Answer for Week 2/2-2/6

Olivia Hernandez

2/4/09

CMJR 205

Rhetoric Response for the Week of 2/2-2/6

In response to Elaine’s question about the Kenneth Burke article:

“ 1. After this, Burke discusses the contradictions found among proverbs that I found to be rather interesting. If proverbs are meant to serve as methods for dealing with a given situation, isn’t it reasonable that such contradictions exist? For example, following a proverb that aims to provide a helpful hint to reach success will result in either a success or a failure. Let’s say that the person did indeed fail after first obeying the helpful proverb. The person might then seek a proverb of consolation that might encourage a second attempt. We, as humans, are not successful in all of our endeavors and therefore seek words of encouragement, consolation, and incentive to match any situation we find ourselves in. It is natural that proverbs are contradictory, then, because we require a number of different attitudes to complement what we humans experience. We are constantly re-working our strategies in order to achieve our goals, which thus create the necessity of a range of proverbs that we may tailor to our emotional needs. What do you think of my interpretation of Burke’s ideas?”

This interpretation of Burke’s essay does a great job of delving deeper into the information and ideas that he presents about proverbs. I agree with Elaine’s introspective assessment of how humans use proverbs.

Burke speaks at length at his idea of proverbs as much debated “strategies.” In this essay that attempts to explain the “sociology of literature”, Burke starts with proverbs as a way of examining how the medicinal “literature” of proverbs can be socially reflective. He attempts to categorize the emotions that proverbs capture. “There is realism for promise, admonition, solace, vengeance, foretelling, instruction, charting, all for the direct bearing that such acts have upon matters of welfare,” Burke writes in page 296, emotional welfare.

Burke seems to subscribe to the notion that proverbs themselves create the human condition that seeks them, almost like the Lakoff and Johnson we read last week about metaphors transcending their status as literary devices and becoming the stage that the situation is played out on.

Perhaps we act on one proverb, knowing that we can always find a separate proverb to catch us as we fall, proverbs can guide us and then save us both in the situation and emotionally, which seems to be what Elaine is implying.

Elaine thinks of proverbs as devices that humans “tailor to our emotional needs.” This is why proverbs can contradict each other, because human emotions contradict each other. We can be needy in one moment and feel fiercely independent the next. How could we exist within the confines that these proverbs and metaphors create in our society if they were not contradictory enough to include our broadest range of emotions and needs?

Burke identifies proverbs as “strategies for dealing with situations”, which I think more than supports Elaine’s interpretation of these proverbs of both motivation and saving grace. This certainly also fits into my own view of proverbs in our interactive society.