Customer Reviews

Language As Symbolic Action: Essays on Life, Literature, and Method

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Language has power and we are foolish if we do not believe that perception is at least as important as reality. While there is much here that is difficult to process the concept of the terministic screen is a very worth while one and deserves special attention if you want to get a handle on anything you need to get a handle on the terminology used to describe, define or even hide it. Drawing on the concept of the Terministic screen in my own book Stone Soup: The Secret Recipe for Making Something from Nothing was essential to explain how we change our perceptions through language even though our reality has been unchanged and yet the way we relate to this unchanged reality through our altered perception can be the difference between success and failure.

This is where Burke defines the terministic screen concept, which I found very valuable in my undergraduate thesis on visual rhetoric. The title is fairly significant; it's an interesting language concept that Burke explains at some length.

I will warn, however, that Burke takes special pains to make his writing difficult to follow. Sometimes, I don't think he's really saying much of anything--just sputtering words and sentences for the hell of it.

Still, any hoity toity English department is going to throw Burke's name around, even if they haven't ever actually read the damn books. If you're serious about rhetoric or the English field in general, you'll need a copy.