Language as Symbolic Action: Essays on Life, Literature, and Method

by Kenneth Burke

From the title for this collection was the title of a course in literary criticism that I gave for many years at Bennington College. And much of the material presented here was used in that course. The title should serve well to convey the gist of these various pieces. For all of them are explicitly concerned with the attempt to define and track down the implications of the term "symbolic action," and to show how the marvels of literature and language look when considered form that point of view.

Genres: Philosophy, Essays, Nonfiction, Language, Criticism, Literary Criticism, Theory

532 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1966

About the author

Kenneth Duva Burke was a major American literary theorist and philosopher. Burke's primary interests were in rhetoric and aesthetics.

Reviews

[Daniel Liddle · Rating 5 out of 5]

This one sits as my favorite with p and c. It's decently clear and is split up into short essays with commentary instead of the long-winded rehash of rhetoric or philosophy. Plus he finally gets to (direct) fun times with the "dogs" of the unconcious.

[John Fitzgerald · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well, this was a slog. There's no question that Burke is brilliant, but that doesn't always make him right and it certainly doesn't make him concise.
There's a lot to consider in the book, but unless you are a total Burke fan-boy, there's probably a fair amount to skim (or skip). Part II "Particular Works and Authors" mostly fits this description with maybe two notable exceptions. The section on William Carlos Williams is kind of a lovely elegy and it's fun to think about these two literary icons hanging out and walking on the beach. For completely different reasons, the section on Djuna Barnes is interesting because Barnes refused to grant permission to have Burke use excerpts from Nightwood, and the mind just boggles thinking about the back and forth that must have gone on behind the scenes.
If you are just looking for a sampling of Burke's thinking, Part I "Five Summarizing Essays" probably does the trick, and if you are really pressed for time, Chapter 3 "Terminsitic Screens" can be read on its own.
I had high hopes, but ultimately was a little disappointed by, Part III "Further Essays on Symbolism in General." The most interesting essay in this section was "What are the Signs of What? ('A Theory of Entitlement') because it provided a sort of counter-point to Saussurean structuralism. Rather than a relationship between signifier and signified, Burke suggests that language creates "titles" for situations and that language is essentially an abbreviation for reality.
Other notable chapters in the final section include Chapter 6 "Medium as Message" in which Burke maybe misreads Marshall McLuhan (or, maybe more charitably, doesn't do a great job of predicting the future of media). The final chapter "Formalist Criticism: Its Principles and Limits" provides a lucid accounting of what formalism actually entails, although Burke borrows this list from Cleanth Brooks, and this chapter is mostly a dust-up with other critics.

[Jessica · Rating 1 out of 5]

While I want to applaud Burke for having published his thoughts with no classical education in philosophy, I end up just wanting a painkiller after reading a section. Because of his lack of education, he has no sense of philosophical rhetoric, and so he plods on and on, trying to communicate his thoughts in 500 words when the proper 20 would have wonderfully sufficed.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

I admit - I only read parts.

[Liquidlasagna · Rating 5 out of 5]

wiki - Principal works

In "Definition of Man", the first essay of his collection Language as Symbolic Action (1966), Burke defined humankind as a "symbol using animal" (p. 3).

This definition of man, he argued, means that "reality" has actually "been built up for us through nothing but our symbol systems" (p. 5).

Without our encyclopedias, atlases, and other assorted reference guides, we would know little about the world that lies beyond our immediate sensory experience.

What we call "reality," Burke stated, is actually a "clutter of symbols about the past combined with whatever things we know mainly through maps, magazines, newspapers, and the like about the present ... a construct of our symbol systems" (p. 5).

College students wandering from class to class, from English literature to sociology to biology to calculus, encounter a new reality each time they enter a classroom; the courses listed in a university's catalogue "are in effect but so many different terminologies" (p. 5).

It stands to reason then that people who consider themselves to be Christian, and who internalize that religion's symbol system, inhabit a reality that is different from the one of practicing Buddhists, or Jews, or Muslims.

The same would hold true for people who believe in the tenets of free market capitalism or socialism, Freudian psychoanalysis or Jungian depth psychology, as well as mysticism or materialism.

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.

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He's like a weird sparring partner to Marshall McLuhan

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Reception

Burke’s ideas, through these significant essays, have had widespread influence.

Burke scholar Nelson J. Smith III offered this review: “Much of what our current generation of rhetoricians accomplishes will be drawn from the preliminary and pioneer investigations into the sociology of ideology by Kenneth Burke.”

Frederick J. Hoffman also writes: “[Burke’s] range and scope are truly remarkable. If there are predecessors and contemporaries in this respect, they are probably Remy de Gourmont. . .and Eric Auerbach. . . His fate is that of a man some years ahead of his time.”

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He was a close friend of the sociologist Talcott Parsons

and the Zero Mostel of English Literature at Yale, Harold Bloom was a great great fan of one of his works.

[Kendra Richards Ohmann · Rating 3 out of 5]

The ideas are great, but the writing is very difficult.

[Macalester Linguistics]

M 15.0