CHAPTER SIX
The Metaphorical Basis of Symbolic Action
6.0 Introduction
The purpose of this concluding chapter is to examine to what degree current cognitive theory supports Burke's theory of symbolic action and to see how Burke's thinking can be refined and extended in order to answer the questions posed at the end of Chapter Five. As we concluded in the last chapter, Burke's theory of symbolic action is plausible, but limited. His systemic theory of symbolic action has been overlooked because the mechanistic hegemony kept others from seeing its value and capitalizing on it. Now that a systemic approach (e.g., schema theory and Connectionist models) has replaced mechanistic theories of mind, we can extend Burke's theory, particularly with respect to the nature and function of symbolic action (and the structure of the quality space system that gives rise to it).
One major limitation of Burke's theory of symbolic action is that he does not adequately define symbolic action. This chapter will define symbolic action as the operation of the quality space for persuasive ends. (Persuasion is shared evaluation, i.e., the schema selected by the speaker to characterize a situation is accepted by the hearer.) Furthermore, this chapter will argue that such symbolic action is generally accomplished primarily through metaphor, since metaphor is the most common and efficient way of evoking and modifying a schema.
In short, this chapter seeks to use recent research in cognitive science to answer the questions raised at the end of the last chapter: What is symbolic action? What is the nature of the system (i.e., quality space) that it is grounded in? What is the function of quality space? After attempting to answer these questions, the final section will assess the ramifications for rhetoric of accepting a systemic theory of symbolic action, suggesting that such a theory could provide a kind of unified field theory for rhetoric, in that it could show how rhetorical strategies work and interrelate. Because the argument is long and draws on a number of disciplines, an overview may be useful.
Section 6.1 will show why the mechanistic paradigm had to be superseded before metaphor and symbolic action could be explained. We noted in previous chapters the vociferous criticisms made by both Burke and Bertalanffy against mechanistic, reductionist methodologies such as positivism and behaviorism. Those methodologies had limited utility in the physical sciences, and even less for studying high level systems. Such methods have now been abandoned, even in physics, in favor of more systemic approaches (Bertalanffy 1975a 6-7). Chaos Theory, for example, came about when anomalous data accumulated to the point where the mechanistic paradigm had to be abandoned. A similar shift is occurring in the human sciences, where, as we have seen, the mechanistic assumptions were especially debilitating. The anomaly encountered in the human sciences was categorization. George Lakoff, as we shall see below, noticed that a number of researchers in various fields were finding that the traditional conception of category was inadequate, which led to a kind of paradigm shift towards more systemic and less mechanistic approaches--Connectionism and experiential realism. Connectionism is the name applied to a loose confederation of cognitive scientists and artificial intelligence researchers who are using a "neurally-inspired" analog computer model. This model may be useful in understanding the quality space system, and will be examined below.
During the hegemony of the mechanistic paradigm, the mind as slate model gave way to the steam engine, to the telephone switchboard and finally to the digital computer. (Each of these is a more sophisticated model, but still retains a mechanistic, passive conception of cognition.) But after a fertile period, the digital computer model is now being seen as a dead-end. The alternative Connectionist model is an analog computer which turns out to behave similarly, in some respects, to brains. Connectionists are coming to realize that thinking is primarily analogical and categorical, as Burke and Richards have long contended. With the demise of the mechanistic paradigm, at last an adequate model for Burkean theory (and quality space) is coming into being.
Section 6.2 will show how Connectionism provides a non-mechanistic (i.e., a systemic) model to guide speculation about the structure and function of quality space. This section will argue that its overall function, as Burke stated, is evaluation. It accomplishes this through classification. Connectionist models have abilities to generalize and classify, abilities which biology and psychology suggest are indispensable. Even more provocative, Connectionist models can learn, and have many of the strengths and weaknesses of brains. Connectionist models, for example, have learned to create the past tense and to read aloud in English. These models give support to the ideas that thinking is largely a matter of categorization and analogy.
The third section (6.3) will examine the role of categorization and metaphor in cognition. Here we will begin to incorporate schema theory, which holds that the mind is composed of small interactive packets of information. Lakoff has used schema theory in his studies of metaphor and categorization. Section Three will conclude that the function of quality space is evaluation by means of categorization. Symbolic action will be defined as the manipulation of quality space for a persuasive end. Essentially this is a matter of the speaker getting the hearer to apply the speaker's interpretative schema to a given situation (i.e., to categorize it the same way). The primary way of evoking a schema in a hearer for persuasive purposes is through metaphor.
In order for our hypothesis that symbolic action is the manipulation of quality space to be accepted, an account of the constituents of that system (schemas) and how they are transformed must be provided. Such an account is yielded by cognitive science in the form of schema theory, the basis of section 6.4. This section will use schema theory to answer the questions of what quality space is made of, how it is structured, and how it can become restructured. This section will posit that quality space is made up of schemas, skeletal structures of knowledge distilled from experience. These schemas allow sense to be made of incoming stimuli; for example, a thrown ball is identified by a trajectory schema. However, if a situation occurs that cannot be accounted for by an existing schema, the closest match must be found and modified for the purpose. This is the essence of metaphor: metaphor evokes a schema so that an amorphous entity can be seen in terms of one better understood. Such a metaphor categorizes an entity as a kind of thing, structuring perception, inference, attitude and action.
Section 6.5 explores the rhetorical ramifications of the theory sketched above. In discussing anything of importance, people must operate in the realm of the contingent. If a group cannot come up with a coherent and acceptable interpretation (i.e., a workable schema) of an important situation, an epistemological crisis can result. During such a crisis, typically a shaman (i.e., someone adept at manipulating the quality space) will emerge with a metaphor to make the world meaningful again. Studying such crises is important in understanding the quality space because a shaman will frequently fall back on basic metaphors (e.g., Hitler and Churchill) or create new metaphors (Roosevelt).
The dissertation will conclude with some directions for further research in rhetoric. The systemic theory of symbolic action provided here may develop into the rhetorical equivalent of a unified field theory, in that we may be able to go beyond a taxonomy of rhetorical strategies and account for how they work and interact. For example, the topoi can be viewed as inferences based primarily on bodily schemas, whereas enthymemes are those based on learned or cultural schemas. Identification, in the strict Burkean sense, is a metaphor in which the target and the donor are people. Furthermore, God-terms can be seen as the most highly placed, but also the most amorphous of schemas. Their amorphous nature allows them to provide an umbrella for many other schemas, so we begin to see how strategies can interact. The functional and interactive properties of the schemas underlying rhetorical strategies will be demonstrated with a brief analysis of a persuasive discourse sample, which will suggest the utility of a systemic theory of symbolic action and provide a starting point for subsequent research.
6.1 Contra Mechanism
We noted in the first chapter that because of the difficulty of reading Burke, and because many of his ideas were ahead of their time, his influence has been until relatively recently profound, but restricted. Burke's ideas were resisted for so long in part because they contradicted the mechanistic assumptions of the time. For many reasons, the mechanistic paradigm is currently being discarded, and systems thinking is becoming more acceptable in more and more fields. Mechanistic assumptions are being abandoned because the limits of their usefulness have been reached.49
The mechanistic ideas that excluded metaphor are currently being discarded by some linguists and cognitive scientists in favor of more systemic approaches. The scenario of the paradigm shift is remarkably Kuhnian: researchers find themselves confronted with problems with which the dominant paradigm cannot assist. The researcher will try an alternative approach, which is generally considered somewhere between idiosyncratic and professional suicide. Then, various divergent approaches are recognized as convergent. This happened with General Systems Theory, and more recently in Chaos Theory (meteorologists, physicists, mathematicians, biologists and economists finding similarities in phenomena once considered random). Chaos, Catastrophe Theory, Self-Organizing Systems, Connectionism, and schema theory have different foci, but overlap significantly: all are dealing with the same sort of problems (i.e., organized complexity), share certain assumptions, and all have abandoned the traditional mechanistic, linear paradigm; thus they are all evidence of the paradigm shift. In cognitive science, for example, Walter Schneider asserts that Connectionism is indeed a paradigm shift, since it has loosened the rules for normal research, has led to the isolation of anomalies and theory to account for them which has a degree of overlap with existing theories (Pfeifer xviii-xix).
We noted above that linguist George Lakoff has noticed such a shift taking place after many researchers in the human sciences discovered that the classical account of categories is inadequate (i.e., anomalous). The work by Eleanor Rosch suggested that categories are not clearly enumerated sets of physical features, as classical theory had supposed. To this "objectivist" tradition, Lakoff opposes "experiential realism": thought is embodied, imaginative, has gestalt properties and the mind is ecological (1987 xiv-xv).50 This new paradigm has led Lakoff to work with cognitive scientists, philosophers, artificial intelligence researchers and others in developing Connectionism (which is in some respects a descendent of General Systems Theory). This movement has led to radical rethinking in linguistics, cognitive science and artificial intelligence. The new paradigm has strong affinities with the new paradigm in the "hard" sciences, primarily the adoption of a systemic approach.
6.2 Connectionism
Connectionism challenges the dominant mechanistic paradigm in artificial intelligence and psychology established after the Second World War (though, as our historical survey in the introductory chapter shows, its roots go much further back). After Donald Hebb's work on neurons in the late Forties, there was a great deal of interest in creating artificial intelligence, since the on-off output of a neuron could be mimicked by a binary computer. This spawned classic cognitive science: the brain is a logic machine, dealing in rules, symbols and syntax; this is a top-down approach (i.e., the rules have to be given to the computer).
During the Sixties, this linear and digital approach competed with the analog approach, which is bottom-up (i.e., the machine learns to associate an input with an output, which leads to rule-like behavior). One of the proponents of the analog approach, Frank Rosenblatt, made some rather ambitious claims. These claims were countered by equal zeal in 1969, when M. Minsky and S. Papert's Perceptrons buried the bottom-up, analog approach. But as the initially promising digital approach is encountering limits of its own, the analog approach is currently regaining many adherents. The new analog machines constructed by Connectionists employ a very different architecture and method, parallel distributed processing ("parallel" because the system works on the whole network at once, "distributed" because no neuronal unit carries out a function alone, and "processing" because the machine "thinks") (Allman 1989 101).
Connectionist models have received a good deal of attention lately because they can do some tasks well that digital computers do badly. Moreover, they work in ways that appear to be similar to brains. In addition, they satisfy many of the requirements that biological evolution presents. A. Clark states that real brains must be able to do real-time sensory processing, integrate various sense modalities, deal with conflicting data, and be able to cope with a constantly changing competitive environment (62-3). In short, a brain must be thrifty and robust. Furthermore, Clark theorizes that brains must be capable of recognition, analog reasoning from experience, generalization, graceful degradation, and have prototype, completion and default capabilities. (Higher level functions of brains include curiosity, play, modelling of self as well as environment, recognition of social rank and the ability to predict and control the actions of others) (73).
Connectionist models do in fact have some of these attributes: they are robust, error-resistant, good at recognition, generalization, completion, and finding prototypes. It is not unreasonable to expect more complex models will acquire more sophisticated emergent properties. It should be noted, however, that such models are "neurally-inspired," and not intended as models of what real brains do. For example, there is little evidence to support the idea that the brain engages in back-propagation, a technique which has been used to speed learning of Connectionist models. However, there is even less evidence that the brain is a machine manipulating abstract strings of symbols.
There are a number of reasons for accepting the hypothesis that a brain is not a computational machine: in brains there is no distinction between hardware and software, no central processor; memory is spread throughout. The brain is not programmed with a set of rules. Rather, brains create models distilled from experience. A computer does not have such experience and could not use it if it did (Carbonell and Minton 406). While a digital computer can find an exact match, it is not good at finding a close match. Moreover, searches in digital computers are arduous in that they are serial; the more data, the longer it takes. In analog computers, on the other hand, increasing data decreases search time (i.e., information becomes easier to retrieve). In addition, analogue computers are good at finding approximate matches. A digital computer is very good at computation and formal logic, though humans (and neural networks) are not.
Neural nets have important advantages over conventional digital computers in that they are more robust (i.e., are more error resistant and self-correcting), and can assimilate conflicting information. Digital computers are very good at algorithmic tasks, but they tend to use brute force, sometimes performing thousands of operations to carry out comparatively simple tasks. Brain neurons, by contrast are rather slow, yet they can carry out complex tasks rather quickly (hence the famous one hundred step constraint). For this reason Connectionists hold that the brain must be operating on a different principle than conventional serial computers: massive parallelism.
Aside from their resemblance to brains, another reason to consider Connectionist neural networks as a good model for quality space is that they have some characteristics of the self-organizing systems we examined in the last chapter. Such nets demonstrate emergent properties that could not be predicted from their simple architecture: they are composed of simple but highly interconnected units. At first the connections are random, but over time groups that are repeatedly stimulated at the same time become associated (as in real brains, these groups can become specialized, and act as pathways which can eventually produce rule-like behavior).
One of the most remarkable properties of neural networks is that they learn rather like brains. As with brains, neural networks are analogical, rather than digital. Also like neurons in the brain, the "units" that make up the network send out a signal based on the excitatory or inhibiting inputs they receive. Not unlike brains, they can reorient themselves into a new configuration when the proper type of input occurs. Even more promising, neural networks can form categories and behave in a rule-like way (as opposed to digital computers, which, as we noted, have to be programmed with explicit rules). One Connectionist machine, NETtalk, has even learned to pronounce English, beginning with babbling and becoming increasingly more precise with little coaching (Allman 1989 183). Another network learned to form the past tense of English verbs, even initially overgeneralizing to produce "goed" instead of went, as children do (186 ).
NETtalk convincingly demonstrates that neural networks can recognize patterns and so can abstract categories (and thus make associations and generalizations). NETtalk reads with 95% accuracy because it can generalize; it hasn't merely memorized (Allman 185). Hinton and Sejnowski's Boltzman machine learned to categorize with similar accuracy. Such models can discover features of the world without being told what to look for and use that information to solve problems (189). Equally remarkable, Connectionist models can produce a generalization (prototype) after seeing only examples. For example, John Anderson made a prototype pattern, then distorted it. Only the distortions of the pattern were shown to the model; when the prototype was eventually shown to the model, it was classified the fastest (167-8). Humans too appear to learn prototype and basic level classifications quickly (Cf. Rosch).
Work with Connectionist models supports Burke's assertions that thought is primarily a matter of analogy and categorization. It is to these subjects that we must next turn our attention in order to understand how symbolic action works. Connectionist theory can provide a model and a general account of how symbolic action works. Because symbolic action is grounded in quality space, the first question to be addressed from the last chapter is: how does quality space function?
6.3 Analogical Thought and Categorization
A number of diverse theorists in various fields have asserted that categorization and analogical thought are fundamental. For example, Burke asserts that humans are a classifying animals. Similarly, Richards claimed that all thinking is sorting (30). A number of researchers, particularly in anthropology, hold that classification is essential to the creation of meaning: "When the classifications of social life are gone . . . there is no pollution or purity, nothing edible or inedible, credible or incredible. There is no more meaning" (Schwartz 154).
Somewhat paradoxically, anthropologist James Fernandez holds that metaphor is the heart of social life (58). Similarly, Burke claims that "it is precisely through metaphor that our perspective, or analogical extensions, are made--a world without metaphor would be a world without purpose" (1984b 194). Furthermore, analogical thought is often cited as basic to cognition, e.g., Lakoff and Johnson. Linguist Eva Kittay holds that analogical thought is indispensable for some types of problem solving (3-4, cf. also Collins and Gentner). The apparent contradiction or conflict is compounded when we realize that some theorists have argued that both categorization and analogical thought are fundamental: Burke, Richards, Beck and Lakoff.51 Clearly there is a relationship (some would even claim identity).
Those who have considered the relation between categorization and analogical thought almost invariably conclude that metaphor disrupts conventional categories. Cognitive psychologists tend to hold that metaphor is a temporary and minor disruption of literal thinking: Johnson and Malgady hold that seeing similarity is the same as forming a category in which two things are said to share membership (264). J.M. Kennedy holds that metaphor is a special purpose classification (119). Others assign metaphor a more profound and enduring cognitive function. These confirm Burke's assertion in Chapter Three that metaphor creates a disorder that leads to the restructuring of the cognitive system. P. Ricoeur echoes this idea when he states that metaphor is a categorical transgression that leads to the restructuring of a semantic field (1978 233. Cf. Kittay 22). Similarly Mark Johnson holds that metaphor is a cross-categorical experience; metaphor makes connections across domains (103). An account for specifically how this is accomplished will be essayed in the next section on schema theory. First, however, we must establish the centrality of metaphor in cognition.
6.3.1 Analogical Thought
In the traditional objectivist account of cognition, analogical thought was excluded as irrational--associated with emotion, imagination and madness. Formal logic was privileged. But as Rodney Needham points out, human beings do not reason using formal logic very often, or for very long, and they are not particularly good at it when they do use it (69). Human beings are, however, astonishingly good at making fast inferences using analogical thought. Carbonell and Minton define this ability as recognizing that a present situation has a resemblance to one experienced in the past and the use of that prior knowledge to structure an understanding of the current situation (407). Lakoff refines this a bit in stating that when a person encounters a phenomenon which is not structured, metaphor allows the importation of structure (303). And so Lakoff opposes objectivist theory in asserting that rational thought involves the use of metaphorical models (cf. also Johnson and Malgady 263). Such models make it possible to reason without logic. A great deal of what we know about memory also suggests that thinking is analogical.
We have seen a number of researchers in different fields assert the primacy of classification and/or metaphor in cognition. There must, therefore, be a connection between the two. In accordance with the General Systems Theory of the last chapter (which held that all systems must have devices for stability and flexibility), we can hypothesize that the connection is that metaphor increases the flexibility of the system of categorizations referred to here as quality space. The idea goes back at least to Kant (who was also important with reference to schemas and categorization), who held that metaphor is language's "intrinsic capacity to surpass its own [putative] limits" (Johnson 1981 62). Chaim Perelman asserts that metaphor allows the fusion of spheres (i.e., schema or semantic domains) and the transcendence of traditional classification (403-4). Current cognitive science supports the idea as well: Johnson and Malgady assert that metaphor augments the word/thing relationship, which leads to creativity (264). Kennedy also notes the role of metaphor in reclassification (119). Lakoff and Johnson (1981 123-4) and Lakoff (1987) note the imaginative use of metaphor to alter categorization for some purpose (371).
We are now in a position to state some provisional answers to the remaining questions posed at the end of Chapter Five: quality space is an evaluative system. This system evaluates by classifying incoming stimuli as a kind of situation. Thus thinking is more analogical recognition than calculation. The system not only functions analogically, it grows analogically in order to adapt to changing circumstances, as Burke maintained. Thus metaphor gives the system flexibility. For example, if a situation arises for which there is no matching schema in the system, the system will adapt a close match (or will import a schema from a different realm). Both of these strategies involve metaphor. Through metaphor, new schemas are formed and take their place in the system. Thus metaphor leads to the reconfiguration of quality space. This account is in accord with General Systems Theory, Chaos, schema, and Connectionist theories.
With this support from cognitive science, we can be sure that Burkean theory is a solid foundation on which to build. But though we have a model of quality space, we are not clear on its constituents (schema), nor do we have an account of how metaphor alters the system. The next section will try to establish what schemas are and more precisely how metaphor recategorizes quality space.
6.4 Schema Theory
In order to understand categorization, we must understand something about schema theory. Lakoff and many other linguists, anthropologists and cognitive scientists are investigating the categorical implications of schemas. Cognitive psychologist John Anderson, for example, defines schemas as "large complex units of knowledge that encode the typical properties of instances of general categories" (103). Linguist Eva Kittay also holds that schemas allow for the recognition of categories (22, 326). But what are schemas, and why is schema theory implicated in both metaphor and categorization?
Fundamentally, a schema is a mental code for representing experience, embodying rules and categories that make the flux of sense data meaningful. While all people have memories of experiences, schemas are not memories of specific experiences, rather they are abstracted from an experience or distilled from many. David Rumelhart defines a schema as "a kind of informal, private, unarticulated theory about the nature of events, objects and situations which we face" (Goleman 76). Rumelhart points out that schemas operate at all levels of abstraction: "Just as theories can be about the grand or the small, so schemas can represent knowledge at all levels--from ideologies and cultural truths to knowledge about what constitutes an appropriate sentence in our language to knowledge about what patterns [of sound] are associated with what letters of the alphabet" (77). More technically, schemas are self-testing, interacting knowledge structures which contain a network of interrelations (Rumelhart & Ortony 3).
The total set of schemas we have available for interpreting our world "in a sense constitutes our private theory of the nature of reality" (Goleman 76). So our minds and quality space can be regarded as a collection of schemas. Schema theory suggests that Burke was correct in asserting that analogical thought is primary. Many metaphor theorists believe that a metaphor acts as a template, placing the features of an entity or action under discussion into slots, which organizes thinking and perception. George Lakoff and Mark Turner regard schemas as skeletal forms of knowledge having slots which are then instantiated with elements from the situation at hand.52Schema theory is very useful for explaining why metaphors are perspectives, as Burke maintained. Because metaphor structures our understanding and guides our perception, it can also restructure our perception; any schema emphasizes some features and de-emphasizes others. As Max Black put it, with reference to his example "Man is a wolf": "Any human traits that can with undue strain be talked about in 'wolf language' will be rendered prominent, and any that cannot will be pushed into the background. The wolf-metaphor suppresses some details, emphasizes others--in short, organizes our view of man" (Johnson 75).
J. D. Sapir and J. Crocker, building on Burke, make the connection between metaphor and schema explicit: a metaphor is a hypothesis that makes some features relevant and others not, imposing a schema (127). These schemas are important in learning and in persuasion: we only have to use a schema once to subsequently use it effortlessly, unconsciously and automatically to structure our knowledge and to guide our inferences (cf. Collins and Gentner). In addition, once we have learned a schema, it can be modified, extended, and transported to different realms and problems. This is the essence of metaphor, analogical thought, and symbolic action. Comprehension is essentially the finding of a metaphorical schema that works, i.e., that can solve the problem at hand, or at least generate good evidence for itself (Rumelhart & Ortony 49). Using schema theory, we can be more precise about how metaphor works.
6.4.1 How Metaphor Works
Though the finer details differ with the approach, consensus exists on the broad outlines of how metaphor works: one problematic domain is restructured by a better understood domain; metaphor is a transfer of a mapping structure. In general, then, a situation arises which requires attention. The mind seeks a previous experience (i.e., tries to classify the situation as a kind of situation encountered earlier). If no match is found, the mind will search for a relevant previous situation with similar salient features. When found, a schema is applied to the new situation in order to see if it can account for it (i.e., can the situation be classified as an instance of the concept that the schema represents). If the schema suggests useful solutions, it will be tested (instantiated; that is, the elements and relations of the target domain will be structured by a kind of template from the donor domain). The search might seem arduous, but memory is associational (not random); moreover, Connectionist models have shown that networks are good at classification.53
Schema theory can be helpful in seeing how the search could be constrained. We just noted that Black stated that metaphor selects, emphasizes, suppresses and organizes. Schema theory may be able to demonstrate in some detail how metaphor performs these functions. When a metaphor applies a target schema structure to the donor domain, the features that fit will be selected and those that do not will be suppressed. Moreover, the schema organizes in that it shows the relations between features. In addition, some features will be given prominence and thus emphasized. This account is in accordance with interactional theories of metaphor, and in fact adds little. However, the process becomes clearer when case grammar is employed, as it is in Kittay and Lehrer (1981). Using case grammar makes sense if we accept that the principle use of language (or symbolic action, at any rate) is to evaluate human activities in the human world. That being the case, it useful and natural to default to concepts such as act, actor, instrument, goal etc. A schema can emphasize a feature by placing it in the important actor slot. Relations can also be accounted for by verb, manner, patient, and instrument slots. For example, if we take a common political metaphor, the Prime Minister wants to jumpstart the economy, the actor is the P.M., the patient is the car, the instrument is jumper-cables, the goal is to activate a temporarily stalled (but not fundamentally damaged) machine (these features are selected and emphasized by the jump-start schema and lead to certain inferences). What is suppressed is the complexity of an economy, and the fact that the source of the power is not specified (perhaps the source is another economy, thus implying free trade. Or the source might be the government treasury). Here we begin to see the strategic or rhetorical use of metaphor, which is the subject of our final section.
6.5 Implications for Rhetoric
How is metaphor used to restructure the interpretation of a situation? And how can the use of metaphor contribute to the reorientation of quality space? This can be most clearly seen by defining the "shaman function." The term is akin to Burke's "medicine man," but structuralist anthropological studies demonstrate that a shaman is concerned with reorientation, solving crises and resolving paradoxes. When an individual or a group encounters a situation that it cannot ignore, yet which resists classification, a shaman may be needed to avoid epistemological crisis. "Shaman" is a Siberian word widely used by anthropologists to refer to medicine men who treat physical and psychic illness largely through symbolic means.
As we shall employ the term, then, a shaman is anyone who is expert in manipulating the quality space of the culture, i.e., anyone who can make and break connections with great dexterity, and who can propose credible metaphors to make a situation understandable, meaningful and thus tolerable. In short, a shaman offers symbolic cures for social ills. The medicine dispensed by such a medicine man can be crude or refined, effective or poisonous (an ambiguity inherent in the word "pharmakon"). The shaman resolves paradoxes (and can in fact prove opposites: e.g., Hitler argued that German survival is good and noble, while Jewish survival is despicable), and offers credible interpretations of how the world works to people who have lost confidence in their own ability to create meaning. Invariably the new interpretation is based on a metaphor (cf. Darrand and Shupe).
The best time to observe the operation of the shaman is during an epistemological crisis for several reasons: first, because that is when the shaman's role is most crucial. Second, the methods employed are at their most crude and discernable. Third, during such a time, the most basic core metaphors and values of the culture are often invoked.
The biggest crisis in living memory was the Second World War, and in fact it was precipitated by an epistemological crisis. Adolf Hitler rallied a confused nation, mostly by taking a religious schema and turning it to political purposes, as Burke demonstrates in his brilliant analysis (1973 191-220). Hitler's opponent in England used primarily orientational metaphors (i.e., biologically grounded metaphors such as light/dark up/down, as in "broad sunlit uplands"). Franklin D. Roosevelt used analogy, many of which have become standard (e.g., naval blockade as quarantine). Metaphor is essential to political discourse because it takes something abstract and invisible (i.e., the current political situation) and makes it concrete.54 The brief analysis of persuasive discourse below will illustrate workings of the shaman function and the metaphorical basis of persuasion.
6.5.1 Application of a Systemic Theory of Symbolic Action
The theory essayed just above provides the beginning of a unified field theory for rhetoric. Despite his insight into form, Burke had to content himself with cataloging symbolic action strategies that are used in persuasion because cognitive science did not provide a systemic account of the structure and function of quality space. Now that we have such an account, we can begin to investigate how these rhetorical strategies work and support one another. Schema theory can help account for many of these strategies: an enthymeme is analogical reasoning grounded in cultural (i.e., learned) schemas, whereas topoi are grounded in more basic bodily schemas (orientational metaphors). God-terms such as family values and democracy are abstract schemas highly placed in quality space. Identification (in the strictest Burkean sense) is a metaphor in which both the donor and target are humans or groups of humans (identifying with someone higher in the quality space allows one to symbolically share status). Metaphor itself is the application of a well-understood schema to a situation that is difficult to understand. Each of these ideas will be examined briefly below, with examples drawn from one of the most familiar pieces of persuasive discourse, Martin Luther King's "Letter from Birmingham Jail."
Above we noted the importance of a shaman in epistemological crisis who reorients the system so that it can account for changing situations. This is King's task: he must make and break associations in order to reorient the system. His goal in reorienting the system is to promote his ideas and his people in quality space. Because the primary method of establishing an associative link is metaphor, King employs a number of metaphorical strategies. The most obvious can be called novel or one-shot metaphors. For example he speaks of the "anaesthetizing security of stained-glass windows." He also likens the church to a "irrelevant social club."55
Another more basic metaphorical strategy that King uses, very heavily in fact, is orientation metaphor. The text is saturated with light-dark and (not coincidentally, as we shall see) up-down metaphors: "shadows of deep disappointment, dark dungeons to bright hills, bogged down" etc. A number of reasons for employing this strategy can be posited. First, as we noted above, orientational metaphors are useful and effective in an epistemological crisis because they are easily understood, and unequivocal about how we should think. Second, these metaphors are copious in the Southern Baptist oratorical tradition, and of course they are plentiful in the Bible as well. But perhaps the most important reason is King's shamanistic goal of reorienting the quality space. If he can associate what he wants to promote with what is already valued (e.g., pioneers, light, UP metaphors and God-terms), then his arguments compel acceptance.
It is tempting, and potentially useful, to consider orientational metaphors as the source of topoi, particularly if we take the definition "the natural channels of the mind" somewhat literally, particularly the "natural" portion. Topoi could be regarded as schemas that are grounded in bodily experience, and thus do not have to be learned. Enthymemes could then be seen as inference based on learned or cultural schemas (which are generally more complex than body schemas, but probably ultimately grounded in them). This cultural connection is bolstered by Aristotle's associating enthymemes with maxims; maxims and proverbs are mnemonic devices for storing cultural schemas that have been found useful in evaluating situations. King uses the enthymeme oppressors never give up power voluntarily. (And he must neutralize another enthymeme: outsiders should not meddle in local affairs).
King uses other metaphorical strategies which Burke calls identification. Burke uses the term in a broad sense to mean metaphor in general (he uses "association" and "equation" as well). But he also uses the term in a more specific sense of a metaphor in which both the target and donor are human. An example of the latter more specific sense of identification is when King addresses his audience as fellow clergymen; here King seeks to have himself classified as one of them (which Burke refers to as consubstantiation). This is a strategy crucial to his goal of establishing a reasonable, rational, pious ethos. If successful in classifying himself as one of them, these stereotypical features of clergymen would transfer to him.56
A more indirect and thus sophisticated kind of identification is employed when King identifies himself with Jesus and Paul, and his coworkers with the early Christians. These are figures that are placed exceedingly high in the quality space. Having made the metaphorical connection, the audience has little choice but to reorient quality space and reclassify the Civil Rights workers. Note how these new associations break previous unfavorable ones; e.g., King and his followers are no longer fanatical, irrational, Communist-inspired rabble-rousers, but martyrs. King points out that the early Christian martyrs eliminated the social evils of gladiatorial contests and infanticide. In linking the Christian martyrs to the Civil Rights workers, King breaks the dissociative linkage that separates religion from politics (cf. also the linkage inherent in "the gospel of freedom").
Not only are people such as Jesus, Thomas Jefferson and Socrates in privileged positions in quality space, but concepts are as well. These are God-terms, which schema theory can help explain. In Chapter Five we theorized based on General Systems Theory and SOT that quality space must be hierarchical. Most schema theorists hold that schemas are arranged hierarchically as well, in that any complex schema will have a slot that connects it to a higher level schema which is more general and abstract (as well as slots to connect to lower level schemas that are more specific and concrete). God-terms are schemas so abstract that nearly anything can be attached to them, even opposites. King uses the God-terms justice, freedom, equality and Constitution (placing an un- in front of these produces the corresponding devil-terms). King must also demonstrate that he does not fall into the class of the demon-term "outside agitator." He breaks this association by stating that, as a Christian clergyman, he is bound by duty and charity to respond to a call for aid, as St. Paul did. Enthymematically (or by definition), an invited guest cannot be a meddler. Furthermore, King is a member of local organization, a Southerner, and an American, and thus an insider. Moreover, the "blame" for his presence ultimately lies with the oppressors: "I am in Birmingham because injustice is here."
It should be evident by now that Burke is correct in asserting that persuasion is largely a matter of making and breaking associations in order to reorient the quality space. King demonstrates his shamanistic virtuosity most brilliantly in his privileging of demon-terms such as "tension" and "extremist," and his breaking of the linkage of law and justice.57 He accomplishes this by splitting or subclassifying tension into violent, destructive and non-violent, creative types. The latter type leads to negotiation and thus negates violence. It is both rational and pious. It exposes the festering boil of racial injustice to the healing "light of human conscience" and the "air of national opinion." We see here how various rhetorical strategies become integrated: topoi, enthymeme, orientational metaphor and God-terms. The disease metaphor is a basic orientational metaphor, though the treatment of a boil is cultural knowledge, and so is more towards the enthymematic end of the continuum. Also implicated is the enthymeme regarding national opinion (i.e., two hundred million heads are better than one). "Conscience" is clearly a God-term, and so effortlessly can be linked to light. The strategies in even so short an example are surprisingly dense, as are the interrelations between them, but a fully developed systemic theory of symbolic action must be able to account for them.
In section 6.4 we noted that schemas are by their very nature interactive. And in the analysis of King's discourse just above we began to see how these different strategies can interrelate. The fact that these strategies can combine suggests that an underlying system is in effect. The most compelling evidence can be found in the correlation between God-terms (and their corresponding devil-terms) and Lakoff and Johnson's UP and DOWN metaphors, respectively:58
UP good = forward = future = light/vision=life/health/consc.
DOWN devil back past dark/blind th/sick/unconsc.
happy/hope = substance = action/power = rational
sad/despair narrow/little impotence mad/emotional
Notice that all the God-terms line up and can be hybridized, i.e., combined without cognitive dissonance (e.g., we can retreat or fall into a dark despair, but not into a bright future).
The combination of these different strategies is readily accomplished by the speaker and understood effortlessly by the audience, with profound unconscious resonances. We can think of a resonant metaphor as one that effectively and broadly activates the quality space; it is akin to what Eco calls an open metaphor:
That metaphor is "good" which does not allow the work of interpretation to grind to a halt, but which permits inspections that are diverse, complementary and contradictory. This does not appear to be different from those criterion of pleasure cited by Freud (1905) to define a good joke: thrift and economy, to be sure, but such that a short-cut is traced through the encyclopedic network, a labyrinth which would take way too much time if it were to be explored in all its polydimensional complexity (1983 249).
Schema theory can be very useful in explaining how King's stylistic strategies work as well (e.g., parallelism, anaphora, antithesis, and phonological strategies such as alliteration and assonance, which King uses profusely). Indeed, linguists such as Samuel Levin and Geoffrey Leech already have detailed accounts of these formal strategies which may serve as a basis for schema theory.
6.6 Directions for Future Research
To summarize, we have now established that symbolic action is grounded in the quality space system. The function of this system is evaluation. We also have concepts and terms for discussing the structure and transformation of this system. The system is made up of interconnected schemas which can be quickly accessed and cross-referenced. We know too that metaphor is the primary device for the extension and transformation of schemas, and finally for the system as a whole.
The task of future research will be to make more explicit and formal how metaphor transfers structure across domains. Ultimately of most interest to rhetoricians is the question of why some metaphors are accepted and others rejected. Booth's rubric of metaphorical effectiveness distilled from traditional rhetoric would be an excellent place to begin to formulate a schematic account (1979 54-5). Moreover, the increasing capacity and complexity of Connectionist models should allow us to begin to begin to chart the quality space itself, at least the most basic and static parts of it. For example, virtually the only metaphor we have for political campaigns is war or sport. As it is unlikely that this particular portion of quality space will change any time soon, it would be an excellent candidate for modelling.
While charting the quality space, as Burke wanted, seems an overwhelming, even impossible task, it is an important one. And it can be done as Burke did it: analyzing a text, a doctrine, an individual author. Any text is, to a degree, going to mirror the model of the world of its author (and will show how the author construed the supermodel of the culture). Moreover, the emerging paradigm will continue to provide theoretical and empirical input into the nature of the system as well. Richard Weaver likens the buildup of the quality space system to the accumulation of wealth: "If we knew how this capital is accumulated, we would possess one of the secrets of civilization. All we know is that whatever spells the essential unity of a people in belief and attachment contains the answer." Thus Weaver feels that understanding metaphor and the system that gives rise to it "offers the fairest hope of restoring our lost unity of mind" (1970 53).