This blog will center on stylistic devices, etymologies, and definitions. Recognizing the power of words to shape our reality, this blog is devoted to exploring Kenneth Burke’s observation, “Much that we take as observations about ‘reality’ may be but the spinning out of possibilities implicit in our particular choice of terms” (LASA 1966, 46). The blog’s title is derived from a late version of Burke’s “Definition of Man.” Continually revising his work, Burke presented this version at the 1989 convention of the Conference on College Composition and Communication:
Being bodies that learn language
thereby becoming wordlings
humans are
the symbol-making, symbol-using, symbol-misusing animal
inventor of the negative
separated from our natural condition
by instruments of our own making
goaded by the spirit of hierarchy
acquiring foreknowledge of death
and rotten with perfection
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