Stability, Change, and Symbolic Remainder: A Burkean Critique of Actually-Existing Symbolic Shift

• In Event: Critiquing, Engaging, and Transforming the Social: Burke and the Strategic Use of Symbols

Abstract

During profound social change, the symbolic systems by which we organize our lives become sites of rhetorical action. Public sphere theory advocates the replacement of symbolic systems through the ascension of a new public. Burke suggests that social change is accomplished by altering only the content of our symbolic grammars. Drawing from and extending these views, I argue the dynamics between resonance and circulation offer a more nuanced model of actually existing symbolic change.

Author

• Thomas Dunn, Univ of Pittsburgh