Linguistically-Created Perception

Since we didn't really get to unpack much of Burke's "Terministic Screens" on Friday, I thought I would try and throw out some ideas here. My first thought is an Eastern parable called "The Blind Men and the Elephant." In the parable, six blind men come across an elephant and touch a different part. One touches the tail and thinks it is a snake, another the tusk (and thinks it a spear) and so on. Each one only sees a part of the elephant and calls it something different. They are all somewhat correct, but none of them have the full picture.

Now, this is a bit of an extreme example of what we're really talking about, but it fits. One of Burke's main arguments is that people have different "terministic screens" which "direct the attention" (Burke, 45). That is, each terministic screen provides a person or group of people with a specific perceptual set through which they can both see and describe something. This kind of "blinding" is represented in the parable by the blind men positioned around the elephant. Each can only "see" his part of the elephant and describe it in his own terms. How each one describes what they are experiencing holds some truth, but is unintelligible without breaking it down. The man with the tusk and the man with the tail would get no where in discovering the true nature of their respective pieces if each insisted it was really a snake or spear. They would have to break down their conclusion to its components.

This is another of Burke's arguments. He claims that there must be some kind of "unifying" screen, or at the very least proposes the basis for one. Because Man is a symbol-user, all men engage in symbolic activity "hence it can properly serve as the basis of a general, or philosophic definition of this animal [man]" (Burke, 52).

Perhaps of any perceptive filters, this is the most all-encompassing. Looking back to the blind men. If someone were to come in (also blind) and break down the symbols being used, he would be able to construct a true picture of the elephant. By breaking down what "snakes" are like, we would know that the blind man had something rope-like in his hands. The man with the "spear" has something long and sharp. As each man's description is broken into parts, the true nature of their "discovery" becomes more clear.

That is my basic illustration of "terministic screens" (I would call them frames). Hope you like elephants.