On Burkean Form

Cleaning Out My Journals

Christopher R. Darr (2005) Civility as rhetorical enactment: The JohnAshcroft “debates” and Burke's theory of form, Southern Communication Journal, 70:4,316-328, DOI: 10.1080/10417940509373337To

Burke's (1968) definition of form emphasizes that communicators create and then satisfy 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 collaborate 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 rhetorical—it 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 "Macbeth'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 lightness 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 involves "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 debate—if 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, 2000). "Categorical expectations" will exist in the minds of auditors before the speeches begin.