Artifact 3: Burke On Rhetoric: The Democratic Aproach

In the first half of the Kenneth Burke reading, the author really defines what he believes to be the essence of Humans. Or in other words, what he believes are the human motivations and limitations. For instance, he believes humans are rotten with perfections, and that we have separated ourselves from nature by tools of our own making.

I took a lot more away from the second half of the reading we did on Burke because it flowed more readily and seemed clearer to me. One aspect that Burke mentions is a foundation for Rhetorical speech is the freedom of the audience to choose for themselves. Or in other words an ability to have an alternative option ulterior to the arguer who is speaking. If a tyrant gives a speech in which he offers a proposition to an audience who will have to obey either way, he is not truly using rhetoric.

Burke insists that the best rhetoricians capitalize on their argument by identifying with the crowd they are among. As Socrates said its easy to praise Athenians among Athenians. You can accomplish this by speaking and acting sympathetically to the ways and practices of the majority of the audience you speak to. Whether this be tone, language, subject, etc. One way of effectively arguing with identification if the audience is sympathetic to your cause is by directly contrasting all of your opponents arguments and logical appeals. This way you can put words in their mouth and transform their speech with opposites.