A group of men stand in a circle looking down into a hole in the ground. There is not much light flowing into the hole, but they can see the face of a teenaged boy looking up at them. He is quiet now, probably hoarse from the yelling and screaming he did when the men — his brothers — stripped him of his ornamented coat and put him down into the pit.
They were going to kill him. They saw him coming from a distance and said, “The Lord of Dreams approaches,” remembering that his dreams always involved something bowing to him. 11 sheaves, 11 stars, 11 brothers. They got the picture. “Let’s kill him and throw him into one of the cisterns. Then we’ll see what comes of his dreams.” (Gen. 37:19-20)
The eldest brother stepped in and tried to save him. He modified their plan; yes, throw him into the pit, but don’t kill him, he said in three different ways. He did not tell his brothers that he meant to find a way to bring him back to his father, however.
The scene changed when the brothers looked up to see a caravan of traders on their way to Egypt. Another brother spoke, adding one more modification to their plan. “What profit is there if we kill our brother and cover up his blood? Come, let us sell him to the Ishmaelites, but let’s not lay our hand upon him, for he is our brother, our flesh.” (Gen. 37:26) The storyteller adds that his brothers listened to this brother whose name was Judah.
This last statement is important. Judah’s brothers listened to him, literally, “they heard him.” Adele Berlin, in her book, Poetics and Interpretation of Biblical Narrative, noted that a subtle word play highlights the force of Judah’s words. When eldest son Reuben “heard their plan,” he proposed a modification, but when Judah modified it again all the brothers “heard” him. The change from the singular to the plural form of the verb indicates the shift in power, showing that Judah’s words were more effective.1
As the story of Joseph and his family unfolds, it turns out that Judah continues to emerge as leader among them. Judah appears four times as a speaking character in the story. In three of those four appearances, his speeches persuade his listeners to act in ways that will prevent the death of family members. We have seen that Judah persuades his brothers to sell Joseph into slavery rather than kill him.
Judah later convinces his father Jacob to release his son Benjamin to make a trip to Egypt (a condition laid down by the disguised Joseph) to buy grain and save the lives of the family. (Gen. 43:3-13) Finally, he attempts to persuade his disguised brother Joseph to enslave him instead of Benjamin to prevent his father’s death from grief. (Gen. 4:16-34) In nearly every scene he appears, Judah’s speech moves other characters in the story to a change of heart and action that saves Joseph’s life.
How did he do it? Going back to the scene in the wilderness, we see that Judah’s short speech to his brothers effectively undoes firstborn Reuben’s plan in three ways. First, Reuben’s words were negatively charged with the “no” of prohibition: “do not take his life, do not shed his blood, do not lay a hand on him.” The words remind us of Abel’s blood crying out from the ground and as well as God’s claim at the end of the flood story that there will be an accounting for human bloodshed.
Judah uses only one negative in his echo of Reuben’s plan, “let’s not lay our hand on him,” but the rest of his reasoning is new and positively charged: “what profit is there in it anyway?” The caravan has added a new factor to the equation and Judah uses the change to shape his proposal.
Second, brotherly language is used both for and against Joseph here; “our brother” is spoken twice. Murder is wrong because he is one of the family; Reuben used no such argument. Ironically, Judah’s use of words about brotherhood further unites the brothers against the favored one, even while it saves his life. Third, Judah’s plan accomplished what the brothers intended from the start; it got rid of Joseph. Reuben’s plan left things unfinished; Joseph was still in the pit, still a problem to be dealt with. Judah made it clear that they could get rid of Joseph, keep their hands clean (they thought), and put some silver in their purses.
Note that Reuben’s plan ultimately separated him from his brothers. He planned on acting alone to save Joseph; only the narrator knows and reveals that Reuben has any concern for his father. Judah shows no such concern for his father, but instead stands with the brother’s desires.
Looking more closely then, we notice that Judah has been doing more than speaking positively or offering a better proposal to his brothers; he stands with them, speaks to their interests, points out what they have in common, and in so doing unites them in a common purpose. The creation of a like-minded community of purpose by means of language we can call the rhetorical act, defined by Kenneth Burke as “the use of language as a symbolic means of inducing cooperation among beings that by nature respond to symbols.”2 This rhetorical act of speaking to the interests and shared experiences of the audience Burke called identification.
Kenneth Burke became important to communication studies when, in the course of his thinking about literature, he noted that imbedded within all literary form was a rhetorical component. In time, he expanded his idea of rhetoric to embrace all human communication. “Wherever there is persuasion,” he wrote, “there is rhetoric. Where there is ‘meaning’ there is ‘persuasion.'”3
A central idea in Burke’s approach to rhetoric is the principle of identification. A politician running for office dons a seed cap before an audience in rural Iowa and says, “I was raised on a farm myself.” Observers would note that the politician is trying to identify with the listeners by pointing to what they have in common in order to curry favor. Burke saw this as a representative anecdote, an example of strategies of persuasion and appeal that permeate our language and our relations.
He thought that the appeal and power of identification was pervasive and important enough to warrant an extension of Aristotle’s definition of rhetoric, “the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion.”4 As Burke put it, “The key term for the ‘old’ rhetoric was ‘persuasion’ and its stress was upon deliberate design. The key term for the ‘new’ rhetoric would be ‘identification,’ which can include a partially ‘unconscious’ factor in its appeal.”5
Identification is the attempt to overcome human division through the demonstration of some common ground. Burke’s description of human division often made use of biblical terminology, as for example, his “problem of Babel:”
The theologian’s concerns with Eden and the “fall” come close to the heart of the rhetorical problem. For behind the theology, there is the perception of divisiveness which, being common to all men, is a universal fact about them, prior to any divisiveness caused by social classes. Here is the basis of rhetoric.6
Traditional approaches to rhetoric have described the attempt to overcome division as “persuasion.” In this view, a communicator seeks to persuade an audience by winning it over to a given position so that the situation becomes, in effect, a contest of opinions and wills.
Through identification, however, a communicator seeks to elicit consensus and cooperation by demonstrating what Burke called a “consubstantiality” between communicator and audience. The depiction of consubstantiality points out where persons “stand together” (from the etymology of the word) and shows how they share a similar concern or interest.7 Identification is a two-way process. As the communicator establishes rapport by identifying with the concerns of the audience, the audience begins to identify with those of the communicator. The sharing of opinion in one area is used as a fulcrum to move opinion in another.8
To learn what the story of Judah, Joseph and their brothers has to tell us about communication and to reflect on what it means for preaching, we can look for two different acts of identification. We will first watch for identifications that are made within the story between characters and then look for the ways in which audiences are asked to identify with the concerns of the characters in the story. Put another way, we will look at the figures of Judah and Joseph as persuaders who influence other characters, but we will also consider how the story works to influence reading and listening audiences.
To learn about Judah’s strategies of identification we should look at his last and longest speech, his appeal before Joseph for Benjamin’s release in Genesis 44. Up to this point in the story, Joseph’s gift for interpreting dreams has saved Egypt from famine and, as a result, Joseph has become lord of the land. The brothers have gone down to Egypt to buy food, but Joseph has orchestrated events to “test the words” of his brothers to see if they are, as they say, “honest men.” He jailed Simeon, stating that he would only be released if the brothers brought Benjamin to Egypt (42:33-34). After Reuben’s attempt to persuade their father fails, Judah convinced Jacob to let Benjamin go. When they arrive in Egypt, Joseph framed the boy by planting his silver cup in Benjamin’s sack, declaring that he would keep him as a slave.
Judah answers Joseph’s initial accusation with repetition of a first person plural “we” that ironically speaks of the guilt that the brothers all bear before the brother they sold,” What shall we say to my lord? What can we speak, how can we prove ourselves innocent? God has found out your servants’ guilt. Here we are, slaves to my lord, we and the one in whose hand the goblet was found.” (Gen. 44:16).
This short speech aligns Judah with his brothers, but it also functions as the first step in Judah’s rhetorical strategy. If the Egyptian (who is really their brother) can be persuaded that all the brothers conspired to take the cup, he might be less likely to take only Benjamin. The attempt fails and the Egyptian rejects the suggestion, stating that only Benjamin will become a slave; the rest may return in peace to their father. The word “father” is his last word.
Then Judah steps forward, physically separating himself from his brothers, to make another appeal and proposal. As he has done before, Judah assesses his situation and determines his strategy in response to that situation. The last word in the Egyptian’s pronouncement, “father” becomes the key. In past visits this man had asked about their father’s welfare.
Now Judah speaks to this interest the Egyptian has shown in their father, all the while addressing an interest that runs deeper than he knows. The speech that results marks the creation of a new consubstantiality between Judah and Joseph based upon their common love for their father. At the same time it demonstrates Judah’s commitment to his father’s welfare and calls Joseph to the same commitment.
Judah chooses a narrative form for his appeal in which he neither embellishes nor comments on his report until he makes his concluding proposal. He does little more than quote from past exchanges, but his quotations show a number of diversions from the dialogue recorded earlier in Genesis. He is a helpless man who retains authority as he shapes his narrative through the choice of his words.9
Judah begins his appeal by quoting Joseph’s initial question of interest in the family, intimating that the trouble began with him. As Judah retraces the steps in the dialogue between Joseph and the brothers, he points out that they have shown concern for their father’s well being while Joseph has not. Judah recalls that although the brothers told him that the loss of Benjamin would kill Jacob, Joseph demanded to see him anyway.
We said to my lord, “the lad cannot leave his father; if he leaves his father, he will die.” But you said to your servants, if your youngest brother does not come down with you, you will not see my face again” (44:21-23).
Thus Judah puts the wishes of his father and Joseph in conflict with one another. The recurrence of “cannot” in “the lad cannot leave his father,” (44:22) and in the words to Jacob “we cannot go down,” and “we cannot see the man’s face,” (44:26) highlights Joseph’s power over the situation.
Judah seeks to evoke a sense of pity in this powerful judge, hoping the Egyptian will imagine the effect the loss of Benjamin will have on the father. Judah would make the sorrowful image of Jacob come to life before Joseph’s eyes. He uses Jacob’s own words to create a dialogue between these two adversaries whose wishes and threats have put Judah in an impossible position. He also presents Joseph with the pathetic figure of the father. Jacob is described as aged, bereft of a son, and so attached to his youngest that the loss of that son would prove fatal.
Now your servant, my father said to us:
You know that my wife bore two sons to me. One went away from me, and I said, Surely he has been torn to pieces. And I have never seen him again. Now should you take away this one as well from before me, and should harm befall him, you will bring down my gray hair in sorrow to Sheol. (44:27-29)
Judah quotes his father’s very words so that the image of Jacob’s grey head going down to Sheol can have its full visual effect (44:29-31). As a result, Judah has stepped out of the picture and brought his father face to face with Joseph to allow Jacob to make his own emotional appeal directly to him. Joseph also hears how his own words were heard by Jacob while he hears his own father pour out his tale of grief and loss.
But Judah stresses his responsibility when he speaks in first person singular: “Then your servant my father said to us …” (44:27). Quotation ends when Judah says, “Now therefore when I come to your servant my father” (44:30) and makes his substitution based on the pledge he made to his father.
Now let your servant remain instead of the lad as a slave to my lord; let the lad go up with his brothers. For how can I go up to my father if the lad is not with me? Otherwise I will see the sorrow that will find my father. (44:33-34)
Here Judah rhetorically separates himself from his brothers, even as he had physically separated himself earlier when he stepped forward (44:18). He alone had made a pledge to his father and he alone can make this offer to Joseph, but this separation is not a break with father or family. Instead, it an affirmation of the family bond and a sacrifice made for its welfare.
On another level Judah, without knowing, asks his brother to consider alignment with the family as more important than alignment with Egypt. Recall that Joseph named his sons Mannasseh and Ephraim, commemorating his vindication and rise to power in Egypt. “Manasseh,” he said, “Because God has made forget all my hardship and all my father’s house….” Ephraim, “For God has made me fruitful in the land of my misfortunes.” (41:52) There is a twofold identification here, for Joseph first of all aligns himself with God, the source of his good fortune, and second uses the names to reject his father’s house and embrace this new land of Egypt. Now as Judah asks this powerful Egyptian to do right by the old man, he unknowingly asks his brother Joseph to do right by demonstrating the same affection Judah has shown.
Judah’s creative act of commitment reverses the roles that the two brothers played in their last encounter, for then it was Judah who took the father ‘s favorite from him. Now Joseph would take Benjamin away and Judah is willing to sacrifice himself for his father. The figure who was instrumental in the near destruction of the family now holds its welfare above his own. The audience, knowing Joseph’s identity, also can appreciate what Judah’s attempts to evoke pity would mean to this man who hears of the sufferings of his own father.10
So, having looked closely at Judah’s speech, what can we learn about communication and preaching? First, we see that Judah shaped his speech to speak to the interest this Egyptian judge showed in his father. Preachers instinctively do the same when they shape their sermons to speak to the interests of their hearers, to lift a burden, answer a gnawing question, or point to ways in which listeners can fulfil their desires to be more Christlike. Speaking to interests does not necessarily mean that we are contributing to the self-centeredness of our culture. Judah appealed to what looked like genuine interest in the old man’s welfare, and he hoped to use that to show that keeping Benjamin was unthinkable. Sermons that offer answers to the question, “How can I come to know God more deeply or make the love of God known to others?” can be presented in ways that show the preacher has been listening to the concerns and interests of the congregation.
Second, we notice that Judah used Joseph’s own words, certainly as part of his strategy of reading the court transcript, but also in the repeated use of the word “father,” fourteen times! And, it is the last word in his speech; just as Joseph ended his pronouncement to the brothers with the words “go up in peace to your father” so Judah ends his appeal speaking of the evil that would come to his “father.” So, even though salespeople are sometimes taught to mimic the posture, words and even rate of speech of potential customers, identification with the language of one’s hearers need not be manipulative; it can be a sign of genuine concern for their well being.
Walter Wangerin in his book Mourning into Dancing, tells the story of a woman who mourns the death of an uncle, the closest thing to a father she ever had. She remembers how, when she was a girl, her uncle had given her a buffalo nickel before he went away to the war. He told her he’d come back for it, and he did. Now Gloria tells Wangerin that she saw her dead uncle standing at the foot of the bed, smiling and reminding her about the buffalo. She tells him she knows he is coming back. “He told me, twice,” she says.
But time passes and Gloria’s grief takes another turn, plunging her into quiet passivity. Her oldest son is affected. He’s been missing school, and doesn’t know why he punched out the back door window. He just knows that he misses his mother and the house is cold. Wangerin helps the boy fix the window and visits with Gloria, but there is little response as he speaks to her.
She keeps her head down. She looks like a truant in the principal’s office. I place my hand on her forearm. “Gloria, I wish my word were a buffalo nickel and your heart were a purse, so I could tuck this into you, and you would never lose it: God loves you. God loves you, Gloria. God loves you.”11
On a lighter note, Tex Sample tells how a pastor friend learned to communicate with a teenager who came to visit him. Within the space of one week the young man had lost his job, his girlfriend, and his dignity in a fight at the basketball game. The pastor knew he wasn’t connecting as he asked him if he saw any light at the end of the tunnel. He said he wasn’t sure. “You mean,” he said, “it’s like the [country] song, ‘I see the light at the end of the tunnel, but I sure hope it’s not a train.'”
The answer came back like a shot: “Exactly! That’s what it’s been like with her.” After an hour of conversation peppered with country song lyrics, the young man was willing to pray with the pastor, who asked if he could resist attempting to call her. “I’m just gonna say to her: ‘If your phone doesn’t ring, baby, it’s me.'”12 The previous examples are about pastoral conversations, not sermons, but I’d like to suggest that those pastoral conversations are opportunities to do the kind of listening that will help us preach with the words and concerns of our listeners in mind.
Such identifications would seem contrived and manipulative if they did not demonstrate deep caring for persons. Any attempt to follow Judah’s rhetorical strategies will fall flat without authentic feeling and commitment. As Judah poured out his love and sorrow for his father before Joseph, Joseph himself was moved and perhaps even shamed by the suffering he too had brought upon the old man.
Craig Loscalzo reminds us that the prophet Ezekiel sat among the exiles before he spoke to them. Another prophet, Amos, must have known the Israelite’s anger at Damascus, Gaza and Tyre as he pronounced judgement on these neighbors of Israel. He even spoke against Judah, his homeland. Then, after affirming their anger, he began to speak about the sins of Israel. If he had not, says Loscalzo, he would have been dismissed as an outsider.13
Contemporary preachers can demonstrate this empathic identification in many ways. One might be to give voice to the reactions and feelings that come in response to a Scripture text. Positive responses as well as negative feelings of anger, questions and doubts can become bonds with the congregation as well as pointers for the direction the sermon can take. Giving voice to potential reactions demonstrates that the preacher understands the responses and is not put off by them.
Well, where are we? We’ve looked at Judah’s use of rhetorical identification in persuading his brothers. We’ve seen some communication strategies that we often use without realizing it. Now we need to look at the ways the story itself makes identifications with audiences and works for their transformation. Joseph’s reply to Judah and his brothers shows us how it happens.
Joseph reveals himself with the words, “I am Joseph. Is my father still alive?” (Gen. 45:3) In so doing, he shows that he no longer has any need to hide behind his Egyptian identity and has chosen to rejoin the family. Judah’s words and act of commitment have unwittingly persuaded Joseph to respond in kind, for they spoke of a commitment that Joseph had put far behind himself. As Judah taught Joseph about family fidelity, he also provided a principle for reunification based upon their love for their father.
Now, just as Judah taught Joseph about fidelity to the father, so Joseph teaches Judah and the brothers about trust in providence. He explains, “do not be distressed or angry with yourselves, because you sold me here, for God sent me before you to preserve life.” (45:5) If Judah’s loyalty to the father moved Joseph to rejoin the family, Joseph’s awareness of God’s guidance lifts the matter to a higher level of identification, for even the brothers’ jealousy and evil action have been subsumed in God’s plan for the family. Surely this family that has found a new sense of unity in their love for their father can also find unity in the God who has kept them and their father alive. Even as Judah tells Joseph, we are all sons of Jacob, Joseph replies, we are also children of God.
To emphasize the point, the same movement from consubstantiality in father Jacob to unity based upon God’s action recurs at the end of the story. After Jacob’s death, the brothers, fearing that Joseph will take his final revenge, send a message that father Jacob had asked Joseph to forgive them. Joseph weeps and reminds them that “Even though you intended to do harm to me, God intended it for good, as he is doing this day, preserving a numerous people.” (50:20) Here again Joseph takes the idea of familial unity and lifts it up to a higher principle, so as to say that this family’s unity is above all a result of the guiding hand of God. The brothers speak of blood ties, Joseph speaks of the hand of God.
With this in mind, let’s say one more thing about preaching. Preaching is, if it is nothing else, the demonstration of how our stories are taken up into the larger story of God’s loving care for his creation. Preaching as a communicative act summons all the resources of identification we can discover to fashion a new vision of personal and corporate identity based in God. Put another way, preaching is using the resources of identification to lead people to new or renewed identification with God and God’s purposes.
Judah persuaded, but Joseph preached. Recall that Judah asked Joseph to see that his actions affected another’s life; that Joseph’s story with these brothers was not isolated from the story of father Jacob’s. Joseph in turn invited Judah and his brothers to see their story not as a series of events hanging out there on their own, but as events that are caught up, carried along, borne aloft by the story of God, a story of mercy and restoration. Even as Judah said to Joseph, I am committed to this family, Joseph said to Judah, you are not the only one who is committed to this family — God is too.
Joseph made the startling claim that the story Judah told him was part of a larger, more comprehensive story, one that works for salvation, one that takes evil intentions and produces good. Joseph not only spoke of a higher principle of unity to Judah and the brothers, he spoke of a higher intention at work as well. There is then a merging of their story with God’s story, but there is something more. Joseph dared to proclaim that they are one and the same story viewed through the eyes of faith.
So Joseph spoke with two purposes. He said that there is another way of looking at the story that is hopeful, beyond all hopes, and that became the basis for calling his brothers to identify with this new version of the story, to see how God works good from evil.
Perhaps that’s what we are as preachers, people who listen to the stories of those placed in our care and then show how they are stories of God at work — preserving, saving, healing, loving — God present, even when there seems to be no sign or word from God anywhere. But we do that by paying more attention to the stories of Scripture, not less.
Here’s what I mean. Scripture has already told our stories through the stories of people who were very much like us, even though they lived in a different time, place, and culture. Because we can identify with so much that happens in those stories, we can also identify ourselves with the work of God in those stories. Let’s turn back to Burke.
Literature, said Burke, provides a “strategy for coping with a situation.”14 Works of literature function as “equipment for living, that size up situations in various ways in keeping with correspondingly various attitudes.”15 The poet is, indeed, a “medicine man.” but the situations for which he offers his stylistic medicine may be very real ones … it is only in so far as his situation overlaps upon our situation that his strategy of encompassment is felt by us to be relevant.16
Burke’s work with the literary function of the symbol stressed two things. One, stories are symbols. The symbol describes a life experience that is common enough to be recognizable to many if not most readers. The details of the event or experience are not as important as the underlying response.
For example, Burke noted that readers need not necessarily share Coleridge’s experience of drug addiction to share some sense of that writer’s experience of guilt. Here identification can be understood as the symbolic link that is forged between writer and reader. “The Symbol”, Burke wrote, “is the verbal parallel to a pattern of experience…. The Symbol is perhaps most overwhelming in its effect when the artist’s and the reader’s patterns of experience closely coincide.”17 So the stories of Scripture, especially the story of Joseph and his family, describe our divisions, our hurt and anger, our guilt, so we say, “Yes, that’s what it is like.”
Two, the symbol also offer a “strategy for encompassment,” a way of dealing with a situation, that can become a strategy for readers as well, if the symbol as accurately “sized up” the life experience of those readers. The strategy for encompassment offered by the Christian Scriptures is the redemptive work of God, ever present throughout the Old Testament and especially present in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus in the New Testament.
Burke helps us understand that preaching follows the symbolic inducement of Scripture as it invites listeners to identify, not only with the situation of the story, but also with its strategy for coping with that situation. Preaching then is not so much asking people to exchange stories or to exchange identifications, it is calling them to reframe their stories and to take on a new or renewed identification as children of God and followers of Jesus.
In ministry we hear hundreds, perhaps thousands of stories, many as painful and seemingly hopeless as the story of Judah’s family. No, not all of the stories we hear will have the happy ending this one does, yet we still have the duty and privilege of recasting them in the fire of God’s presence, God’s holiness, God’s self-giving, God’s love. So like Joseph’s family, believers in Jesus Christ come with the experiences of family division, dashed dreams, betrayal, grief, guilt, and they need and long to hear the Scriptures sum up that experience, give it a name, and offer a strategy of encompassment.
In sum then, preachers can learn much from the speeches of Judah and Joseph. From Judah we learn that successful persuaders know how to create unity by speaking to the concerns of their listeners. This process of identification can use the language and inter-ests of the listeners, but it is only auth-entic and effective when it demonstrates real sharing of concern. The concerns of the listeners must really be the concerns of the speaker. The sharing of concern is evident when listeners sense that the speaker has felt something of what they have felt. Preachers, when they have done their work of listening well, can and will identify with their listeners.
From Joseph we learned that preachers know how to bring the life stories of their congregations together with the life stories of the Scriptures. They are able to merge, or better, to recast the stories of our lives into the story of God’s loving purpose for this world he called good. Preachers must help their listeners identify with the stories of Scripture and the God who gave them.
People listen to sermons for many reasons, but I suppose that there is really only one, and that is to hear that God is at work in their lives. We who preach have the joy of using the resources of identification to tell them that their stories are the stories of the people of God.
1Adele Berlin, Poetics and Interpretation of Biblical Narrative (Sheffield: Almond Press, 1983), 119.
2Kenneth Burke, A Rhetoric of Motives, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969), 42-43.
3Burke, A Rhetoric of Motives, 172.
4Aristotle, Rhetoric, 1.2.1355b, 25.
5Kenneth Burke, “Rhetoric – Old and New,” The Journal of Education V (April 1951): 203-209.
6Burke, A Rhetoric of Motives, 146. Burke started to use inclusive language in the later years of his writing and speaking.
7Burke, A Rhetoric of Motives, 62; A Grammar of Motives (New York: Prentice Hall, 1945), 57.
8Burke, A Rhetoric of Motives, 56.
9George W. Savran, Telling and Retelling: Quotation in Biblical Narrative (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988), 59. Savran compares Judah’s use of quotations with that of the lengthy speech of Abraham’s servant in Genesis 24, noting that the servant was also in a powerless position, p. 132, n. 54.
10Wayne Booth has suggested that the use of “stable” irony (that in which readers are included) can give readers the illusion of having built the points of irony for themselves; “The Pleasures and Pitfalls of Irony, or, Why Don’t You Say What You Mean?” in Rhetoric, Philosophy and Literature: An Exploration, ed. Don M. Burks (West Lafayette: Purdue University Press, 1978), 11.
11Walter Wangerin, Jr., Mourning into Dancing (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1992), 248.
12Tex Sample, White Soul: Country Music, the Church, and Working Americans. (Nashville: Abingdon, 1996), 154.
13Craig Loscalzo, “Preaching Themes from Amos,” Review and Expositor 92 (1995): 197, 203.
14Kenneth Burke, The Philosophy of Literary Form: Studies in Symbolic Action, 3d. ed. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973), 109.
15ibid., 293-296.
16ibid., 64.
17Kenneth Burke, Counter Statement (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968), 152-3.
