Burke Introduction

The reading of Burke we did seems to focus a lot on motive, semantics, and how arguments can be differently framed. He reminded me of one of the Sophists we originally read about, Prodicus, who had a personal obsession with finding the exact meanings of words. Unlike Prodicus however, Burke seems to enjoy the ambiguity of language, or at least feel that ambiguity isn't something that needs to be completely eliminated, saying that "what we want is not terms that avoid ambiguity, but terms that clearly reveal the strategic spots at which ambiguities necessarily arise" (xvii). Basically, Burke is arguing that you can still have ambiguity in language, as long as the ambiguity or source of ambiguity is clear. 

Burke also speaks of three conventions in language that he called Grammar, Symbolic, and Rhetoric. The reminded me of Aristotle's three canons, Logos, Pathos, and Ethos; while they are not exact equivalents, they are similar. I had a bit of a difficult time understanding what he means by Grammar, since he doesn't seem to mean it in an identical way as we use it today -- in regards to punctuation and whatnot -- but rather as a something like facts or fitting exactly within the intended definition or rules of a convention. Something similar to how we see grammar today, but Burke's version seems to encompass a broader spectrum of language. After that, Symbolic seems to mean expression within language, and Rhetoric is of course equal to persuasion in language. As he points out though, the three often overlap. 

I thought Burke's point about how an argument or statement can be portrayed differently depending on the person looking at it, for example his example of how a portrait painter would see the body as an agent versus the medical man who would see the body as the scene of an action/motive, or the more interesting example of the counter-agent being a necessity for the agent. It's sort of an interesting continuation of the "revolutionary" (at the time) discovery way back, the idea that "on every argument there are two sides." What Burke is doing is explaining how both individual people can see a subject or argument differently, or how someone could intentionally take the ambiguity of an argument or statement and twist it into something completely different. 

So Burke's point is both a positive thing and a worrisome thing. On one hand, he helps to explain how someone with a different viewpoint isn't inherently wrong, but that there is enough flexibility in whatever word/title/subject that they see it differently. On the other hand though, you can get some pretty crazy arguments from this sort of thing. The reading used the argument how Judas and the crucifixion of Jesus was a necessity for the resurrection of Jesus and the salvation of mankind, therefore you could turn Judas into a positive sort of figure. In that way, you can make all kinds of positive arguments for various dictators and tyrannies of history, since some good thing likely emerged from them. You can argue that these arguments can be easily outweighed by negative points about the thing, and I can grant you that. However, less extreme versions of this argument could be interesting, you could take something bad but not as obviously bad, but again be able to twist it about and make it seem good -- war, questionable legislation, things like that.

It is good that Burke talks about this though, since he obviously didn't create this, this is a rhetorical device that has likely been used for ages. By bringing it into the open and analyzing it, we are able to consider this strategy and be aware of what it is, how it is used, and the moral/immoral potential of it. So regardless of the point Burke is making with his work (if he is making one), it is a good discussion to have.   

Questions:

1. What do you think Burke means when he talks about Grammar? Do you agree with what I said I think he means, or did he mean something different? 

2. Would it be ideal if we could strike all ambiguity from language, and every word/argument has one precise meaning we could all understand? What would be sacrificed for this total clarity?