Though Kenneth Burke has often been dismissed as a brilliant but idiosyncratic
thinker, this dissertation will argue that he is actually a precocious systems theorist.
The systemic and systematic aspects of Burke’s work will be demonstrated by
comparing it to the General Systems Theory (GST) of biologist Ludwig von
Bertalanffy. Though beginning from very different starting points, Bertalanffy and
Burke develop similar aims, methods, and come to remarkably similar conclusions
about the nature and function of language.
The systemic nature of Burke’s language philosophy will also become evident
through an analysis of the Burkean corpus. Burke’s first book contains several
breakthrough ideas that set him irrevocably upon the path of a systemic theory of
symbolic action. Burke’s next book, influenced by GST-inspired biology, seeks to
understand the nature of associative networks by employing an organic metaphor.
Burke’s interest in systems comes from his desire to repair the cultural system
crumbling around him as a result of the Depression. Consequently his next book,
Attitudes Toward History, studies what happens to such “orientations” (i.e., the
systems by which humans classify and evaluate the world) during epistemological
crises. The Philosophy of Literary Form is concerned primarily with the function of
these orientations.
In A Grammar of Motives Burke seeks to understand the basis for transformation of these evaluative systems, and in A Rhetoric of Motives he demonstrates
how these transformations are used to persuade. Burke next turns his attention to
understanding a small part of the system, a theological doctrine, in The Rhetoric of
Religion.
Burke’s theory appears plausible when compared to and supplemented by GST
and the related self-organizing system theory. Furthermore, a paradigm shift to non-mechanistic
cognitive theory allows us to refine and extend Burke’s intuitive theory of
symbolic action. The final chapter will argue that symbolic action is the manipulation
of the quality space, which is a
multi-dimensional model for the super-system
composed of mental, linguistic and cultural sub-systems. In mental systems, skeletal
information structures called schemas combine to form simple models, which in turn
combine to form a model of the world. Similarly, a culture can be seen as a system
of schemas held in common by the group. The linguistic system labels, transmits and
thus evokes these schemas. The primary means by which the quality space becomes
reconfigured is through metaphor, which creates new schemas, and modifies the
connections between schemas (and thus the position and relative value of a schema).
Metaphor, therefore, is the basis of symbolic action.
This systemic theory of symbolic action may be modeled by Connectionist
networks. These analogical neural networks provide a model for how brains form
and associate categories and support Burke’s assertion that thought is primarily
analogical and categorical, thus affording the means for refining Burke’s theory of
symbolic action. Ultimately, such a theory may provide a unified field theory for
rhetoric, showing how various symbolic action strategies work and interrelate.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:BVAU.2429/6892 |
| Date | 05 1900 |
| Creators | McKercher, Patrick Michael |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Relation | UBC Retrospective Theses Digitization Project [http://www.library.ubc.ca/archives/retro_theses/] |
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