet and post-Cultural Revolution periods, mixed with brief glimpses of quiet resignation and hope for the future. The bitter portrait of the Vladimir Putin era in Vladimir Sorokinʼs Day of the Oprichnik, for example, is partially balanced by the hopefulness of Victor Pelevinʼs The Yellow Arrow and the recent Rasskazy collection, and the darkly comic portrait of the Deng Xiaoping era in Ma Jianʼs The Noodle Maker is to some extent mitigated by the quiet resignation of the personas in Xinranʼs The Good Women of China and the brief glimpses of hope for a better future in Eva Hungʼs City Women. These literatures serve as lessons in living with sympathy and understanding for other cultures and living our own lives, whatever our circumstances, with an equal measure of dignity and hope. "Stories Teachers Live by": Exploring Narrative and Rhetorical Concepts in Teacher Education. (Geert Vandermeersche) In my paper, I will explore how insights from David Herman's cognitive narratology (e.g. contextual anchoring, stories as tools for thinking) can be combined with Kenneth Burke's 'equipment for living' and Barry Brummett's 'rhetorical homologies'. All these concepts share

Friday 24/05

70

an interest in the interplay between formal structures of narratives, on the one hand, and readers' interpretations and use of stories to organize their experiences and thoughts on the other hand. Burke's notion of equipment for living can be embedded in the cognitive understanding of narratives as tools that support human beings' "problem-solving abilities" (1963): stories help humans represent and organize knowledge (e.g. in the form of scripts, or "proverbs"). Just as narratives give us, in Burke's terms, "strategies for dealing with situations" (p. 296), stories, according to David Herman, provide "templates for behavior in physical as well as moral-cultural worlds" (p. 182). Brummett's idea of rhetorical homologies can be combined with Herman's "contextual anchoring" which denotes "the process by which clues in narrative discourse trigger recipients to establish a more or less direct or oblique relationship between the stories they are interpreting and the contexts in which they are interpreting them" (p. 8). In Herman's narratological analyses, we find a focus on the textual features, which prompt readers to draw analogies, or to revise previous assumptions. As part of the research group Culture & Education, I continue the focus of my colleagues on this pragmatic use of fictional narratives to reflect on aspects of education and the role of narrative in learning and life: novels, movies, and graphic novels are at the center of our courses in teacher education. I will present a number of short examples from our lessons: (1) the use of school novels or movies to 'clarify' students' thinking about educational goals (Lloyd Jones' Mister Pip; Tom Wolfe's Old School; The History Boys); (2) the implementation of the television series The Wire to reflect on the place of education in society; (3) the analysis of the graphic novel The Unwritten to reflect on humans' uses of narrative in a multimedia world. I end with the claim that often these narratives themselves 'do' the conceptual and critical work of examining literary culture and education by how they (formally) organize and structure the events in the story. Or in less abstract terms, creators of narrative fiction perform critical work at the same conceptual level as academic scholars. Chalk talk: The rhetorical practice of storytelling as a form of teacher identity construction (Sonja Modesti) For centuries, educational contexts have served as microcosms of larger cultural iterations and ideologies. Inside this malleable and dynamic environment, actor-educators labor to negotiate the rhetorical situation, and consequently, their reliance upon narrative serves as a sense-making survival strategy allowing for the understanding of the rhetorical nature of the educational context (Burke, 1965; Myerhoff, 2007). The human textuality of the educational context serves as a visible world-in-story embodiment conveying acculturation practices, acclimatization strategies, and identity confirmation for others. In turn, narratives provide equipment for living, critically intertwined with the actor-educatorsʼ location of the self and formation of teacher identity. Similarly, Burkeʼs work underscores many instances whereby literature, often in the form of story, helps recurrent types of people “get by” (Stade, 2007, p. 28). By evaluating the narratology of the educational context, it becomes evident that the storied culture of the educational context becomes the Burkean template through which educators learn who it is they are and ultimately, who it is they are asked to be.

Saturday 25/05

71

Saturday 25/05 (11.00-12.30) The Burke Difference and the Difference It Makes to American Scholars (2B) Chair: Robert Wess Scholarly use of Burke increased dramatically in late twentieth-century America, which also saw the founding of the Kenneth Burke Society in 1984. Burke became prominent in the middle of the century, but scholarly use of his work then was sparse compared to today. The principal work from this earlier period is William H. Rueckertʼs 1963 Kenneth Burke and the Drama of Human Relations. Rueckert also experienced, like other Burke scholars, Burkeʼs remarkable generosity to his scholarly followers. This increase arose partly from the upsurge of language-centered theorizing in late 20th-century America. In this new context, Burkeʼs distinctive variant of such theorizing took on new importance. While language-centered theorizing generally led to unreflective anti-foundationalism and rampant demystification, Burkeʼs variant led to a viable equipment for living centered in the foundational place of rhetoric in the human condition. Burkeʼs appeal is evident in Frank Lentricchiaʼs 1983 Criticism and Social Change, which prefers Burke to Paul de Man. Variants of this preference appear repeatedly, as in Wessʼs 1996 Kenneth Burke: Rhetoric, Subjectivity, Postmodernism, which defends Burkeʼs rhetorical realism against rhetorical idealism. More recently, extensive research of Burkeʼs rich archive, as in George and Selzerʼs Kenneth Burke in the 1930s, is enriching understanding of Burkeʼs distinctiveness. This panel discusses important dimensions of current scholarly use of Burke in America. In the context of Burkeʼs linkage of language to the foundationalism of the body in his “metabiology,” George discusses archival material to uncover the development of Burkeʼs theorizing of rhetoric as equipment for purifying war. Using archives also, Thames examines Burkeʼs comic catharsis, an extension of the comic attitude that is Burkeʼs alternative to rampant demystification. Finally, Wess examines Burkeʼs insistence that dramatism is literal, not metaphoric from the standpoint of Burkeʼs philosopher friend, Richard McKeon, to uncover the philosophical underpinnings of Burkeʼs rhetorical realism. “Whenever we call something a metaphor, we mean it literally,” or, a McKeonesque Understanding of Burkeʼs Rhetorical Realism (Robert Wess) My main title, a quotation from Burke, serves here as a “representative anecdote” for his rhetorical realism. This quotation is from Burkeʼs 1985 position paper in a controversy over whether his dramatism speaks literally or metaphorically. Revisiting this controversy in KB Journal in 2010, Clarke Rountree reviews its significance in communication studies and sides with Burkeʼs position that dramatism is literal. My subtitle proposes understanding Burkeʼs rhetorical realism from the standpoint of his friend, Richard McKeon. A philosopher first and a rhetorical theorist second, McKeon guided himself philosophically by his pluralistic aphorism that “truth, though one, has no single

Saturday 25/05

72

expression.” He often observed, in classes I attended at the University of Chicago, that twentieth-century philosophy, like the Renaissance and Ciceroʼs Rome, exhibits an increasing reliance on rhetorical methods. Going beyond observation, McKeon explains from the standpoint of his pluralism of philosophic orientations why returns to rhetoric occur periodically. These orientations all speak truth albeit in different terms, with each set of terms offering distinctive advantages, such as those seen in rhetoric today. Oneʼs understanding of each orientation is thereby deepened. McKeonʼs pluralistic standpoint uncovers the philosophical necessity of the literal at a foundational level in all orientations, as well as the reason why, in the twentieth-century orientation, skirting this necessity sometimes becomes a strong temptation, even the thing one might mistakenly think one must do. My “representative anecdote” exhibits a place where both this necessity and this temptation are evident. Viewing this “anecdote” from a McKeonesque standpoint thus clarifies the philosophical stakes in the controversy over whether dramatism is literal or metaphoric. In the context of this clarification, one can see why Burkeʼs position is the one that is philosophically coherent. Metabiology: An Ethical Step Away from ʻExplosive Wordsʼ (Ann George) “Ad bellum purificandum,” the epigraph of Burkeʼs Grammar of Motives, is a familiar phrase to most students of modern rhetoric. It famously frames the Grammar as Burkeʼs definitive wartime project, encouraging scholars to separate it sharply from Burkeʼs earlier forays into the 1930s culture wars. But Burkeʼs plans for Permanence and Change (1935) provide a provocative perspective by incongruity—namely that Burke began purifying war as early as 1933 when he was inventing metabiology and planning ethical simplification. Drawing upon largely unstudied archival materials, including Burkeʼs notes and drafts, I argue, first, that P&C began as an attempt to build a “ ʻworkableʼ ethics,” and, second, that one motive for this project was to enable us to step away from the jungle mentality leading to violence. Specifically, early subtitles for the metabiology project—“Outline for a Minimal Ethic” or “Project for an Ethic by Elimination”— indicate that Burke initially sought to establish “a minimal morality”—“the Biological Ought,” a secular test of basic human nourishment. Burke argued, perhaps counter-intuitively, that too-refined judgments distort moral vision. “So rich has our moral vocabulary become,” he wrote, “that man is now the proud possessor of a noble reason for anything (which he does) and a withering reason for anything (which his enemy does). Our moral gardens,” he continued, “are thick with the weeds of heroism and indignation.” Backed by this ready arsenal of highly charged judgments, Burke argued, countries inevitably approach “problems with the most ʻexplosiveʼ words in our vocabulary. ”… [W]e need not be surprised that there are continually occurring frightful accidents which rip out half a continent and maim the lives and bodies of millions.” My archival tracking of metabiologyʼs development thus reveals the startling extent to which P&C, at least initially, shared Grammarʼs agenda—providing equipment for peaceful living.

Saturday 25/05

73

“Shouting ʻIce Creamʼ in a Crowded Theatre: Considering Comic Catharsis in Kenneth Burke” (Richard Thames) Burke promises in the unfinished 1957 draft of his Symbolic to complete his remarks on comedy, dwelling on “the pleasing antics of peace” using Aristophanesʼ peace comedies as models, considering “the relation between wholly cathartic laughter and derision,” asking in particular about “the role of ʻbody-thinkingʼ in Aristophanic comedy,” and inquiring further about “laughter, tears, and appetite, as regards the materials of poetic form.” Two years later, writing Rueckert “concerning the final bits of the Poetics,” Burke proposes doing “a section on comic catharsis, . . . though the general lines are already indicated in the Kenyon article” and making clearer “the relation btw. dramatic catharsis and Platonic (dialectic)/transcendence,” though the main lines have been indicated there as well. In the 1959 Kenyon article “On Catharsis, or Resolution” Burke considers comedy as essentially peaceful and tragedy warlike, comedy as explicit about what tragedy pretentiously conceals—our animality. In the 1966 Sewanee essay “I, Eye, Aye” (the 1963 draft of his Symbolic still unfinished) he distinguishes between “dramatic” catharsis (involving victimage—though there is “sacrifice” and “the kill”) and dialectical transcendence (viewing one realm in “terms” of another beyond). Retracing Burkeʼs own research and correlating published with unpublished material, the essay works out his position on catharsis in comedy (where derision for a character committing a “foolish blunder” is transformed by excessive suffering into sympathy) vs. tragedy (where indignation for a character committing a “prideful error in judgment” is likewise transformed into pity) in a manner consistent with positions taken in Attitudes toward History concerning comedy and tragedy; and Permanence and Change concerning the bodyʼs recalcitrance and its role in repeated struggles to restore basic patterns of the good life; as well as similarities and differences between comic and tragic catharsis and Platonic transcendence and their common roots in Dionysian ritual. Rhetoric and Education 3 (2C) Chair: Anneli Bowie Expanding the Terministic Screen: A Burkean Critique of Information Visualisation in the Context of Design Education (Anneli Bowie & Duncan Reyburn) In the face of what information design theorist Richard Wurman has dubbed ʻinformation anxietyʼ, it is well documented that information visualisation has become a widely accepted tool to assist with the navigation of the symbolic world.Information visualisations are essentially external cognitive aids. Graphs, diagrams, maps and an increasing number of integrated and innovative approaches are designed to communicate to audiences through various media channels. It is often argued that information visualisations are rhetorical texts in that they have the ability to “direct attention, persuade, and shape attitudes.” Furthermore, information visualisation may be understood as one expression of Kenneth Burkeʼs notion of the

Saturday 25/05

74

ʻterministic screenʼ in that it “explicitly and implicitly turns our attention in one direction rather than in other directions.” Visualisation is therefore, like any symbol system, a “reflection”, “selection” and “deflection” of reality. Bearing the above in mind, this paper seeks to interrogate the rhetoric of information visualisation within the domain of design education in South Africa by analysing student visualisation projects. Moreover, it explores the selective and deflective nature of visualisation alongside issues regarding the interplay between ideology and Robin Kinrossʼ idea of a visual ʻrhetoric of neutralityʼ. Ultimately, it presents rhetorical theory as a critical tool in communication design praxis. The Rhetoric of Contemporary Edutainment (Tamás Csonge) The recent decade witnessed the rise of a new popular genre called "edutainment", mostly in the form of television shows, where the main goal is to engage the audience with "science" and at the same time entertain them. In my paper I examine the phenomenon through the most known show of the kind, the now 10-year-old Mythbusters series. The purpose of the show is to investige the truth value of phenomena like myths, urban legends, rumors, adages, movie scenes and much more. I argue that by performing a series of tests (that usually involves big explosions and fireworks) the show itself is creating a myth of greatness and power with its structure of successful problem solving, intense visuals and underlying political messages. We should be aware of the significance of the symbols (characters, themes, settings) it employs in order to point out the accompanying implicit but intense ethical stands and ideological positions came with this education. I highlight three episodes where the cast is investigating the realism of a Hollywood movie scene, taking orders from the President of the United States and making a self reflexive gesture about the show's own medium, respectively. In these scenes we get a unique blend of fictional and factual events contrasting and affecting the meaning of each other. Thus the important question emerges: what kind of messages does the show really deliver with the catchword of objective examination of reality but through the illusionist cinematic imaginery it utilizes? A Critique of the Paradigm of Culture: Culturalization in Education (Saladdin Ahmed) In the current climate of public opinion, “race” is no longer used, at least openly, as a scientific truth to justify racism. Instead, in our post-modern era, “culture” has become the mysterious term that has made the perpetuation of racist discourse possible. “Culture”, in this new-racist worldview, is the unquestioned set of traits continually attributed to the non-White Other, essentially to de-world her Being and de-individualize her personhood. In other words, “culture”, as it is used in the old anthropological sense, is the magic incantation with which the Other is demonized, mystified, and/or ridiculously oversimplified. With references to Slavoj Zizek and Edward Said, along with analyses of a series of discursive examples to clarify my argument, I focus on the phenomenon of “culturalization” as a common new-racist method of de-politicizing the Otherʼs affairs and surrounding socio-political phenomena. My paper is an attempt to discredit the paradigm of “culture” as a pseudo-concept used

Saturday 25/05

75

commonly in cultural racism. Cultural racism, which I argue is new-racism, routinely assumes “culture” to be a naturalfact, almost exactly as the pseudo-scientific paradigm “race” was (and is still) used in some discourses of biological racism. I argue that although they may have opposing intentions, conservatives and liberal leftists often commit the same fallacy of culturalizing the non- White Other. Finally, I critically analyze a syllabus for a Sociology course on progressive social movements at Carleton University (Canada) to show how leftist professors can also lapse into culturalization. Among other things, the outline for the course demonstrates how the educator, due to her culturalization (through Muslimization) of Middle Eastern women, fails to imagine, and, thus, to know about, any non-Islamic or non-Islamist (e.g. Marxist or simply secular) women organizations in the region known as the Middle East. Spaces and Identities (3B) Chair: Peter Goggin Incongruous Perspective: Reframing the Picturesque in Island Identities, and Rhetorics of Presence (Peter Goggin) In Global Complexity, sociologist, John Urry states that “the analysis of globalization brings out the obvious interdependencies between peoples, places, organizations and technological systems across the world.” He concludes this observation that “with the analysis of globalization, ʻno place is an islandʼ” (39). While the context for this statement on global complexity is well taken, within complex global systems islands are, in fact, places in their own right. Here, Urry illustrates an important limitation of mainland/mainstream perspective in both popular and scholarly discourse that situates ways of seeing islands and island perspectives as some-place/thing outside of a dominant mainland global reality. Donnehower, Hogg, and Schell in their analysis of rural rhetorics and literacies point to a phenomenon of commonplace assumptions constructed through an urban/mainstream worldview they term, “rurality.” Sheller and Thompson equate a similar phenomenon for oceanic islands (the Caribbean in particular), which I will term “islandality,” that is in large part informed by colonial and post-colonial images that have defined island natural landscapes, the people, and their cultures as a picturesque, and thus relegated as consumable places within the global system. Drawing on Prattʼs study of imperial travel, Sheller observes that such a view constitutes a “rhetoric of presence” that fixes “the mastery of the seer over the seen” (50). The picturesque perception of island people and ecologies constitutes a form of “world making” that reinforces a sense of timeless dissonance for the mainland/mainstream worldview, what Burke would describe as “terministic screen,” and “trained incapacity.” Thompson further argues that cultures and ecologies are drastically altered as islanders themselves buy into the marketing influences and framing of mainland interests, what she terms, “tropicalization.” For this presentation, I will draw from previous work on rhetoric in small islands (Goggin & Long; Goggin) and recent field work in Malta, Anguilla, Bermuda, Alderney, and the Isles of Scilly to discuss how islandality and rhetorics of presence (and absence) affect and shape ecological literacies in and about small island states and communities, and how Burkeʼs notion of “perspective by incongruity” in sponsoring a reframing of island identity offers insights into how rhetorics of place can be

Saturday 25/05

76

employed in a more robust understanding of global and local participation in ecological sustainability. Rhetorical approaches to spatial orientation (Pierre Smolarski) Kenneth Burke developed a perspective on rhetoric which is based on a twofold process of identification. Semantically something has to be identified as something else to produce meaning, which has to be pragmatically identified with the audience modes of understanding to become inter-subjectively reliable. Thus, persuasion which is the key-term of the old rhetoric, becomes understandable by defining it with the help of processes of identification. The question is, does this interpretation of the rhetorical process help to understand the rhetorical dimension of spatial orientation? Since orientation is always bound to a specific perspective, which allows to handle situations which are defined by this perspective, weʼve got exactly what Burke calls a motive. Upon his theory of motives, especially developed in Permanence and Change, it is the aim of my presentation to show, that there is a fundamental rhetorical dimension in urban orientation. Therefore I want to read Kevin Lynchs The Image of the City, which includes one of the most important theories of urban planning and orientation, rhetorically. I want to show, that Lynchs elements of the city-image can be interpreted as (Burkean) motives and thatʼs why these elements invite us not only to passively perceive the surrounding city, but to act upon it and solely because of that, we are able to orient ourselves in urban environments. But with Burkeʼs theory of rhetoric we can go further. After showing that the elements of our city-image are rhetorical motives, I want to discus, how these motives are the basic elements of two orientation generating processes: perspective by incongruity and trained incapacity. Since human beings are symbol-making animals they are able to produce meaning by using perspectives of incongruities, and they are also able to act upon these symbols by their trained incapacity in mean-selecting. Kevin Lynch has shown what the Image of the City might be and how it is produced by mental mapping. With Kenneth Burke we are able to understand what this means for humans and what the rhetorical dimension of every orientation process might be. Redefining the Language of the Trinidad and Tobago Calypso as Symbolic Action (Everard Phillips) Calypso, which forms an integral part of the carnival celebrations of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago, is a syncretic popular cultural art form that is at the centre of the countryʼs carnivalesque tradition and as such is also bedded in the practice of ritual resistance. Through the medium of the calypso, the skilful calypsonian, using verbal creativity, freely comments on aspects of everyday life, exposing the scandals of politicians and the rich, while recounting gossip as they redress the powerful. Using an interpretative paradigm to draw from the combined etic and emic ethnographic experience, this presentation will revolve around the core, Kenneth Burkeʼs notion of “Language as Symbolic Action.” While embracing cultural anthropology, this presentation will show how language is the key tool that a calypsonian uses in effecting resistance as s/he draws attention to the “ills” of the local

Saturday 25/05

77

society. In this presentation it will be argued that through their calypsos, calypsonians seek to raise consciousness, thereby supporting the application of a form of non-formal community-facilitation that has its roots in the Burkean notion of “Dramatism.” Hence, the presenter will embrace the cultural construction of meaning through both language and narrative. This presentation will therefore be based on the notion that in the process of singing a calypso, the calypso itself functions as a mediator, in a dialectic that is attempting to resolve the contradictions or oppositions that are perceived by the calypsonian. Signs and Symbols (4B) Chair: Sebastien Pesce 'In Pursuit of Persuasion: Rhetoric and the Artistic Practices of the Painter Frank Auerbach' (Derek Pigrum) This paper is a continuation of my research into expert practices in the arts and their implications for semiotic philosophy of education. The paper characterizes the painting and drawing practices of the British artist Frank Auerbachʼs (1931-) as belonging to what Burke described as ʻnon verbalʼ rhetoric. Following Burkeʼs notion of ʻa strongly rhetorical ingredient in Freudʼs view of the psycheʼ (ibid, p.38), in the paper I relate Freudʼs observation and comments on the fort/da game in ʻBeyond The Pleasure Principleʼ (1920/2003) and Winnicottʼs notion of ʻpotential spaceʼ and ʻtransitional object useʼ (Winnicott, 1971) to Auerbachʼs practices. Drawing on Hughes (1990), Peppiatt (2012), and other sources, on the work of Auerbach, I characterize these practices as involving an oscillation between, what Burke refers to as ʻa movement inwards and a movement outwardsʼ, of disappearance and re-emergence produced by formative mark-making and erasure that I have elsewhere described as transitional (Pigrum 2009), producing a modified view of intentionality and the nature of the mark in relation to the sign that has profound implications for both semiotics and semiotic philosophy of education. Auerbachʼs practices are a ʻspellbinding and spellbound address to an audienceʼ (Burke, 1969, p.37) that for Burke can be the audience of the self, because ʻnonverbal conditions or objects can be considered as signs by reason of persuasive ingredients inherent in the “meaning” they have for the audience to which they are addressedʼ (ibid. p, 161). In the paper I address this in terms of Auerbachʼs relation to the studio space, to practices where the emphasis on the materiality of the mark in painting and drawing is overarching, but also Auerbachʼs rhetorical use of models, or selected works of art from the sometimes distant past, that are woven integrally into the very essence of his painting practices. “If one language is not enough to convince you, I will use two”: Rhetoric and Symbolic Power as a Tool to Interpret Code-switching (Marco Hamam) One still unexplored key to interpret Code-switching (CS) is how this mechanism is used to rhetorically structure a discourse by exploiting the symbolic power codes possess. One can, in fact, speak of a “rhetoric of CS”. When bilingual speakers switch, they do it for more or less specific purposes. What emerges from corpora studies is that CSs are rhetorically functional,

Saturday 25/05

78

in the sense that they help the speaker build his discourse, making it more consistent and differentiating textual material, just like other rhetorical mechanisms, such as figures of speech. The continuous CS help the speaker build the rhetorical structure of his discourse in a way speakers can understand, because they share the same symbolic system. Studies in Arabic diglossic CS have showed how rhetoric can explain CS in a new way. In Arabic, rhetoric is strictly linked to symbolism. CS in Arabic exploits this symbolism people give to codes. Moreover, by comparing the Arabic and the Italian diglossic/dilalic phenomena of CS, it has emerged how Arabic speakers exploit symbolism much more because Standard Arabic, which is mainly but not exclusively a written language, is heavily symbolically charged because of the phenomenon of diglossia, which has as a goal to protect the language of the Quran, considered as a sacred language. Looking more closely at this symbolism of CS, one realises in fact that it stems from a more ancient ideal dichotomy, which is the one between “written” and “spoken” language. CS help speakers dose the right concentration of the two basic symbolisms that enhance the discourse, making it convincing. Using too much of one symbolism can translate into a rhetorical failure. Through examples taken from corpora I will try to show how rhetoric and symbolism can be used as an interpretative tool for CS. Rhetorics of Dialogic Inquiry: Peirce, Dewey & Burke in the classroom (Sébastien Pesce) In 1955, Kenneth Burke proposed, consistent with his dramatistic approach, a “Linguistic Approach to Problems of Education”, which provided the foundations for innovative curricula. My aim is to relate Burkeʼs approach to Peircean and Deweyan thought. While Burke offers a specific view of both the subject and the educational program, Peirceʼs later semiotics provides useful concepts necessary for understanding the semiotic processes in the context of the classroom teaching and learning processes. Furthermore, Deweyʼs theory of inquiry presents a way of structuring this dramatistic activity through dialogic inquiries. From this perspective, Peirce, Dewey and Burke allow us to investigate the interplay between essential aspects of education, such as the growth of self, experienced by engaging in forms of “symbolic action”, the intersubjective dimension of such development and the dialogic conditions of a “rhetoric emergence of culture” (Meyer & Girke, 2011). Myresearch will be based on an analysis, from a Burkean perspective, of an actual educational practice directed towards children who are at risk of and in the process of dropping out of school. This pedagogical innovation, which is based on the discovery and analysis of great dramas, Greek mythology, Platoʼs myths, scientific works and various religions, is observed through the lens of the dramatistic approach. That is, “teacher and class are on a voyage of discovery together” (Burke, 1955, p. 276). Accordingly, the semiotic resources used by the group are “treated as voices in a dialogue” where each voice is offered an opportunity to “state its position as ably as possible” (ibid., p. 283) about a same object: “the question of origins”, which constitutes the very impulse of the groupʼs critical dialogic inquiry.

Saturday 25/05

79

Rhetorical Dialogues (4C) Chair: David Isaksen Symbolic Polarization in Turkish Society (Secil Deren van het Hof) Kenneth Burke maintains that each belief system has its own vocabulary to describe how the world works and what things mean, thus presenting its adherents with a specific reality. Modern politics continues the tradition of expressing itself through symbols and those symbols mark not only identities, but also group boundaries. This paper delves into the Kemalist and Islamist rhetorical systems in their construction of oppositional political symbols. In doing this, the author sees thıs symbolization as part of a rhetorical process that contributes to citizensʼ political socialization. As Burke put forth in A Rhetoric of Motives(1969), every rhetoric addresses an audience, and this audience is sometimes the speaker him/herself. Consequently, each rhetorical act is an attempt at political self-construction. As the individual constructs him/herself within the symbolizaiton of a certain political/ideological group, he/she reproduces the group in a dialectical manner. Group boundaries are set through the opposition and polarisation of rhetorical symbols and this process is critical in understanding the ideological dynamics of Turkish society. The current, unfinished phase of the ideological transformation of Turkish politics and society can best be observed in the symbols that individual practices scatter through daily life. On one side of this polarisation is Kemalism, the formative ideology of Turkey as a nation state back in the 1920s. On the other side is a more populist ideological construct with stronger Islamic delineations with roots back in the 1950s. This paper atttempts to analyse the individual cases through the lens of new rhetorics. This paper is part of a research program on cynicism in Turkish political culture and its relation to political communication practices. Searching for Impartial, Common Standards in Platoʼs Protagoras (Jonathan Lavery) Plato's Protagoras casts the leading sophist of the 5th century, Protagoras, against the author's paradigmatic philosopher, Socrates. Fittingly, the guiding methodological issue of the dialogue is a search for common standards for resolving disagreements on moral and abstract questions. Protagoras dramatizes a search for common ground between figures who disagree fundamentally over the nature and purpose of their interaction. These thematic issues are explored most explicitly in the middle interlude, during which a series of speakers comment upon the source of an impasse between the two principal interlocutors. To summarize more generally, the stakes in this episode may be specified as follows: whether the meeting between Socrates and Protagoras is an examination of Protagorasʼ educational program or a recruitment exercise for it; whether the terms of the exchange are to be set by the group collectively or by one of its members; whether the standards of assessment are a function of interpersonal agreement or objective measure. Underlying all of these issues is uncertainty as to whether the impasse can be resolved at all, i.e., whether the forms of engagement personified by Socrates and Protagoras are commensurable. As a way to spell out the procedural and ethical dynamics of the middle interlude, my presentation begins with a brief account of the setting and scene of the entire dialogue. I then trace the dialectical transformation of the debate from speaker to speaker throughout the interlude

Saturday 25/05

80

(supplemented with a handout that allows me to cover everything efficiently). I close with an analysis of the dramatic and rhetorical purpose of the episode, and some general comments about its theoretical implications. Indexing and Transcendence: Kenneth Burke's Pedagogy of Ideology Criticism (David Isaksen) It is the challenge of modern democratic societies to give voice to a wide variety of perspectives and ideologies while at the same time defusing and preventing the violence inherent in some extremist views. In "The Rhetoric of Hitler's 'Battle'" Kenneth Burke gives us a demonstration of and method for ideology criticism which seeks to understand the appeal of an extremist ideology and find out how it can be defused rather than simply discounting it as "madness." He later refined this approach into a method of pedagogy called "indexing" and wrote that he believed "only by such a search, instigated regardless of attitudes ('animus') can the world hope eventually to become civilized." I have traced down and interviewed several of his former students from Bennington, where Burke taught them and explained this method in the 1950s. Many of the students had saved the papers they wrote for his seminar, and these papers (with Burke's comments attached) show how Burke taught this method and how his students used it. I will show how this same method and pedagogy of indexing can help the students of today to become "civilized" by understanding the appeals and implications of symbol-systems such as ideologies, tracing them in seemingly "innocent" texts, and defusing their persuasiveness by making their appeals the object of rhetorical criticism.

Participants

81

Participants surname name institution email Ahmed Saladdin University of Ottawa [email protected] Amy Lori Georgia Southern University [email protected] Anderson Dana Indiana University [email protected] Bates Marlin University of the Pacific [email protected] Bendrat Anna Maria Curie Skodowska

University [email protected]

Bentley Russell Southampton University [email protected] Bialostosky Don University of Pittsburg [email protected] Bjørkdahl Kristian University of Oslo [email protected] Blakesley David Clemson University [email protected] Bourgonjon Jeroen Ghent University [email protected] Bowie Anneli University of Pretoria [email protected] Brummett Barry University of Texas at

Austin [email protected]

Burke Michael [email protected] Camilleri Roderick University of Malta [email protected] Ching Barbara Iowa State University [email protected] Clauss Patrick Notre Dame, Indiana [email protected] Csaba Andras University of Pécs [email protected] Csongé Tamás University of Pécs [email protected] Curtis Caroline Eagle Hill School [email protected] Derboven Jan KU Leuven / iMinds [email protected] Engel Pia Eberhard Karls University

Tübingen [email protected]

Etzol Pascal EDC Paris [email protected] Falkman Lena Lid Stockholm School of

Economics [email protected]

Fedoriv Yaroslava National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy

[email protected]

Fedoriv Mariya National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy

[email protected]

Feehan Michael Arkansas Legislative Council

[email protected]

George Ann Texas Christian University [email protected] Goggin Maureen

Daly Arizona State University, USA

[email protected]

Goggin Peter Arizona State University [email protected] Gonzales Chavez Eagle Hill School [email protected] Gundersen Linn Helen Rijksuniversiteit Groningen [email protected] Gunnarsson Hans University of Halmstad [email protected] Gurak Laura J. University of Minnesota [email protected]

Participants

82

Guttzeit Gero Justus Liebig University [email protected] Hall Melvin W. University of Wisconsin -

Madison [email protected]

Hamam Marco Università di Sassari [email protected] Henderson Juliet Oxford Brookes University [email protected] Herrmann Laura Eberhard Karls University

Tübingen [email protected]

Heynders Odile School of Humanities, Tilburg University

[email protected]

Holubeva Valiantsina Minsk State Linguistic University

[email protected]

Huglen Mark University of Minnesota [email protected] Hovmand Nanna University of Copenhagen [email protected] Isaksen David

Erland Texas Christian University [email protected]

Itzkowitz Justin Eagle Hill School [email protected] Kampf Constance Aarhus University [email protected] Kampka Agnieszka Warsaw University of Life

Sciences [email protected]

Katz Steven B. Clemson University [email protected] Kim Matthew A. Eagle Hill School [email protected] Klumpp James F. University of Maryland [email protected] Landreau John college of new jersey [email protected] Lavery Jonathan Wilfrid Laurier University [email protected] Lindsay Stan A Florida State University [email protected] Lysik Marta J. Humboldt Universitaet zu

Berlin [email protected]

Mailloux Steven Loyola Marymount University

[email protected]

Mason Jean S. Ryerson University [email protected] McClure Kevin R. University of Rhode Island [email protected] McDonald Paul University of

Wolverhampton [email protected]

Mecenas Jolivette University of La Verne [email protected] Meyer Michel Université libre de Bruxelles [email protected] Modesti Sonja Colorado State University [email protected] Molek-Kozakowska

Katarzyna University of Opole [email protected]

Monroe William The Honors College [email protected] Mortensen Peter University of Illinois at

Urbana-Champaign [email protected]

Moseley Merritt UNC Asheville [email protected] Mullen Darcy University at Albany [email protected] Nagy Réka University of ”Babes-Bolyai” [email protected]

Participants

83

Nichols Annie Laurie

University of Maryland-College Park

[email protected]

Oktay Yakut Boðaziçi University [email protected] OZDEMIR-TASTAN

Inan University of Ankara [email protected]

Paul Chrsitopher Seattle University [email protected] Payne David University of South Florida [email protected] Pesce Sébastien Université de Cergy-

Pontoise [email protected]

Petermann Waldemar Örebro University [email protected] Phillips Everard University of Trinidad and

Tobago [email protected]

Pigrum Derek University of Bath [email protected] Reyburn Duncan University of Pretoria [email protected] Reza Eshraghi

Ali University of North Carolina [email protected]

Richards Jennifer Newcastle University [email protected] Riendeau Michael Eagle Hill School [email protected] Risner Kevin John Carroll University [email protected] Robertson Jacob University of Houston &

Utah Valley University [email protected]

Robertson Cori Utah Valley University [email protected] Roer Hanne University of Copenhagen [email protected] Roets Griet UGent [email protected] Roose Rudi Ghent University [email protected] Rountree Clarke University of Alabama [email protected] Rountree John Auburn University [email protected] Rutten Kris Ghent University [email protected] Schoen Steven W. Florida International

University [email protected]

Selejan Corina Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu

[email protected]

Simons Herbert W. Temple University [email protected] Smith Francesca

Marie University of Southern California

[email protected]

Smolarski Pierre FH Bielefeld [email protected] Soetaert Ronald Ghent University [email protected] Solouki Zahra ESADE Business School,

Ramon Llull University [email protected]

Stanchevici Dimitri University of Memphis [email protected] Stewart Paul B. Roberts Wesleyan College [email protected] Strecker Ivo Rhetoric Culture Project [email protected] Thames Richard Duquesne University [email protected] Thompson Jason University of Wyoming [email protected]

Participants

84

Tilli Jouni University of Jyväskylä [email protected] Troche Ursula The Change Collective [email protected] Van Alboom Eliane Ghent University [email protected] Van der Aa Jef Tilburg University [email protected] van het Hof Cecil Deren Akdeniz University [email protected] Vandermeersche

Geert Ghent University [email protected]

Vasudev Rukma Karnatak University [email protected] Vlieghe Joachim Ghent University [email protected] Voorhees Gerald Oregon State University [email protected] Vrijders Dries Ghent University [email protected] Weiser Elizabeth The Ohio State University [email protected] Wess Robert Oregon State University [email protected] Williams David Cratis Florida Atlantic University [email protected] Williams Jeffrey Carnegie Mellon University [email protected] Wojtkielewiz Andrew [email protected] Worthington David DePauw University [email protected] Wrighton John University of Brighton [email protected] Zappen James P. Rensselaer Polytechnic

Institute [email protected]

Ghent University Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences Department of Educational Studies H. Dunantlaan 2 B-9000 Ghent

rhetoric - culture & education · kenneth burke and the rhetoric of the human sciences ......

Documents