Psychology and Form(ssss) & then I was in over my head.

Burke's article on Psychology and Form made me wish I had brushed up on my Shakespeare, Capek, and a few others I honestly am not familiar with, whatsoever. But through it all, I was able to understand what Burke was trying to express to us. He started off differentiating between the psychology of information and the psychology of form. And his examples, even though I haven't read Hamlet or Macbeth in a while, his examples made some sense. A lot of his article was about the audience, more specifically how the audience responds to different forms (of work/info/lit.) Burke also discusses the terms, art, eloquence, and psychology, and how they are all intertwined and dependent on each other.

But what stood out to me most about this article were all of Burke's different types of forms and progressions he explained. To start off he says that,

"Form in literature is an arousing and fulfillment of desires."

Which, in relation to digital rhetoric's, is rather important (imo). From my perspective the concept of form can be applied to digital rhetoric's on several different levels/aspects, including delivery and matter/material. Burke lists and describes syllogistic progression (a form of a perfected conducted argument, advancing step by step), qualitative progression (a subtler progression form...the presence of one quality prepares us for another), repetitive form (the restatement of the same thing in different ways), conventional form (the appeal of form as form, when a form appears as form), minor or incidental forms (metaphors, paradox, disclosure, reversal, contraction, expansion, etc.), he also explains the interraletaion of forms and the conflict of forms, and lastly rhythm and rhyme and significant form (onomatopoetic).  I'm not gonna lie though, I was getting quite a brain work out trying to first understand, then apply all of the different forms he describes to digital rhetoric's, from the examples pulled from old literature, to finding a digital space to apply it to.


and as for that *cough*dreadfully difficult*cough* second reading...I'm with the rest of the girls, totally lost. Basically pulling from it that yes, we as human beings use symbols to communicate, in the form of language. (One thing I struggle to understand and agree with is his idea that human organisms are the only organisms to use a language of symbols to communicate..I guess I just feel like there are plenty of organisms out there that, although they may not have an alphabet, they have other forms of signals)- but for all I know he could have expressed this in the article..and it just went completely over my head, like much of it did.

*individuation?
-I don't get you.

*The Self becomes a product  of the Culture
-"Whatever may be the genetic traits differentiating one individual from another, and whatever the distinct histories of individuals, the nature of symbolic action shapes the Self largely in modes of role, of sociality"
-I guess when I read this I thought of the idea that (to relate to digital rhetorics) depending on what community we are in, affects the "Self" we choose to display, or our role/identity in that online community.

And I guess..for now..that it all.