Keller / Burke / Butler

Mr. Burke, Meet Helen Keller immediately got me thinking about how language is viewed as social action. As we’ve learned throughout our time as EWM students, Burke deeply studies and theorized how we use language. He has referred to humans as “symbol using animals,” butting much emphasis on the fact that we communicate through symbolic sounds. However, in this text from Argument Reason and Rhetorical Theory, he, and his epistemology, is being compared to Helen Keller, who was mute, deaf and blind.

This immediately excites me because we are know talking about a type of physical performance as a language and therefore a type of speech that can create social action. Keller spoke through sign language. She perceived and understood the world through physical symbols, instead of vocal symbols. For example, Keller wrote like she was a hearing, seeing person. She used analogies to describe her experience, however she had never experienced the things she was using as comparison. (George, 344) this caused complaints from her readers. These complaints pushed Keller to understand language and thought even farther.

Keller writes that the mind is a linguistic product (George, 345). The text goes on to quote Keller as she explains that the human brain is wired to understand sight and sound and use these resources as a way to perceive the world. Therefore a blind and deaf child still has a brain with these capabilities.

Keller makes such an interesting argument, writing that we are all understanding the world in a way that is second hand. We all hear about things, and understand them through language and our own experiences. Keller argues that she is doing the same, just through a different type of communication.

So how does this relate to Burke? Burke argues, later in the text that all of what we know, our whole reality, is based on our linguistic systems. If we consider how Burke has explained his epistemology on language previously we can see where these two scholars overlap. Burke writes about his theory of “terministic screens” which to him are the screens that we use to perceive our world and our realities. Everyone has a different set of filters that they use to understand the world. This is similar to what Keller is saying. Most people use verbal communication and sign to understand. Keller used physical communication and touch to perceive. Her screens are different, but her brain is gathering information all the same.

We can compare this to what Butler is saying in his argument as well. Butler is fighting about difference and otherness using the feminism as a vehicle. Keller was a women, but she was also disabled. This immediately put her and her experience in a different lesser category. Giving her, and others who view her, a completely different perception on how to understand what she was teaching.