Kenneth Burke

Kenneth Burke studied at Ohio State University, Columbia University and Peabody High School. The recorded working language is English. The field of work recorded is philosophy. Employment is recorded with Harvard University, University of Chicago and Princeton University. Distinctions recorded are Guggenheim Fellowship.

• Name — Kenneth Burke • Birth Name — Kenneth Duva Burke • Birthplace — Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, U.S. • Died — November 19, 1993 • Place of death — Andover, New Jersey, U.S. • Alma Mater — Ohio State University Columbia University • Institutions — University of Chicago • Occupation — Literary theorist, philosopher

Kenneth Duva Burke was born on May 5, 1897, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and graduated from Peabody High School, where he befriended classmates Malcolm Cowley and James Light. He attended Ohio State University to pursue courses in French, German, Greek, and Latin. He moved with his parents to Weehawken, New Jersey, and later enrolled at Columbia University. During his time there, he was a member of the Boar's Head Society. The constraining learning environment impelled Burke to leave Columbia, never receiving a college diploma. In Greenwich Village, he kept company with avant-garde writers such as Hart Crane, Malcolm Cowley, Gorham Munson, and later Allen Tate. Raised by a Christian Science mother, Burke later became an avowed agnostic. In 1919, he married Lily Mary Batterham, with whom he had three daughters: the feminist, Marxist anthropologist Eleanor Leacock; musician (Jeanne) Elspeth Chapin Hart; and writer and poet France Burke. He later divorced Lily and, in 1933, married her sister Elizabeth Batterham, with whom he had two sons, Michael and Anthony. Burke served as the editor of the modernist literary magazine The Dial in 1923, and as its music critic from 1927 to 1929. He was an avid pianist. He received the Dial Award in 1928 for distinguished service to American literature. He was the music critic of The Nation from 1934 to 1936, and was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1935. His work on criticism was a driving force in placing him back in the academic spotlight. As a result, he was able to teach and lecture at various colleges, including Bennington College, while continuing his literary work. Many of Burke's personal papers and correspondence are housed at Pennsylvania State University's Special Collections Library. But despite his stint lecturing at universities, Burke was an autodidact and a self-taught scholar. In later life, his New Jersey farm was a popular summer retreat for his extended family, as reported by his grandson Harry Chapin, a popular singer-songwriter. Burke died of heart failure at his home in Andover, New Jersey, age 96.

Burke called the social and political rhetorical analysis "dramatism" and believed that such an approach to language analysis and language usage helps us understand the basis of conflict, the virtues and dangers of cooperation, and the opportunities of identification and consubstantiality. Burke defined the rhetorical function of language as "a symbolic means of inducing cooperation in beings that by nature respond to symbols." His definition of humanity states that "man" is "the symbol using, making, and mis-using animal, inventor of the negative, separated from his natural condition by instruments of his own making, goaded by the spirit of hierarchy, and rotten with perfection." For Burke, some of the most significant problems in human behavior result from instances of symbols using human beings rather than human beings using symbols. Burke proposed that when we attribute motives to others, we tend to rely on ratios between five elements: act, scene, agent, agency, and purpose. This has become known as the dramatistic pentad. The pentad is grounded in his dramatistic method, which considers human communication as a form of action. Dramatism "invites one to consider the matter of motives in a perspective that, being developed from the analysis of drama, treats language and thought primarily as modes of action" (Grammar of Motives, xxii). Burke pursued literary criticism not as a formalistic enterprise but rather as an enterprise with significant sociological impact; he saw literature as "equipment for living," offering folk wisdom and common sense to people and thus guiding the way they lived their lives.

Through the use of dramatism, one can ultimately utilize Burke's Rebirth Cycle. This cycle encompasses three distinct phases, Guilt/Pollution, Purification, and Redemption. Burke introduced the phases and their functionality through the use of a poem: "Here are the steps / In the Iron Law of History / That welds Order and Sacrifice / Order leads to Guilt / (For who can keep commandments!) / Guilt needs Redemption (for who would not be cleaned!) / Redemption needs Redeemer (which is to say, a Victim!) / Order / Through Guilt / To Victimage (hence: Cult of the Kill)". The poem provides a basis of for the interactions of the three phases. Order's introduction into the life of human enables the creation of guilt. To alleviate the results produced by the creation of Guilt, redemption is necessary. Through the abstraction of redemption, Burke leads to the completion of the cycle. Pollution initially constitutes actions that result in the creation of Guilt. The creation of Guilt occurs upon the rejection of a hierarchy. Challenges to relationships, changes in power, and appropriateness of behaviors to change are each contributing factors toward the formation of Guilt. It is appropriate to draw parallels between the creation of Guilt and original sin. Original sin constitutes "an offense that cannot be avoided or a condition in which all people share". Guilt represents the initial action that strips a situation of its perceived purity. The establishment of Guilt necessarily leads to the need to undergo purification to cleanse the individual affected by its recognition. Purification is thus accomplished through two forms of "ritual purification." Mortification and victimage represent the available avenues of purification. Stratification within society created by hierarchies allows for marginalization within societies. Marginalization thus is a leading factor in the creation of Guilt, and leads to the need for mortification. Burke wrote, "In an emphatic way, mortification is the exercising of oneself in 'virtue'; it is a systematic way of saying no to Disorder, or obediently saying yes to Order". Mortification allows self-sacrifice, which enables one to rid oneself of impurities. Purification will only be reached if it is equal to one's degree of guilt. If mortification cannot be reached, one will ultimately be forced to project "his conflict upon a scapegoat, by 'passing the buck,' by seeking a sacrificial vessel upon which he can vent, as from without, a turmoil that is actually within". Sacrificial vessels allow for the extermination of one's Guilt while enabling one to remain virtuous. Victimage is the second form of ritual purification. Burke highlights society's need to rectify division within its ranks. He wrote, "People so dislike the idea of division, their dislike can easily be turned against the man or group who would so much as name it, let alone proposing to act upon it". Victimage allows the creation of a scapegoat that serves as a depository of impurities in order to protect against entities that are alien to a particular society. The scapegoat takes on the sins of the impure, thus allowing redemption for the Guilty party. Through the course of these actions the scapegoat is harnessed with the sins of the Guilty. Redemption is reached through one of two options. Tragic redemption revolves around the idea that guilt combines with the principles of perfection and substitution in order that victimage can be utilized. This can be viewed as the "guilty is removed from the rhetorical community through either scapegoating or mortification". Comic enlightenment is the second form of redemption. This option allows the sins of the guilty to be adopted by Society as a whole, ultimately making Society guilty by association.

Another key concept for Burke is the Terministic screen—a set of symbols that becomes a kind of screen or grid of intelligibility through which the world makes sense to us. Here Burke offers rhetorical theorists and critics a way of understanding the relationship between language and ideology. Language, Burke thought, doesn't simply "reflect" reality; it also helps select reality as well as deflect reality. In Language as Symbolic Action (1966), he writes, "Even if any given terminology is a reflection of reality, by its very nature as a terminology it must be a selection of reality; and to this extent must function also as a deflection of reality. Burke describes terministic screens as reflections of reality—we see these symbols as things that direct our attention to the topic at hand. For example, photos of the same object with different filters each direct the viewer's attention differently, much like how different subjects in academia grab the attention differently. Burke states, "We must use terministic screens, since we can't say anything without the use of terms; whatever terms we use, they necessarily constitute a corresponding kind of screen; and any such screen necessarily directs the attention to one field rather than another." Burke drew not only from the works of Shakespeare and Sophocles, but from films and radio that were important to pop culture, because they were teeming with "symbolic and rhetorical ingredients." We as a people can be cued to accept the screen put in front of us, and mass culture such as TV and websites can be to blame for this. Media today has altered terministic screens, or as Richard Toye wrote in his book Rhetoric: A Very Short Introduction, the "linguistic filters which cause us to see situations in particular fashions."

Burke viewed identification as a critical element of persuasion. According to Burke, as we listen to someone speak, we gauge how similar that person is to us. If our opinions match, then we identify (rhetorically) with the speaker. Based on how much we identify with the speaker, we may be moved to accept the conclusions that the speaker comes to in an argument, as well as all (or most) of its implications. In A Rhetoric of Motives, Burke not only explores self-identification within a rhetorical context, but also analyzes exterior identification, such as identifying with objects and concepts that are not the self. There are several other facets to identification that Burke discusses within his books, such as consubstantiality, property, autonomy, and cunning. Burke's exploration of identification within rhetoric heavily influenced modern rhetorical theory. He revolutionized rhetoric in the West with his exploration of identification, arguing that rhetoric is not only about "rational argument plus emotion", but also that it involves people connecting to language and one another at the same time. Burke’s theory of identification was complicated by his critical interest in music, prompting a shift toward distinguishing between form and information in sonic identification.

The authorities additionally record the heading Kenneth Duva Burke. His recorded language was English. One child is recorded: Eleanor Leacock.

Kenneth Burke worked in philosophy. He was employed by Harvard University, University of Chicago, Princeton University and Rutgers University. He belonged to American Academy of Arts and Sciences and American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Kenneth Burke is recorded as philosopher, literary critic, university teacher, sociologist and journalist.