Term Mosquitoes: The Role of the Individual in the Formation of Terministic Screens

Specific reality is an interesting way of describing what, I believe, Burke was trying to convey in "Terminstic Screens".  Burke begins his discussion of terministic screens by evoking the "scientistic" and "dramatisitic" approaches to developing language in the individual.  The approach that is taken is left to the individual and the entirety of external stimuli influencing the workings of their mind.  Now, "scientistic" and "dramatistic" are perhaps a couple of the most general and encompassing screens.  Scientistic covers all of logic and thought within the sciences, while dramatistic covers emotions and almost everything else.  There are many sub-screens within these approaches.  An interesting way to view this, is one of the ways Burke did.  Burke thought about students going from one class to the next.  The students would have to act as term mosquitoes, absorbing terms relevant to their class and forming a vocabulary and symbol structure in order to understand and discuss their topic with each other at a common level.  "...much of our "Reality" could not exist for us, were it not for our profound and inveterate involvement in symbol systems" (Burke 48).  The students create their understanding or "reality" of their experience through this absorption of terms and associating them with pre-existing notions.  Thus, the symbolic structure of a terministic screen is formed for the individual.  For the group, the "terministic" screen is formed by a common consensus of relating the similar elements of each individual's terministic screen for that topic.  The same thing occurs for each topic, with each individual forming and creating their own symbolic system, and the group coming to common ground on the societal version of the terministic screen.  In the mind, however, we are simply limited to our individual terministic screens and our perception of the societal terministic screen.  Like mosquitoes, we are kept from enjoying the full possible depths of interaction and understanding within the societal terministic screen, while we flitter along the surface of our individual symbolic structure.