Reading the Signs with Kenneth Burke

Always attuned to the dialectical relationship between literary productions andtheir sociohistorical contexts, the writings of Kenneth Burke refuse to essentializeliterary discourse by making it a unique kind of language. This article maintainsthat Burke’s theory of literature and language as symbolic action is capable ofencompassing both these intrinsic and extrinsic aspects without being reducible toeither of them. Dramatism is his name for the theory, and its strength derives fromits recognition of the necessarily ambiguous transaction between the system ofsigns and the frame of reference. Nevertheless, there is an essentializing tendencyin Burke’s thought. Logology, a perspective on language that achieves fruitionin The Rhetoric of Religion (1961), is symptomatic of this tendency. I argue thatthere is a perceptible discontinuity between the dramatistic idea that literature andlanguage are to be considered as symbolic action and the logological idea thatwords about God bear a strong resemblance to words about words. Logology—words about words—discovers in theology—words about God—the perfectionismimplicit in all discourse. I conclude, however, that despite his flirtation withlinguistic essentialism, Burke never loses sight of the fact that words are firstand foremost agents of power, that they are value-laden, ideologically motivated,and morally and emotionally weighted instruments of persuasion, performance,representation and purpose. As a form of symbolic action in the world, literature isinextricably linked to society and history—it is not a privileged form of languagethat exists in its own separate and autonomous sphere.