Kenneth Burke on his Sources

Kenneth Burke on his Sources

I had borrowed from three sources : an early nineteenth-century theorist of language, a neurolo- gist, and a philosophical genius of great insight, tinged with madness. 

The theorist of language was Jeremy Bentham, particularly his "Table of the Springs of Action," in which he sets up three kinds of what he calls "appellatives," one class "neutral," the other two "censorial." The two kinds of "censorial" terminologies name a given action either "eulogistically" or "dyslogistically," that is, implying praise or blame respectively, and "having, without the form, the force of an assumption." He aimed to replace opposite kinds of "censorial" terms with a corresponding "neutral" set that would set the conditions for a more rational attitude towards the fourteen kinds of pleasures and pains into which he divided the realm of human interests. 

For instance, it would be "neutral" to speak of thirst, hunger, the need for food, the desire for food, etc. It would be "eulogistic" to speak of "the pleasure of the social board" or "the love of good cheer." It would be "dyslogistic" to designate the same interest by some such terms as "gluttony, voracity, gormandizing, sottishness." Or an "interest" that might "neutrally" be called "religiousness" might be "eulogistically" called "devotion, holiness, sanctity," and might "dyslogistically" be called "superstition, bigotry, fanaticism, sancti- moniousness, hypocrisy." My melodramatic fantasy would obviously apply Bentham's design in a way quite alien to his scheme for a "utilitarian" reform of language, since all motives of the foreground, be they neutral, eulogistic, or dyslogistic, would be represented with dyslogistic implications in the pantomime of the quasi-prehistoric background.

From COMMUNICATION AND THE HUMAN CONDITION edited by Lee Thayer