Burke Primer Definition of Rhetoric

"It is rooted in an essential function of language itself, a function that is wholly realistic, and is continually born anew; the use of language as a symbolic means of inducing cooperation in beings that by nature respond to symbols." (Rhet, p. 43; Burke's italics.) From Kenneth Burke: An Annotated Glossary of His Terministic Screen and a "Statistical" Survey of His Major Concepts, in RSQ

Ongoing Conversation

Imagine that you enter a parlor. You come late. When you arrive, others have long preceded you, and they are engaged in a heated discussion, a discussion too heated for them to pause and tell you exactly what it is about. In fact, the discussion had already begun long before any of them got there, so that no one present is qualified to retrace for you all the steps that had gone before. You listen for a while, until you decide that you have caught the tenor of the argument; then you put in your oar. Someone answers; you answer him [or her]; another comes to your defense; another aligns himself [or herself] against you, to either the embarrassment or gratification of your opponent, depending upon the quality of your ally's assistance. However, the discussion is interminable. The hour grows late, you must depart. And you do depart, with the discussion still vigorously in progress. It is from this "unending conversation" . . . that the materials of your drama arise. From (Kenneth Burke, The Philosophy of Literary Form 110-11)

Dramatism
KB distinguishes between philosophies that are concerned with knowledge and philosophies that are concerned with action. Frye, for instance, wants to understand literature as a form of knowledge, but KB wants to find out what people do with literature. The five key terms of dramatism are, of course, the Pentad: In a rounded statement about motives, you must have some word that names the act (names what took place, in thought or deed), and another that names the scene (the background of the act, the situation in which it occurred); also, you must indicate what person or kind of person (agent) performed the act, what means or instruments he used (agency), and the purpose. Men may violently disagree about the purposes behind a given act, or about the character of the person who did it, or how he did it, or in what kind of situation he acted; or they may even insist upon totally different words to name the act itself. But be that as it may, any complete statement about motives will offer some kind of answers to these five questions: what was done (act), when or where it was done (scene), who did it (agent), how he did it (agency), and why (purpose). (Gram, p. xv) Dramatism will have three concerns: "grammar," the structure of terms; "rhetoric," "the basic stratagems which people employ, in endless variations, consciously or unconsciously, for the outwitting or cajoling of one another"; "symbolic," "modes of expression and appeal in the fine arts . . . and purely psychological or psychoanalytic matters." (Gram, p. xvii). From Kenneth Burke: An Annotated Glossary of His Terministic Screen and a "Statistical" Survey of His Major Concepts, in RSQ

From Brummett, Representative Anecdote, CSMC 1984

Terministic Screens

One approach to analyzing discursive forms and the attendant attitudes (incipient actions) they foster toward a situation is by examining what Burke has called terministic screens6 and media criticsdrawing on a sociological perspective have called frame analysis.7 Frame analysis looks to see how a situation or event is named/defined, and how that naming shapes public opinion. It accomplishes this analysis by highlighting the inherent biases in all storytelling, namely selectivity (what is included and excluded in the story?), partiality (what is emphasized and downplayed in the story?), and structure (how does the story formally play out?). One example of framing in the news media is the distinction between episodic stories and thematic stories. The episodic frame, according to Shanto Iyengar and Adam Simon, depicts public issues in terms of concrete instances or public events . . . [and] makes for good pictures. The thematic news frame, by contrast, places public issues in some general or abstract context . . . [and] takes the form of a takeout or backgrounder report directed at general outcomes.8 Though few news reports are exclusively episodic or thematic, the dominance of episodic frames in the news has been established in multiple studies.9 How a story is framed in the news affects both how the public assigns responsibility for a traumatic event and how people following the debate think about policy options and preferred outcomes.10 To appreciate fully the political and ideological implications of framing, however, the critic must do more than simply classify a news story as episodic or thematic From Ott and Aoki, THE POLITICS OF NEGOTIATING PUBLIC TRAGEDY: MEDIA FRAMING OF THE MATTHEW SHEPARD MURDER. P. 485-486

Kenneth Burke, Language as Symbolic Action: Essays on Life, Literature, and Method (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968), 4445. Burke says here that every selection is also a reflection and a deflection

Identification/Division

"Identification is affirmed with earnestness precisely because there is division. Identification is compensatory to division." (Rhet, p. 22) "You persuade a man only insofar as you can talk his language by speech, gesture, tonality, order, image, attitude, idea, identifying your ways with his. . . . And you give the 'signs' of such consubstantiality by deference to an audience's 'opinions.'" (Rhet, p. 55) Activities are autonomous only when considered in and of themselves. "The human agent, qua human agent, is not motivated solely by the principle of a specialized activity. . . . Any specialized activity participates in a larger unit of action." (Rhet, p. 27) The tension between hierarchywhich is simply a given in the human situationand identification (or the need to identify) is the very basis of KB's theory of human relations. From Kenneth Burke: An Annotated Glossary of His Terministic Screen and a "Statistical" Survey of His Major Concepts, in RSQ The breadth (or "resonance" as Burke would say) of the term "identification" is clearly spelled out in The Philosophy of Literary
Form: (p.195)

By 'identification' I have in mind this sort of thing: one's material and mental ways of placing oneself as a person in groups and movements; one's ways of sharing vicariously in the role of leader or spokesman; formation and change of allegiance; the rituals of suicide, parricide, and prolicide; the vesting and divesting of insignia, the modes of initiation and ptirification that are involved in the response to allegiance and change of allegiance; . . . clothes, uniforms and their psychological equivalents. . . .!^*'

From Pivotal

Terms In the Early Works of Kenneth Burke Jane Blankenship, Edward Murphy, and Marie Rosenwasser, Philosophy & Rhetoric, 1974

Form

Again and again, KB stresses that the appeal of art as art lies in form. For example: "So the formal aspects of art appeal in that they exercise formal potentialities of the reader. They enable the mind to follow processes amenable to it." (CS, p. 143) "The forms of art, to summarize, are not exclusively 'aesthetic' They can be said to have prior existence in the experiences of the person hearing or reading the work of art. They parallel processes which characterize his experiences outside of art." (CS, p. 143) When we respond to form, we are prepared to respond to opinion. (Rhet, p. 58) KB's most widely known statement concerning form is "The Nature of Form" (CS, pp. 124-152). He defines form in literature as "an arousing and fulfillment of desires. A work has form in so far as one part of it leads a reader to anticipate another part, to be gratified by the sequence." (P. 124) "Syllogistic progression is the form of the perfectly conducted argument, advancing step by step. . . . Qualitative progression, the other aspect of progressive form, is subtler. Instead of one incident in the plot preparing us for some other possible incident of plot . . . the presence of one quality prepares us for the introduction of another. . . . Repetitive form is the consistent maintaining of a principle under new guises. . . . Conventional form involves to some degree the appeal of form as form. . . . Minor or incidental forms . . . such as metaphor, paradox, disclosure, reversal, contraction, expansion, bathos, apostrophe . . . which can be discussed as formal events in themselves." (CS, pp. 124127) From Kenneth Burke: An Annotated Glossary of His Terministic Screen and a "Statistical" Survey of His Major Concepts, in RSQ

Burke's (1968) definition of form emphasizes that communicators create and then
satisf)' expectations: "A work has form in so far as one part of it leads a reader to anticipate another part, to be gratified by the sequence" (p. 124). Form is both the creation and satisfaction of appetites in an audience, and a full artistic act includes both. Form is equated with the "psychology of the audience," as it "involves desires and their appeasements" (p. 31). Burke (1962) claimed that form allows an audience to feel as though it were "not merely receiving, but were itself creatively participating in the poet's or speaker's assertion" (p. 58). This participation occurs because formal patterns "can readily awaken an attitude of collaborative expectancy [italics added]" (p. 58). Burke contended that participation is present (though to a lesser degree) even when the audience resists the proposition being advanced, because it invites audiences to collahorate and thus to be more active in the completion of the utterance. This collaboration is not necessarily a conscious process. Indeed, for Burke, much of persuasion takes place on a semi-conscious level (Quigley, 1998). For instance, audiences may identify themselves with speakers without fully realizing they are doing so.

In an important sense, form is rhetoricalit argues enthymematically and may enhance identification between speaker and audience (Burks, 1985). As Burke (1968) asserted, "form is the appeal" (p. 138). Moreover, an analysis of form can enlighten us about argumentative processes between speakers and audiences. It makes sense that by looking at the formal devices that appear in Senate debate, critics can determine how expectations are evoked and ultimately if and how these expectations play a role in the violation of the norm of civility. Burke (1968) identified five aspects of form. Progressive form includes both syllogistic progression and qualitative progression. Syllogistic progression is "a perfectly conducted argument, advancing step by step" (p. 124). Syllogistic progression argues that "given certain things, certain things must follow, the premises forcing the conclusion," such as during Macbeth, where "Macheth's murder of Duncan prepares us for the dying of Macbeth" (p. 124). Qualitative progression, on the other hand, is subtler, occurring not when one incident or event prepares the audience for another, but when one quality prepares the audience for the introduction of another quality. Burke claimed we are "prepared less to demand a certain qualitative progression than to recognize its rightness after the event. We are put into a state of mind which another state of mind can appropriately follow" (p. 125). Again referencing Macbeth, Burke argued that the "grotesque seriousness of the murder scene" prepares audiences for the "grotesque buffoonery of the porter scene" (p. 125). The two are not logically connected (as in syllogistic progression), but the underlying quality of one leads the audience to expect a corresponding, perhaps complementary quality in the other. Repetitive form is simply the "restatement of the same thing in different ways" or the "consistent maintaining of a principle under new guises" (Burke, 1968, p. 125). Minor forms include literary devices such as metaphor, paradox, disclosure, and contraction. Minor forms may exhibit characteristics of other forms, such as qualitative progression or repetitive form, and as such, their effect "partially depends upon their function in the whole" (p. 127). Finally, conventional form involwes "the appeal of form as form" (Burke, 1968, p. 126). Conventional form involves "categorical expectancy"Burke stated that although "the anticipations and gratifications of progressive and repetitive form arise during the process of reading [or hearing], the expectations of conventional form may be anterior to the reading" (pp. 126-127). Thus, texts are greeted by audiences with preconceived ideas of what they should or should not include. This idea is particularly important with regard to Senate debateif civility is indeed the norm, audiences of floor speeches will expect civility within those speeches. Audiences will anticipate a rhetorical style that includes flowery language and excessive compliments (Loomis, 2000; Matthews, 1959; Uslaner,
320 THE SOUTHERN COMMUNICATION JOURNAL

2000). "Categorical expectations" will exist in the minds of auditors before the speeches begin.

From Darr, Civility as Rhetorical Enactment, SCJ, 2005

Similarly, Burke's definition of literary form in CounterStatement reflects a process orientation towards language use. For Burke, "form is the creation of an appetite in the mind of the auditor, and the adequate satisfying of that appetite." (5) Burke's choices of "creation," "appetite," and "satisfying," demonstrate the active participation of the auditor in the evolution of literary form. Because form creates and satisfies an appetite within the auditor's mind, it necessarily depends upon the auditor's involvement for its realization. Like

rhetoric as delineated by Aristotle, literary form as defined by Burke demonstrates a process orientation towards language use.

From Hershey, RSQ, 1986, Burke and Aristotle on Form

Farm is a way erf imiting motive and symbol, situation and act. It is a term that lets us begin, branch out, and then retum to the term from which we started at the beginning of the paper. Orientation. In Counter-Statement, Burke defines Form as a "creation of an appetite in the mind of the auditor, and the adequate satisfying of that appetite. . . .""^ It is "an arousing and fulfillment of desires."^ i* Thus, a "work has form insofar as one part of it leads a reader to anticipate another part... ."^''^ Burke continuaUy stresses the receiver-oriented aspect of Form and he goes so far as to say that "fomi would be the psychology of the audience."^^" For example, he writes: . . . in the case of Antony's speech, the value lies in the fact that his words are shaping the future of the audience's desires, not the desires of the Rranan populace, but the desires of the pit. This is the psychology of form as distinguished from the psychology of information. ^ ^ l A work that has form is clearly preferable to a work that has infonnation and Burke wams the artist to be careful lest "form" he overwhehned by "infonnation." "The hypertrophy of the psychology of infonnation is accompanied by the ccffresponding atrophy of the psychology erf fonn."i2 2 The arousal and satisfaction of an appetite is, according to Burke, a "natural" process which is continually pleasurable. We do not find such pleasure in a continuous stream of new information. It is interesting to note that "natural" is a word which appears frequently in Burke's discussion of Form. Although psychologists and philosophers may argue over whether forms are "innate or resultant," Burke declares that all is settled so far as a work oi art is concemed, 123 They (forms) "simply flre."i24 He says:
14 PIVOTAL TEBMS IN XENIOmi BCBKE

". . . when one turns to the production or enjoyment of a work of art, a formal equipment is already present. . . ."125 These "innate forms" are the " 'potentiality for being interested by certain processes or arrangements'" or the "'feeling for such arrangements of subject-matter as produce crescendo, contrast, comparison, balance, repetition, disclosure, reversal, contraction, expansion, magnification, series, and so on.'"^* He concludes: "So the formal aspects of art appeal in that they exercise formal potentialities of ihe reader."i2 7 IQ tjjjs use of the term Burke implies that Form is both stimulus and response, both a conscious and unconscious process; it is "inherent in the very germplasm of man."^28 In his "Lexicon Rhetcaicae" he discusses five aspects of Form: syllogistic progression, qualitative progression,- repetitive iacm, conventional form, and minor or incidental fonn.^^s jjg illustrates: . . . the Unes in Othello beginning, 'Soft you, a ward or two before you go,' and ending 'Seized by the throat the undrcumdzed dog and smote him thus (stabs himself/ well exemplify the vigorous presence of all five aspects of

form, as this suicide is the logical outcome of his predicament (syllogistic progression); it fits the general mood of gloomy forebodings which has fallen upon ns (qualitative progression); the speech has about it that impetuosity and picturesqueness we have learned to associate with Othello (repetitive form) it is very decidedly a concluaon (conventional form), and in its develc^ment it is a tiny plot in itself (minor The main function of Form is to allow us to gratify appetites. What are the condUions oi form as appeal? Apparently the reindividuating of the psychological imiversals. Psychological universals would appear not just as balance, contrast, and the like, but also as imiversal situations, fundamental attitudes, typical actions, patterns of experience, and the like. For as Burke comments "any particular cluster of conditions will involve the recurrent emotions . . . and fundamental attitudes. . . ."^^^ Since the artist's symbols and the experiences they represent are not precisely the same as those of the audiences, die reader reinterprets and perscmalizes the symbol. However, the kind of individuation on which Burke dwells leiers to the artist's particularization of the crescendo in any of the myriad aspects possible to human experience, localizing or channeling it according
J. BLANKENSHIP, E. MUEtPHT, AKD M. ROSENWASSEB 15

to chance details of his own life and vision, Individuation and reindividuation are possible because of innate formal potentialities. In Counter-Statemera, Binrke maintains that style is a constituent of Form: ", . . those elements of surprise and suspense are subtilized, carried down into writing of a line or a sentence, until in aU its smallest details the work bristles with disclosures, contrasts, restatements . . . , in short all that complex wealth of minutiae which in their iine-for-line aspect we call style and in their broader outlines we call form."!^^ He explicitly relates style, "ingratiation" and "inducement" to "identification." As "ingratiation," style is "an attempt to gain favor by hypnotic or suggestive process of 'saying the right thing'"!3^ and an "elaborate set of prescriptions and proscriptions for 'doing the right thing'. . . ."is* We see the relationship between identification and style when Btirke says that one 'hypnotizes" a man by "ringing the bells of his response."! 3 5 Fmther, style is the "ritualistic projection or completion of manners, . . ."i^^ It has to do with "custom"; with the "meeting of obKgations," with "what goes with what."!^''^ Biu-ke explains in some detail that when a person cannot "justify" himself by spontaneously using such "congregational" responses as ingratiation and inducement, he will likely be driven to justify himself through "segregational" attitudes and acts. The "loss of style" results not only in "segregational" acts and attitudes but it reinforces completion and violence and fosters superiority rather than solidarity, i ^ ^ Burke further explains that style can have its own ldnd of "deterioration." He observes: . . . in societies greatly marked by class prerogatives, style itself tends to become a competitive implement, as a privileged group may cultivate style to advertise its privileges and perpetuate them. Style then ceases to be propitiatory. It becomes boastful. It is no longer a mode of ingratiation, but a device for instilling fear, like the

emperor's insignia. {Such fear is generally called respect.) As style asstimes this invidious function, there is a corresponding social movement from inducement toward dominance.!^* Another aspect of style appears to be "manner" which in Counter-Statement is defined as "power without monotony" and is described as a "restriction of the means by which formal and Symbolic saliency is obtained."!*" It diffuses rather than restricts the means by which the "bells of response" are rung. The notion
16 PIVOTAL TERMS IN KENNETH BUBKE

of manner as restrictive is developed in Attitudes Toward History: "Style is the ritualistic pro|eotion or cotnpletion of manners (as when the iieed of 'push' and 'drive' in selling attairis its stylistic counterpart la the breezy hero)."^*^

From Pivotal

Terms In the Early Works of Kenneth Burke Jane Blankenship, Edward Murphy, and Marie Rosenwasser, Philosophy & Rhetoric, 1974

Four Master Tropes

They are a) metaphor, perspective by incongruity; b) metonymy, a reduction; c) synecdoche, representation; and d) irony, dialectic. The basic strategy of metonymy is "to convey some incorporeal or intangible state in terms of the corporeal or tangible. E.g., to speak of 'the heart' rather than 'the emotions.'" (Gram, p. 506) In regard to synecdoche, see "representative anecdote." As to irony, this cryptic statement: "Irony arises when one tries, by the interaction of terms upon one another, to produce a development which uses all the terms." (Gram, p. 512) Another word for "symbolic." KB considers synecdoche to be the basic figure of speech, and, of course, "representative anecdote" is synecdoche, as are "the fetish," the "scapegoat," "the name." Form may be synecdochic, in that one episode may represent all. (PLF, pp. 23-28)

From Kenneth Burke: An Annotated Glossary of His Terministic Screen and a "Statistical" Survey of His Major Concepts, in RSQ

Representative Anecdote

It is the beginning of dramatism. It contains its own vocabulary and its own assumptions. Insofar as it is representative, it will be adequate to the analysis of a situation. Thus, an anecdote about how animals behave is not representative for humans because animals don't talk. In fact, KB takes drama to be the representative anecdote for human motives. (Gram, pp. 59-61) See also "synecdoche." From Kenneth Burke: An Annotated Glossary of His Terministic Screen and a "Statistical" Survey of His Major Concepts, in RSQ

From Brummett, Representative Anecdote, CSMC 1984

Perspective by Incongruity

Further, Burke's early works cannot be underetood without some rrference to the methodology that informs them. In "perspective by incongruity" Burke has a method that extends "the use of a term by taking it from the context in which it [is] habitually used and applying it to another.''^ Such planned incongruity provides "a method for gauging situations by verbal 'atom cracking.' " i" In it one deliberately wrenches loose a word belonging customarily to a certain category and applies it to a different category. Thus, we come to form new classifications and realignmraits.ii We can "characterize events frcun a myriad shifting points of view. . . ."^^ Wg can see more possibilities, see new rdatiooships, crack old myths, decrease rigidity and increase fluidity. 13 Via this process of conversion and rebirth, of "cutting across the bias," we come to have "a new angle of vision."^* Perspective by inooogniity is so essential to Burke's method that he recommends: . . . planned incongruity should be deliberately cultivated for the purpose of experimentally wrenching apart all those molecular combinations of adjective and noun, substantive and verb, which stiU remain with us. It should subject language to the same 'cracking' process that chemists now use in their refining of oil.^^ Metaphor is essential for the functioning of a Perspective by Incongruity because: . . . the metaphor always has about it precisely this revealing of hitherto unsuspected connectives which we may note in the progressions erf a dream. It appeals by exemplifying relationships between objects which our customary vocabulary has ignored.^ PhUosophers are urged to seek out the "master metaphors" they are employing as the cue to organizing their work and to say why they chose the metaphors they did choose. ^'^ Of his ovsm work he observes: We choose the 'man as communicant' metaphor, for instance, because we feel that it brings out the emphases needed for handling preseait necessities. We modify it with the dead, mixed metaphor 'bureaucratization of the imaginative' because we think that pec^le thereby are kept from being too sensitively exposed to disillusionment as they are affironted by the let down' that necessarily occurs when a tender imaginative-Utopian possibility is implemented by being given its practical embodiment in 'this imperfect world.'i*
4 PIVOTAL TERMS IN KENNETH B13BKE

Every perspective. Burke argues, requires a metaphor, explicit or implicit, for its organizational base.^* Perspective by Incongruity is the method of his early work. It is the process by which he invents the dramatistic metaphor that is fully developed in his later works. The term itseK disappears in Burke's later workin large measure precisely because it has birthed the metaphor around which Burke centers his work.

From Pivotal

Terms In the Early Works of Kenneth Burke Jane Blankenship, Edward Murphy, and

Marie Rosenwasser, Philosophy & Rhetoric, 1974

The Comic and Tragic Frame
The Comic The comic frame "should enable people to^ b observers of themselves, while acting. Its ultimate would not be passiveness, but maximum consciousness. One would 'transcend' himself by noting his own foibles." (ATH, p. 171) The comic unifies acceptance and rejection; it is actually another word for "humanist." From Kenneth Burke: An Annotated Glossary of His Terministic Screen and a "Statistical" Survey of His Major Concepts, in RSQ ATH = Burke, Attitudes Toward History

From Christiansen and Hanson, Comedy as Cure for Tragedy, QJS 1996

Principle of Perfection

Burke (1966) suggests that the "principle of perfection is central to the nature of language as motive" (p. 16). The mere desire to assign something its "proper name" reflects the principle of perfection in language, but what is most "perfectionist" is the impulse to "define the situation" (Burke, 1966, p. 16). With respect to Packwood's alleged misconduct, the "situation" is defined by his "victims" in such a way that it also develops strength from other primary aspects of symbolicity. For instance, the negative helps to define the situation in terms of the moral and ethical transgressions acted out by the Senator, which attain their perfection in distinctions between choices of "Yes" (shall), and "No" (shall not). As the negative generates ethical distinctions, it also defines victims as those who are violated in the transgression implied by the no-command and with the rejection of the transgressor. The negative also produces antithesis, which adds clarity to the issue of sexual misconduct in the specific case. Though he claimed to be unaware of his impropriety, the accusers identified Packwood's advances as unwanted and as something they uniformly "opposed." Antithesis also encourages and reinforces unification through victimage, either by scapegoat or through Packwood's own mortification. At this point the Senator's rhetorical subterfuge emerges in the form of what Burke (1984) calls "the intermediate absolutizing step" (p. 292), to "redefine" the material situation in ultimate terms of justice and equality. In doing so, Packwood shifts his act of "self-sacrifice" to one of self-preservation by substituting his victims for his "guilt." But in this strategic reversal there is no catharsis or escape. As a result, the group of terms implicit in Burke's principle of perfection can be used by a critic to piece together the Senator's rhetorical subterfuge as discourse that offers the ultimate motivations of justice and equality to escape self-sacrifice and promote selfpreservation. As such the Senator's striving for perfection is more ironic than honorific. He applies the principles of justice and equality to sustain injustice and inequality, and sacrifices those he claimed to serve in order to save himself. Packwood opened his "rhetorical subterfuge" with an act of mortification that signaled an apparent willingness to sacrifice. His violation appeared to stem from two primary yet conflicting functions of the political hierarchy, solace and control (Burke, 1976). From his exclusive position he offered solace to women in their political struggle for equality and justice. But insofar as they depended on his "exclusiveness" for their success, he could "control" them. Burke admonishes that such conditions carry potential for "hierarchal psychosis" (or, inner contradiction), characterized by a lost or distorted sense of propriety from using the principles of justice and equality to sustain the opposite. Thus, the hierarchal psychosis can be identified as the conditions under which the victims could either accept this control of authority or lose the solace that only authority can provide. The concept of "hierarchal psychosis" involves the ironic, though natural tendency of people in authority to protect special interests in ways that ultimately impair those interests. With Packwood, the way he "supported" women's causes (a women's rights advocate accused of sexually harassing the women he supported) could weaken the efforts, harm the integrity, or at least tarnish the image of those causes. In this regard, Burke suggests that

the most important yet most difficult aspect of language and social order to explain is the way in which a hierarchy's very existence encourages undue acquiescence among those victims who otherwise could be viewed as its most useful critics. This acquiescence may not result as much from "over-caution" or "obsequiousness" as it does from "the network of 'properties' that spontaneously accumulate about a given order" (Burke, 1984, p. 291). And as each property contributes to the principle of hierarchic order, which is ultimate and therefore "perfect," the hierarchal psychosis that interweaves social order with motives of guilt and victimage inevitably arises. This essay has examined Bob Packwood's rhetorical subterfuge within the context of a dramatistic process that revealed how the Senator identified with the social order; what his motivation and attitude reflected about his role in the social order; and what he viewed as the problem with, and for himself in, the social order. From this examination three conclusions can be drawn. First, the "principle of perfection" appears to drive both Packwood's sexual misconduct and his fragmented response to the misconduct charges. In his initial statement printed by The Washington Post, Packwood reinforced social attitudes about sexual misconduct by regretting that his behavior appeared as such and transcended allegations by emphasizing his record as a women's rights activist. At his news conference, he admitted in a bolstering strategy that cynicism of public officials was at an all-time high, and therefore officials should be accountable and responsible for their conduct. Through such public statements Packwood identified with the social order, but by saying his behavior was not only unintentional but in fact misinterpreted (motives were pure), he evaded responsibility and accountability for his conduct while shifting the blame onto his accusers. For a second conclusion, Packwood transcended the charges by constructing a counter drama and substituting it for the original one. Insofar as victimage offers a way to right a wrong, it also implies some logical conclusion, or ultimate reduction, that can perfect vicarious victims, villains and enemies as it interweaves the subtle complexities of hierarchal psychosis with matters of justice. As the dilemmas faced by Packwood's accusers arose from the hierarchal psychosis that Burke identifies, they illustrated how the negativistic principle of guilt combines with hierarchy, perfection, and substitution, to create victimage.[7] After his act of mortification, Packwood shifted to a substitute sacrifice of women with refutation and diversion strategies from his own "social exclusiveness."[8] As an act of substitute victimage, then, Burke's (1976) notion of "vicarious sacrifice" (p. 15) further illuminates the case. The vicarious sacrifice is a fulfillment of victimage through a symbolic or "substitute" scapegoat. Since substitution is fundamental to symbol systems, Burke believes that vicarious sacrifice can be viewed as a way to ultimate rewards. But by substituting his "victims" for his own mortification, the Senator protected his career by sacrificing those he dedicated his career to help. His motivation thus reflected a self-serving public servant driven by what Burke (1966) calls an "ironic 'perfection' "(p. 18). By appealing to and subverting his accusers, Packwood failed to redeem himself and sent a contradictory message that protected inequality in the name of equality. But is this not one way that hierarchy preserves order? Though he could have served the cause of women's

rights through his mortification, he abandoned his own struggle for a "gender neutral" order and instead became a symbol of "hierarchal psychosis." That is, his apology seemed to be so "full of false promises" (Duncan, 1989, p. 132) that it was not only questionable as an apology, but it served as further cause to question the political order as a whole. Over time, the discourse as vicarious sacrifice revealed that he was willing to abandon those upon whom he had based his political reputation to preserve his reputation. Then in an effort to be responsible as well as accountable he held his accusers out to be both. A final conclusion is that Burke's theory allows a critic to pull together fragmented discourse into a unified rhetorical effort. The application of Burke's theory to Packwood's rhetoric reveals that the cluster of terms implicit in the principle of perfection can contribute to the critical understanding of fragmented texts in contemporary culture. Thus, even in a world of contingencies, ultimate motivations can be identified that both compel and shape human discourse. However, with the ironic sense of "striving for perfection" that the Senator depicted, the ultimate principles of justice and equality seem instead to promote their opposites. In this way, a condition of hierarchal psychosis arises wherein the Senator inevitably hurts the ones whom he loves. This became the prevailing irony in the Packwood case, to be perfected by "the way" in which he loved the ones he loved. One limitation of this perspective is that it views the condition of hierarchal psychosis in real life as inevitably tragic, for only in Burke's ideal sense of irony, one that is based on a fundamental kinship with the enemy, can the deranged sense of hierarchal psychosis be controlled (1969a).
This study not only shows how Senator Packwood "suffered" from hierarchal psychosis, it suggests that he can be saved by it as well. After nearly three years the Senator continued to evade the charges and divert public attention toward his accusers with threats.[9] In 1995, after a woman said he grabbed and kissed her when she was a seventeen-year-old intern, he responded: "I have so far avoided public confrontation with the accusers. It's not in my nature to lob personal attacks, and I'm doing my best to keep a lid on my powder" (.Lane & O'Connor, p. D1). To Senator Barbara Boxer, such a statement was merely another "attempt to intimidate her [exintern] and other potential victims who may come forward" (Lane & O'Connor, p. D1). Again this is one way that a hierarchy's very existence can encourage undue acquiescence among those who might otherwise be its most capable critics. The Senator hoped to end all criticism in September of 1995, by deciding to resign with honor. In doing so, he identified with hierarchy and even reflected its tendency toward derangement. Further study of his resignation as another subterfuge may show that after responding to the misconduct charges he continued to deny responsibility by portraying himself as a victim of those he honored and served.

From Rhetorical subterfuge and `the principle of perfection': Bob Packwood's response to sexual... By: Moore, Mark P., Western Journal of Communication, 10570314, Winter1996, Vol. 60, Issue 1 Database: Communication & Mass Media Complete Scapegoatting Kenneth Burke, A Grammar of Motives (New York: Prentice Hall, 1945), 406.

In A Grammar of Motives, Burke contends that, Criminals either actual or imaginary may . . . serve as [curative] scapegoats in a society that purifies itself by moral indignation in condemning them.44 This is not to suggest, however, that those seeking to ritualistically cleanse themselves of guilt can simply blame a chosen party. The scapegoat mechanism is a complex process that entails three distinctive stages: (1) an original state of merger, in that the iniquities are shared by both the iniquitous and their chosen vessel; (2) a principle of division, in that elements shared in common are being ritualistically alienated; (3) a new principle of merger, this time in the unification of those whose purified identity is defined in dialectical opposition to the sacrificial offering.45 For a sacrificial vessel to perform the role of vicarious atonement, it must be, at first, profoundly consubstantial with . . . those who would be cured by attacking it.46 It must represent their iniquities, because symbolic forms that manage guilt can only be successful if the audience is guilty of the sins portrayed in the discourse.47 Though the very earliest news reports about the hatred and violence directed at Shepard had identified Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson as the main perpetrators, those same news reports cast the two as representative of both their local and national communities. From Ott and Aoki, THE POLITICS OF NEGOTIATING PUBLIC TRAGEDY: MEDIA FRAMING OF THE MATTHEW SHEPARD MURDER. P. 490
When one forms a role, this involves rejection or sloughing off of another role, which is why we get the scapegoat, the vessel for unwanted evil. He can be made "worthy" of sacrifice (a) legalistically (as an offender against legal or moral justice); (b) fatalistically (as in the case of a plot which makes a character a marked man); (c) by poetic justice (as when the scapegoat is "too good for this world").

(PLF, p. 35) From Kenneth Burke: An Annotated Glossary of His Terministic Screen and a "Statistical" Survey of His Major Concepts, in RSQ