Kenneth Burke Essay Example for Free

Kenneth Burke Essay Kenneth Duva Burke (May 5, 1897 – November 19, 1993) was an American literary theorist and philosopher. Burkes primary interests were in rhetoric and aesthetics. Burke became a highly distinguished writer after getting out of college, and starting off serving as an editor and critic instead, while he developed his relationships with other successful writers. He would later return to the university to lecture and teach. He was born on May 5 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and graduated from Peabody High School, where his friend Malcolm Cowley was also a student. Burke attended Ohio State University for only a semester, then studied at Columbia University in 1916-1917 before dropping out to be a writer. In Greenwich Village he kept company with avant-garde writers such as Hart Crane, Malcolm Cowley, Gorham Munson, and later Allen Tate. Raised Roman Catholic, Burke later became an avowed agnostic. In 1919, he married Lily Mary Batterham, with whom he had three daughters: the late feminist, Marxist anthropologist Eleanor Leacock (1922–1987); musician (Jeanne) Elspeth Chapin Hart (b. 1920); and writer and poet France Burke (b. 1925). He would later marry her sister Elizabeth Batterham in 1933 and have two sons, Michael and Anthony. Burke served as the editor of the modernist literary magazine The Dial in 1923, and as its music critic from 1927-1929. Kenneth himself was an avid player of the saxophone and flute. He received the Dial Award in 1928 for distinguished service to American literature. He was the music critic of The Nation from 1934–1936, and was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1935. His work on criticism was a driving force for placing him back into the university spotlight. As a result, he was able to teach and lecture at various colleges, including Bennington College, while continuing his literary work. Many of Kenneth Burkes personal papers and correspondence are housed at Pennsylvania State Universitys Special Collections Library. In later life, his New Jersey farm was a popular summer retreat for his extended family, as reported by his grandson Harry Chapin, a contemporary popular song artist. He died of heart failure at his home in Andover, New Jersey. Burke, like many twentieth century theorists and critics, was heavily influenced by the ideas of Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, and Friedrich Nietzsche. He was a lifelong interpreter of Shakespeare, and was also significantly influenced by Thorstein Veblen. He resisted being pigeonholed as a follower of any philosophical or political school of thought, and had a notable and very public break with the Marxists who dominated the literary criticism set in the 1930s. Burke corresponded with a number of literary critics, thinkers, and writers over the years, including William Carlos Williams, Malcolm Cowley, Robert Penn Warren, Allen Tate, Ralph Ellison,Katherine Anne Porter, Jean Toomer, Hart Crane, and Marianne Moore. Later thinkers who have acknowledged Burkes influence include Harold Bloom, Stanley Cavell, Susan Sontag (his student at the University of Chicago), Erving Goffman, Geoffrey Hartman, Edward Said, Rene Girard, Fredric Jameson, Michael Calvin McGee, Dell Hymes and Clifford Geertz. Burke was one of the first prominent American critics to appreciate and articulate the importance of Thomas Mann and Andre Gide; Burke produced the first English translation of Death in Venice, which first appeared in The Dial in 1924. It is now considered to be much more faithful and explicit than H. T. Lowe-Porters more famous 1930 translation. Burkes political engagement is evident, for example, A Grammar of Motives takes as its epigraph, ad bellum purificandum — toward the purification of (the human spirit from) war. American literary critic Harold Bloom singled out Burkes Counterstatement and A Rhetoric of Motives for inclusion in his Western Canon. The political and social power of symbols was central to Burkes scholarship throughout his career. He felt that through understanding what is involved when we say what people are doing and why they are doing it, we could gain insight into the cognitive basis for our perception of the world. For Burke, the way in which we decide to narrate gives importance to specific qualities over others. He believed that this could tell us a great deal about how we see the world. Burke called the social and political rhetorical analysis dramatism and believed that such an approach to language analysis and language usage could help us understand the basis of conflict, the virtues and dangers of cooperation, and the opportunities of identification and consubstantiality. Burke defined the rhetorical function of language as a symbolic means of inducing cooperation in beings that by nature respond to symbols. His definition of humanity states that man is the symbol using, making, and mis-using animal, inventor of the negative, separated from his natural condition by instruments of his own making, goaded by the spirit of hierarchy, and rotten with perfection. For Burke, some of the most significant problems in human behavior resulted from instances of symbols using human beings rather than human beings using symbols. Burke proposed that when we attribute motives to others, we tend to rely on ratios between five elements: act, scene, agent, agency, and purpose. This has become known as the dramatistic pentad. The pentad is grounded in his dramatistic method, which considers human communication as a form of action. Dramatism invites one to consider the matter of motives in a perspective that, being developed from the analysis of drama, treats language and thought primarily as modes of action (Grammar of Motives xxii). Burke pursued literary criticism not as a formalistic enterprise but rather as an enterprise with significant sociological impact; he saw literature as equipment for living, offering folk wisdom and common sense to people and thus guiding the way they lived their lives. Another key concept for Burke is the terministic screen — a set of symbols that becomes a kind of screen or grid of intelligibility through which the world makes sense to us. Here Burke offers rhetorical theorists and critics a way of understanding the relationship between language and ideology. Language, Burke thought, doesnt simply reflect reality; it also helps select reality as well as deflect reality. In Language as Symbolic Action (1966), he writes, Even if any given terminology is a reflection of reality, by its very nature as a terminology it must be a selection of reality; and to this extent must function also as a deflection of reality. In his book Language as Symbolic Action (1966), Burke defined humankind as a symbol using animal (p. 3). This definition of man, he argued, means that reality has actually been built up for us through nothing but our symbol system (p. 5). Without our encyclopedias, atlases, and other assorted reference guides, we would know little about the world that lies beyond our immediate sensory experience. What we call reality, Burke stated, is actually a clutter of symbols about the past combined with whatever things we know mainly through maps, magazines, newspapers, and the like about the present . . . construct of our symbol systems (p. 5). College students wandering from class to class, from English literature to sociology to biology to calculus, encounter a new reality each time they enter a classroom; the courses listed in a universitys catalogue are in effect but so many different terminologies (p. 5). It stands to reason then that people who consider themselves to be Christian, and who internalize that religions symbol system, inhabit a reality that is different from the one of practicin g Buddhists, or Jews, or Muslims.

Roller Coaster Physics Essays -- physics roller coasters amusement the

The very first â€Å"roller coasters† were created in Russia in the 1600’s, and were nothing like the typical roller coaster that comes to mind today. People rode down steep ice slides on large sleds made from either wood or ice that were slowed with sand at the end of the ride. These sleds required skill to navigate down the slides, and accidents were frequent. A Frenchman tried to cash in on the popularity of the Russian ice slides by building one in France, but the warm climate quickly ended his attempts with ice. A waxed wooden slide proved to be much more feasible, along with wooden wheeled sleds. Just as with the ice slides, the necessity of navigation skills caused many accidents, so tracks were produced to keep the sleds in line. In the 1850’s, the first shot at a vertical loop was made in France. This â€Å"Centrifuge Railway† offered a rail car that would travel through the loop with nothing keeping it there aside from its own centripetal acceleration. Government officials quickly shut the operation down after one accident. The beginning of American roller coasters was near the end of the 19th century when railway companies set up amusement parks at the end of their lines to increase business on the weekends. In 1884 the first real roller coaster in America was introduced: a gravity driven switchback train. Passengers would climb a set of stairs to board the car, which was then pushed from the station to travel down a hill and over a few bumps. At the bottom, the passengers got out and climbed another set of stairs while workers hoisted the car to the top of the second station. The passengers got back into the car and rode to the first station on a second track. Another attempt at a vertical lo... ...changing their direction of movement from down to up. G-forces that are felt when changing direction horizontally are called lateral G’s. Lateral G’s can be converted into normal G-forces by banking turns. Roller coasters today employ clothoid loops rather than the circular loops of earlier roller coasters. This is because circular loops require greater entry speeds to complete the loop. The greater entry speeds subject passengers to greater centripetal acceleration through the lower half of the loop, therefore greater G’s. If the radius is reduced at the top of the loop, the centripetal acceleration is increased sufficiently to keep the passengers and the train from slowing too much as they move through the loop. A large radius is kept through the bottom half of the loop, thereby reducing the centripetal acceleration and the G’s acting on the passengers.

Marketing Executive Skills

Axiom steel (PVT) Ltd is a privately owned steel re-rolling firm which consists of three units and is located within the industrial zone at the outskirts of the city. Two of the firm’s units are automatic which produce wire rods & whose end users are the wire & electrode manufacturers. The third is a manually operated unit producing reinforced steel, the end use of which is for construction purposes. The Chief Executive Officer, who is also the owner of the firm, sits at the firm’s head office which is located 25 kilometers away from the production units in the heart of the city. Axiom Steel is currently facing all time huge losses, which the CEO thinks is due to the firm’s production planning deficiency, under /restricted use of the firm’s capacity and ability & poor marketing strategies.   The CEO thinks he needs a good marketing individual who can market his products and can bring business to the company and only then can the company survive, other wise the firm is heading for a shut out which can result in not only a dented reputation for the owner & business loss but also several individuals who are related to the firm, losing their jobs. After through screening and interviews,   the firm hires a new individual at the post of assistant manager marketing whose main goal is to identify the loop holes in the company’s marketing and planning infrastructure and boost sales by formulating proper strategies thus helping Axiom Steel mills, which now poses to be a sinking ship. The newly appointed Assistant Manager visits the various departments of the firm which includes all three units, their production technicians, marketing representatives, quality control and the firm’s ware house. A thorough marketing strategy discussion with the individuals and after discussing results in following points being put forward for analyses:- There is no proper marketing department of the firm, the individuals that are so-called marketing people are actually being used for follow up of the orders, which are netted by the company’s CEO and then transferred to the production floor. These individuals are being paid at price which is far below the prevailing market prices for individuals working under such capacities and are working for the firm since a very very long time. A through interview also reveals that most of the marketing individuals do not posses a recognized degree in Marketing and are working on bases of sheer experience. The production planning is being done in the head office without consulting the production capabilities with the production technicians. The production planning is carried out by the CEO himself with the team he calls his â€Å"marketing team†. Since the CEO seldom visits the production mills and depends purely on the information presented to him by the â€Å"marketing team†; he is un-aware of the ground realities; often, orders are being shipped out late, which are resulting in customer losing faith and looking for other vendor options. There is a communication gap between the head office and the Mill’s Production Management resulting in delay in production planning and preparation of the orders at mill’s end. This gap is also due to the fact that the CEO held the powers to make decisions and enforce to his management. The CEO belongs to an older generation which is reluctant to learn new methods of communications such as the internet (Although the facility is available for use). The fastest method of communication for the CEO is the communication via Fax and Telex. Sales of wire rods are restricted to wire and electrode manufacturers only and thus sometimes, there came a time when the units often faced shut downs due to lack of orders! The two Automatic units which are producing wire rods are also capable of producing reinforced steel for construction but this capability is not being utilized and the units are restricted to production of Wire rods only. This is also a reason for late shipments as bottle necks are being produced and the load is not shifted from one production unit to another which is capable but not being utilized of producing the same product. The CEO is therefore correct in pointing out this issue as one of the reasons for current losses. After looking at above problems, following strategies are being proposed: The company should adopt a proper marketing strategy for its firm. This includes injecting fresh blood in the marketing team, those individuals who are capable of taking the company beyond a certain level. This means certain over hauling of the marketing machinery. The CEO must realize that if he wants the business turn over to increase; he must then look after and take care of his people well†¦ In fact a policy of profit sharing should be introduced where the marketing individuals are given a certain %age of commission over their efforts to bring new business to the firm. If not, then the rate of payment must be increased for the individuals who have lost motivation in working for the company because of the poor compensation for their work. There should be a separate production planning department whose specialization should be the planning of order executions at mills. These individuals will provide the correct idea to the marketing individuals and the CEO regarding the timeline of orders from raw material stage to the shipment Ex-Factory. Each marketing individual should be provided with at-least a desktop computer work station with internet facility and designated individual email IDs which they lack today. This will help the marketing individuals to concentrate on marketing and transfer order execution information from their firm to the customer. Internet excess will also help the marketing people to search for new potential markets and fetching customers, also not to forget faster communication The CEO must realize that if he wants the business to grow, then he must delegate authorities to the individuals working under him as with the increase of business, a phase will come where he cannot handle things on his own. The CEO must introduce a layer of Management which includes Top Management consisting of himself and his reporting General Managers, Middle Management of Managers and Assistant Managers reporting to the GM and the work staff that will be reporting to the Middle Management. This delegation of authorities and creation of Management chain will not only help in quicker decision making but also in fluent transfer of orders from top level to down. These are the points which are basics for an improvement in the marketing structure and in the communication and centralized decision making problem which the marketing department is facing within the firm. These together with a few production related issues highlighted above, if addressed will result in better performance. If successful, more recommendations for improvement will be forwarded for perusal.         

What Makes Effective Counseling - 1618 Words

As a first year graduate student, I am thankful to have already learned many of the necessary values and skills needed in order to practice counseling effectively. While there are numerous aspects used to determine what makes effective counseling, in the case of counselors, three of the most important aspects I have learned to date would be the following: the proper use of one theoretical approach, a complete understanding of the therapeutic process, and a complete understanding of one’s needs and values as not only a counselor, but as a person. Allow me to further explain my views in the following paragraphs. In order for a counselor to successfully help a client, I believe that it is important for the counselor to first adopt and become very knowledgeable in one of the major theoretical approaches. Using myself as an example, even though I am not yet a counselor, I have already decided to take on the humanistic approach (or person-centered approach, as it is also called) of psychologist Carl Rogers. As a counselor, it is important for one to choose a theoretical approach that they feel most comfortable with; I have chosen this approach because I agree most with its characteristics and believe that it more or less fits my personality. The goal of Rogers’ person-centered approach is to provide clients with an opportunity to develop a sense of self where they can realize how their attitudes, feelings and behavior are being negatively affected (Cepeda Show MoreRelatedEffective Counseling1313 Words   |  6 Pagesiove couse Personal and Professional Qualities for an Effective Counselor By {Author} {Institution} Abstract This research paper discusses the qualities that are necessary for an effective counseling and as such any counselor considered effective must posses them. The paper has a separate discussion of both personal and professional qualities required for any good counselorRead MoreEffective Counseling1328 Words   |  6 Pagesiove couse Personal and Professional Qualities for an Effective Counselor By {Author} {Institution} Abstract This research paper discusses the qualities that are necessary for an effective counseling and as such any counselor considered effective must posses them. The paper has a separate discussion of both personal and professional qualities required for any good counselor. The personal qualities form a larger part of theRead MoreThe Education Commission (1964-66), While Lamenting On1430 Words   |  6 Pagesand counseling including vocational placement, among student services. It stressed ‘guidance and counseling programme which would assist the students in the choice of courses, indicate the links of remedial action and help in dealing with emotional and psychological problems, should be an integral part of the educational facilities provided in institutions of higher education’. Guidance and counseling have three-fold functions: adjustment, orientation and development. Guidance and counseling areRead MoreCounselor Beware Of Ethical Sovencies1260 Words   |  6 Pagesperceived when an individual has chosen counseling as a career. People tend to ask, â€Å"why do you want to deal with other people’s setbacks. There are those that choose the career of being a counselor that maintain a sense of compassion for others, while maintaining the professional guidelines of ethics. Effective counseling is a two-way street. It takes a cooperative effort by both the person receiving counseling and the counselor. 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Furthermore, when it comes to being a counselor, not something that should be taken for granted. We are all born of sin, but we have been saved through the grace of Jesus Christ. Not everyone bless to be a counselor, but Dr. Crabbs biblical teaching in ChristianRead MoreCounseling Assessment, Interventions And Results And Follow Up882 Words   |  4 PagesCounselors keep notes to document their counseling assessment, interventions and results and follow-up. Case notes are a memory aid used during a counseling session to record the conversation for consultation or to help facilitate referrals (Jacobs Schimmel, 2013). 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From a legal stand point ethics, morality, and law mustRead MoreEffective Biblical Counseling : A Model For Helping Caring Christians Become Capable Counselors By Crabb Essay1748 Words   |  7 PagesUniversity PACO 507 Andrew Reitenauer Crabb Comparison Paper September 11, 2016 ABSTRACT In this paper, the student-writer will discuss the methods that are taught in In Effective biblical counseling: A model for helping caring Christians become capable counselors by Crabb (1977). The student-writer will also use what is taught in this book with the skills that are expressed in Creating a Healthier Church; Family Systems Theory, Leadership, and congregational life by Richardson (1996) and BlessedRead MoreEssay on Traits of an Effective Counselor1065 Words   |  5 Pagesempathy. I believe the session was effective because the client and the counselor worked together with re-evaluating how the client was going to improve his circumstances. In this case study, the counselor establishes a good relationship and empathy with the client, which allows him to be completely honest about his thoughts and feelings. The counselor assesses continually the relationship between what is going on in the client’s life, in the session. An effective counselor can help pinpoint th e obstacles