ENGL309C Lecture Notes - Lecture 8: Kenneth Burke, Abortion Debate, Louis Althusser
Document Summary
The use of words by human agents to form attitudes or to induce actions in other human agents (a rhetoric of motives). Part of a subset of symbolic action (includes rhetoric, poetics, science, and philosophy). Rhetoric concerned with persuasion and identification, which ultimately work together. Persuasion: what aristotle meant, though also includes unconscious persuasion and persuasion from media, advertising, etc. Identification: a new category part of the arsenal of persuasion but creates community and helps avoid divisions. The individual shares relationships (substances) with others and defines him/herself with and against them. Both an individual and part of a community. Traditional rhetoric focused on speaking and writing in public fora. Burke does focus on these but adds: advertising, maps and charts, sales promotion, education, courtship, social etiquette, hysteria, witchcraft, food, art, including literature and. Rhetoric must include the form of the discourse because form and content can"t be separated.
