Human Rights Through Terministic Screens

In Burke’s text, he addresses a concept he coined, named terministic screens. This concept acknowledges a language system that determines how an individual perceives abstract notions such as symbols, meanings, and reality on a multimodal scale. Burke states in his text how there are two different kinds of terministic screens in existence. The first type is the scientistic approach, which “Begins with questions of naming, or definition (language as definition)” (44). Likewise, Burke invented the term scientistic. Secondly, we have the dramatistic approach which reads that it “Stresses language as an aspect of ‘action’ that is, as ‘symbolic action’ (language as act)” (44).

The greater issue that I want to address with allusion to Burke’s text is the current media portrayal of basic human rights violations and ethical norms which currently exist in the United States. In the recent months we have seen not only one, but several cases that have been portrayed in the media, that is mainly broadcast media, dealing with the deaths and the legal cases of many African-American victims of police brutality and the police’s abuse of authoritative power. Ultimately, these basic ethical violations have struck a nerve with the American public, and through the media’s scope, we as a society have been able to take in the information regarding the deaths of these mainly African-American, unarmed victims in the recent months. My aim for this discussion is to draw influence from Kenneth Burke’s Terministic Screens and try to understand better the different elements as the media portrays them. More so, how the framing of language, and the alternating determinants of language have sparked, and therefore perpetuated a change and an advocacy for the way that the police system in the United States treats people who are part of a minority. In other words, how has language through the use of terministic screens brought more awareness to this cause, and how has the media portrayed this, whether positive or negative.

In his text, Burke states that "What [he means] by the 'dramatistic,' [is] stressing language as an aspect of 'action,' that is, as 'symbolic action'" (Burke. 44). Therefore, what Burke might likely say in relation to ethical reasoning in the case of the media and the deaths of innocent African-Americans due to police and their abuse of power might be that law-enforcement officers attempt to stress language and the meaning behind language or an interaction in order to perpetuate an action, which is where problems and casualties then begin to occur. Whenever there is a clash of the deterministic between an individual belonging to a minority, and a law-enforcement officer who can easily misconstrue the information, people end up dead. And now long after, the media reports on it, and different outlets give it their own spin, to further pass along the needed change for another terministic screen.

On the other end of the spectrum, we have the scientistic approach, which questions definition. Again this all goes back to framing, and the manifestation that the framing of language can have on a populous. Different news and media outlets will give a story a different spin. Likewise, when dealing with active crisis management, a needed spin for correction is often necessary. However, when talking about life and death and the pathology of power which we have been seeing within the United States’ police force recently, we have to think back on media portrayal and accuracy involving facts, and how these facts are being given to us by the gatekeepers of news and current events. If we truly want to be informed as a public, we cannot just ingest our news from one particular source, which could be biased based on the terministic screens and language constraints that are therefore placed upon the source and the manner in which the media coverage is delivered to us as civilians.

Moreover, terministic screens tie back to perception and symbolic action, as can be referenced in the previous class reading that we did of another one of Burke’s texts in regards to language. When you think about the media portrayal concerning the murder and choking of Eric Garner, or the murder of Michael Brown and the whole circumstance of the riots in Ferguson, or even most recently the murder of Walter Scott, at one point it has to end. The media has to give full coverage of the content we are receiving and not just one side these things and put them through different terministic screens in order to delivery certain results. The only evidence that we can argue against with terministic screens is video footage, because language does not need to be present in order to visualize and see that something is not correct, or even that an event is fatal when it does not have to be.

In the end, language, and framing, and scope, are all qualities which we attribute to language and the understanding of language and how we become cognizant of information. Although not often acknowledged, a lot of rhetoric and diction and differentiation goes into the way that the public is delivered information, and it is through terministic screens that we are able to form out own opinions and our minds up on certain issues.