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Today's Speech
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Communication aesthetics
a
Paul N. Campbell
a
Queens College , CUNY
Published online: 21 May 2009.

To cite this article: Paul N. Campbell (1971) Communication aesthetics, Today's Speech, 19:3,
7-18, DOI: 10.1080/01463377109368984

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 SUMMER 1971
COMMUNICATION AESTHETICS
In this essay I shall propose the estab-
lishment of a new area in the field of
Communication—the area of "Communi-
cation Aesthetics." The "newness," I
must add at once, does not inhere in any
of the basic concepts that follow; all of
these are clearly ideas revisited. Rather,
the proposed area is new in that familiar
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constructs are combined in unusual ways.
The proposal is based on a character-
istic of, and a need tha,t exists in, Com-
munication as a discipline. It seems ap-
parent that "communication" has become
the god-term of our field, as witnessed
by the retitling and restructuring of
courses, departments, and the national
organization. And it seems equally clear
that one major pull of this new ultimate
term is toward empirical-experimental-
behavioral methods of investigation. But
a problem immediately confronts us, for
such investigative methods are essenti-
ally analytic, and that is to say that they
are basically incomplete and unsatisfac-
tory. There is no question that analytic
methodologies are necessary. We must
begin with such studies, and we must
emphasize them. But we must go beyond
them. The warnings against analytic
processes per se that began with Kant
and Cassirerl have grown in recent
years to a veritable chorus of voices—
Langer,2 Lenneberg,3 Chomsky,4 Feigl,5
Polanyi,6 Duncan,7 Godel,8 Sartre,9
Burke,10 Koestler,11 and many others—all
crying that every viable system must
make room for the knower in what is
known, all protesting that "pure" and
"impersonal" approaches are distorting
and self-contradictory, all pointing out
the severe limitations in the analytic
method. Some of these theorists (Chom-
sky, Lenneberg) have argued against be-
haviorism; others (Feigl, Langer) have
put the problem in larger terms and have
attacked the inadequacies of positivistic
7
thinking; and still others (Burke, Sartre,
Koestler) have taken an even more com-
prehensive view and have exposed the
weaknesses of the analytic method. Since
behaviorism is one form of positivism,
and positivism one variant of the ana-
lytic method, what unites these theorists
is their distrust of and disbelief in ana-
lytic thought when employed as the pri-
mary or the sole intellectual process.
I do not suggest that these voices have
been unheard by students of Communi-
cation, but I do suggest that we have as
yet built into the field no processes or
investigative methods that will serve as
safeguards against approaches that are
too analytic, too objective, too imper-
sonal.12 It is my belief that the need for
just such processes constitutes the basis
for the proposed area, and it is my hope
that just such processes will constitute
the area itself.
A Conceptual Framework
There are four interrelated concepts
that provide a foundation for this area:
1) There in a level at which human com-
munication becomes a dramatic, an aes-
thetic act, for such communication re-
quires the use of language (i.e., verbal,
nonverbal, natural, or artificial symboli-
zation), and the language process itself is
at bottom an aesthetic one. 2) Communi-
cation is an entirely active process, and
though communicative and language acts
are often called "symbolic," no distinc-
tion can be made between "symbolic"
and "real" acts. 3) Language, the medium
of communication, is the defining charac-
teristic of man, which is to say tha,t to
be human is to possess and be possessed
by language. 4) In his language acts man
effects a fusion of self-symbol-environ-
ment that is appropriately studied dia-
lectically, not analytically.13
These four concepts are the corner-
stones of Communication Aesthetics, but
 8 TODAY'S SPEECH
my argument in this essay concerns, not
only these notions, but the relationships
between them and the implications they
hold for our field. I shall contend that
together these ideas make up an area of
study that is of much importance.
Language as Aesthetic Process
The concept of literature as dramatic
discourse is a familiar one.14 But we have
assumed that communicative and rhetori-
cal processes do not include, or include
in only an incidental fashion, the dra-
matic process that is literature.
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The problem involved in distinguishing
between dramatic a,nd nondramatic uses
of language is much like the rhetorical
problem of limiting persuasion to oral
discourse or to those situations in which
concrete changes in behavior are sought.
Unless persuasion is viewed as a dimen-
sion of language, the basic language proc-
esses pertinent to sua,sory discourse are
excluded from the realm of rhetoric. Sim-
ilarly, so long as dramatic discourse is
viewed as occurring solely or primarily
in literature, the basic language processes
that constitute the dramatic act will be
considered the domain of literary schol-
ars, not of students of communication.
My first step, then, will be to suggest
that the concept of dramatic discourse be
broadened to the point at which, like
rhetoric, it can be considered a dimen-
sion of language. And to accomplish this
it is necessary to compare the terms
"communication" and "language."
Although the communicative process is
indispensable to fully developed lan-
guage, noncommunicative language proc-
esses exist, are employed constantly, and
are the bases from which we develop
our communicative language abilities.15
In symbolic and in phylo- and ontoge-
netic terms, the deepest levels of lan-
guage are constitutive rather than com-
municative. A constitutive language act
is one that constitutes, that is a passing
or permanent aspect of the language-
user. If I step under a scalding shower
in the morning, my bellowed or muttered
"damn!" is in no sense communicative.
I am not talking to anyone else, for no
one else is present; and there is no
meaningful sense in which I am talking
to myself [though intrapersonal commu-
nication certainly occurs in other con-
texts). Rather, I am simply talking. That
"damn!" is not expressive of some inner
state, but is a way of being irritated or
angry. And there are, of course, a great
many similar constitutive language acts
that we perform regularly. All language
acts that may be called characteristic of
the user are constitutive, for a charac-
teristic act is one that is not governed
by the communicative demands of the
situation, but is native to, is an aspect of
the individual. Thus, inflections, gestures,
limited or rich vocabularies, typically
serene or sarcastic uses of language are
all constitutive, though they are very
often communicative as well.
Constitutive language acts are most ap-
parent in the vocal and gestural play that
seems to have been the origin of lan-
guage in the race and that many theorists
view a,s the precursor of language in the
individual.16 And this fundamental di-
mension of language does not disappear.
Most of the time it is hidden beneath
deliberate communicative language proc-
esses, but it is always present, as indi-
cated by the clearly noncommunicative
and constitutive nature of the dreams,
fantasies, and poetry to which we turn
for restorative value.17
These constitutive language acts are
aesthetic or poetic in the broad sense,
for they involve, as Burke puts it,
the sheer exercise of "symbolicity" (or "sym-
bolic action") for its own sake, purely for
love of the art. If man is characteristically
the symbol-using animal, then he should
take pleasure in the use of his powers as a
symbolizer, just as a bird presumably likes
to fly or a fish to swim.18
And they seem to be aesthetic or poetic
in the narrow sense of centering on
rhythm and metaphor, for it is just those
language processes that are most mark-
edly noncommunicative that are most ob-
viously rhythmical and metaphorical—
 SUMMER 1971
our dreams, our profanity, our passionate
urgings, and our poetry. We are mistaken
if we think of these elements of language
as merely decorative, for, as Koestler
says,
rhythm and assonance, pun and rhyme are
not artificially created ornaments of speech;
the whole evidence indicates that their
origins go back to primitive—and infantile—
forms of thought and utterance, in which
sound and meaning are magically inter-
woven, and association by sound-affinities
is as legitimate as association based on other
similarities.19
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I believe that we must consider this
basic language process a dramatic one
for two reasons: first, it is on this level
that man creates himself as a person (by
acting against a. resisting environment) or
as a persona in an imaginative work (by
acting against the resisting self); second,
the human state is one of constant ten-
sion between the constitutive and the
communicative dimensions of language.
Both of these processes involve a, dra-
matic (almost a protagonist-antagonistic)
quality, for both involve a conflict of
forces. It is in language-as-drama. that
we fight to reach beyond ourselves, to
achieve simple, direct contact with an
other or with the outer world. And it is
in language-as-drama that we struggle to
step outside our own skins to become
the persona of a poem or play or novel.
Thus, far from limiting dramatic dis-
course to literature, I wish to consider
it as the dimension of language in which
we create and re-create ourselves in re-
lation to the "real" world around us and
in which we use those imaginative or
artistic events (originated by others or
by ourselves) to become new beings or
personae.
And I believe that we must consider this
basic language process an aesthetic one.
The term "aesthetic" is difficult to deal
with precisely or narrowly. Originally, it
meant "perceived by the senses" or "sen-
suously perceived"; it has come to mean
"the ability to perceive beauty." But
buried in the word is the notion of per-
ceiving keenly, strongly, pleasurably; it
9
is not simply perception versus the lack
of perception (anaesthesia), but a manner
of perceiving, perceiving in such a way
as to create the reason for the very act
of perception. This is indeed a broad use
of the term, but we must start there, I
think, for it is precisely this notion of
perception that is appropriate to consti-
tutive language acts. In our dreams and
our poetry we do not simply perceive,
we perceive sharply, intensely, with a
kind of sensuous concentration. And
these qualities may well be called aes-
thetic.
Some narrowing is possible, however.
As I have already implied (and as I shall
argue directly in pages to come), the aes-
thetic level is one of heightened or sharp-
ened perception in which there is a par-
tial breakdown of the shell of the self. A
move is made toward some larger iden-
tity, a step is taken toward fusion with
an other, with a process, or with a group.
The step, the move, is but partial, for the
self must be maintained and transcended
simultaneously. In that tension, in the bal-
ance between the two, exists the aes-
thetic process as I use that term.
If we recognize that, at bottom, there
is a constitutive, a dramatic, an aesthetic
element of language, we will understand
that no matter how obvious the commu-
nicative process is in a given situation,
there is also a constitutive and dramatic
process that must be considered if the
situation is to be described accurately.
In short, we will understand that the
communicator is also a performer—not a
performer in the sense of being unreal
or exhibitionistic, but a performer in the
sense of using language artistically, of
finding aesthetic pleasure in the symbolic
process. Because it is at the symbolic
level at which he chooses to symbolize
in a certain way that the symbol-user is
behaving most dramatically, that he is
most obviously performing, we must
study and appreciate that drama, that
aesthetic process.20
 10
Communication as Symbolic-Real Action
Since human communication requires
language (again, verbal, nonverbal, nat-
ural, or artificial symbolization), the idea
that language is "symbolic action" means
that communication, too, is "symbolic
action." That statement has two impor-
tant implications. First, communication is
an action, an active process—one in
which there are no passive elements.
Thus, the listeners to or receivers of mes-
sages must be seen as active participants
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in the communicative event. This is
hardly a novel point of view, but our
very use of language tends to discredit it.
"Persuasive speaking" we consider an ap-
propriate label, but "persuasive listening"
has an odd ring to it. And yet, unless we
are to relegate listening to the status of
a passive, mechanistic behavior, it must
be fully as active, fully as persuasive as
speaking. Second, and even more impor-
tant, language and communication are
certainly "symbolic acts," but we are in-
stantly tempted to distinguish between
acts that are "symbolic" and those that
are "real."
In the term "symbolic act," both words
may prove to be troublesome. If we as-
sume that a "symbolic" act differs from
a "real" one, we face the problem of the
nature of symbolicity. Of course, we will
wish to say that anything that is sym-
bolic must in some way transcend itself,
must stand for something other than it-
self. But as soon as we say that we are
prevented from simply describing verbal
acts as "symbolic" and physical acts as
"real." I may call someone an "imbecile,"
or I may throw a rock through his win-
dow. Throwing the rock is a real act, but
it is surely symbolic of my dislike for
the window's owner or, at the very least,
of something such as my need to destroy.
On the other hand, uttering the word
"imbecile" is clearly symbolic, but it is
also entirely real. Indeed, I may cause
psychological harm, destroy a career, or
be liable to legal action, so real is such
an act. Thus, the symbolic-real dichotomy
TODAY'S SPEECH
must be discarded, and all acts must be
seen as completely real and completely
symbolic.
The other word in the term is even
more of a problem. What is an "act"?
The key, I think, is to bs found in those
behaviors that we are unlikely to call
acts. The circulation of blood, the growth
of hair, knee-reflexes are hardly acts. If
I am struck in the back of the head, my
head will move forward, but that forward
motion seems poorly described as an act.
Such behaviors are too automatic, too
mindless, too unintentional to qualify as
acts. The familiar distinction between
"action" and sheer "motion" requires that
acts possess a motivational character-
istic.21 To say that I act is to say that,
in some sense, I am motivated to act; and
that is to say that I choose to act; and
that, in turn, is to say that I am free to
choose to act. Freedom of choice, then, is
essential to action.22
Because free choice cannot coexist
with absolute or deterministic systems,
we can postulate no one-to-one relation-
ships between messages and receivers,
senders and receivers, or communicative
acts and the responses to those acts.
In all cases there must be levels on
which we freely choose to create, send,
and interpret communications, and that
means that much of our attention must
be directed to the bases on which the
choice to act is made. Indeed, we may
well wish to consider successful those
communicative processes that provide
bases for the exercise of free choice, no
matter whether that choice entails agree-
ment or disagreement with the speaker or
writer.23 That would be ' a significant
change from the traditional view tha,t
successful communication is that which
obtains a desired result, and it would, I
believe, remove many of the theoretical
and practical difficulties we have en-
countered in the past.
If we accept the idea that all acts in-
volve freedom of choice, the ultimate
question that confronts us concerns the
nature of the bases on which those
 SUMMER 1971
choices are made. And the answer is
a fundamental part of Communication
Aesthetics. We act, we choose freely for
reasons and purposes that are basically
neither instrumental nor rational, but
constitutive, dramatic, and aesthetic. In
the process of choosing, we may, of
course, reason by spelling out the impli-
cations of alternative behaviors, but
those implications become significant
only when we translate them into our
own systems of values, i.e., when we
make the leap from the orderly and
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practical into the realm of the subjective
and the aesthetic. Further, the process of
choosing freely is by no means a con-
sistent progression from the rational to
the aesthetic; we always end with the
evaluative, the personal, but we very
often begin there as well. At the outset,
we very often select those alternative
processes and the implications of those
processes that best suit us, that most
deeply please us. So that it is always the
aesthetic that underlies the end, or the
beginning and the end, of our freedom of
choice.
In our very perception of the world we
order it so that we may exist in it more
comfortably, more pleasurably. In the
creation and interpretation of messages
we certainly reason, but that very process
is based on nonrational and aesthetic
factors such as rhythm, metaphor, elegant
wording, taut argumentative design. In
the evaluation of the person who speaks
or writes or of the persona of an im-
aginative work, we surely use analysis
and logic, but on the deepest levels we
are at the same time dealing with the
magic of the word, the mystery of the
shaman who has power over us, and the
illusion of the actor who portrays a self
that expands or diminishes us.21
There is a twofold importance to this
cluster of ideas. First, it prevents us from
setting up or sustaining points of view
that are implicitly mechanistic or deter-
ministic, and tha,t is a significant move
11
because much of our terminology can
easily acquire meanings that are static,
fixed, analytic (the paradigm example is
the ubiquitous sender-message-receiver
transmission model.) Second, it helps
make the study of communicative pro-
cesses consonant with our basic knowl-
edge of language—a vital theoretical step,
for it has been frequently noted that the
acquisition and use of language are in-
explicable if the postulated goal is com-
munication.25 It would seem that our
study of the communicative process
should rest on and be related to the basic
symbolic but noncommunicative process
from which the former develops.26
Language as Man
Man is not. the only communicating
animal, nor is he the only symbolizing
animal. But it appears that he is the only
animal that possesses a fully developed
language, i.e., a symbol-system that is
both instrumental and consummatory,
both poetic and practical, both com-
municative and aesthetic. Langauge, then,
is man's defining characteristic. To be
human is to possess and be possessed by
language.27 And if we understand that
the fundamental constitutive and aes-
thetic language processes are not expres-
sive of the human condition, but are that
condition, it follows that man is lan-
guage. As the defining characteristic,
language dot:s not stand for some innate
or human state; language is that state.
To accept language as the human pro-
cess and to examine it aesthetically is to
cast some interesting problems of human
behavior in different terms. For instance,
we have considered science and art as
archetypal human endeavors, for man has
apparently worked on those symbolic
fronts since the dim days of pre-history.
But there are other activities that are
quite as typical. War, murder, sacrifice
—these, too, have ever been part of man
the symbol-user. And while we have
conventionally described man's artistic
achievements as triumphs of feeling or of
the spirit and his scientific achievements
 12
as triumphs of the mind or of reason, we
have tended to explain man's wars, hates,
prejudices, and murders as regressions to
a sub-human level. In so doing we have
tended to confuse the "human" and the
"humane,"28 and as a result we have
rarely searched for the aesthetic bases of
obviously human behaviors that are de-
cidedly inhumane. That search may seem
to involve a contradiction in terms, for
"aesthetic" has often been reserved for
those pursuits that are beautiful or pleas-
urable in a beneficial sense. Yet if all
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symbolic action is based on an aesthetic
process, we must look for the aesthetic
dimension of war, hate, murder—of all
man's aggressive and destructive acts.
We have usually thought of say, ag-
gression as a form of selfishness, as self-
centered behavior. But it would appear
that, at least for all types of group ag-
gression, "selfishness" is a singularly in-
appropriate term. Rather, individuals
seem to "lose" the self, to identify with
the political movement, the church, the
state, etc., in their aggressive acts. In-
deed, it has been remarked that aggres-
sion is due to man's excessive need for
selflessness, for identification with the
group, for fusion with the larger human
reality.29 And this need to give up the
uniqueness of the self for the strength or
comfort of membership in a social organi-
zation is precisely what makes such phe-
nomena as war and racism possible. It is
only by defining ourselves as Americans,
capitalists, liberals, conservatives, etc.,
that we are able to define our enemies;
and until we have defined them we can-
not possibly hate, fear, or kill them.
There is, of course, a communicative, a
rhetorical dimension to these definitional
maneuvers.30 But what has too often
escaped our attention is the fact that the
process of identification with the group,
the process of "earthing" one's feelings in
the mother church or state is remarkably
similar to the aesthetic process of re-
sponding to a work of art by transcending
the self, by identifying with a persona,
by "earthing" one's feelings in the cos-
TODAY'S SPEECH
mos. Both processes are, in fact, aesthetic
in nature, despite our belief that the one
is ennobling, the other, degrading.
Similarly, there is an aesthetic in indi-
vidual communicative acts that we may
value negatively. The inflammatory and
denunciatory communication that is so
prevalent today is aesthetically grounded
no less than the calmest and most serene
appeal. The so-called "militant" who at-
tempts to create a threat-filled environ-
ment for those whom he sees as op-
pressors may do so partially because he
believes in the efficacy of such a com-
municative strategy, but he adopts that
strategy largely because he thereby in-
creases his value in his audience's eyes
and his own. That increase in value, that
self-elevation is accomplished by filling
the enemies' world with the same threats
that have permeated the communicator's
own life, and in its most extreme form
this sort of communication involves the
symbolic rite of the kill, whereby tho
communicator raises himself to his ene-
mies' level by symbolically destroying
them.31 Such acts are well termed "rites,"
for they are explicable only as dramatic,
as aesthetic events.
It is only by accepting the idea that all
communication, all symbolization is on
one level an aesthetic process that we
can avoid dividing language into those
acts that are suitable to man, and are
therefore explicable in terms of the hu-
man creature, and those that are neither
suitable nor explicable as human acts. It
is, after all, not successful communica-
tion that is typical of man, but communi-
cation; it is not the distorted or undis-
torted process of symbolization that is
the human condition, but the process of
symbolization.
The value of this concept lies primarily
in the unifying approach that it makes
possible. If, on the deepest levels, one
misuses symbols for the same reason that
one uses them, the door may be opened
to a unified study of language and com-
munication.32
 SUMMER 1971
The Human Dialectic: Symbolizer-
Symbolization-Symbolized
We must, of course, study man, com-
munication, and the human environment
analytically. We must begin with analysis
because to insist that our sole considera-
tion be a unified symbolic field of all
reality is to make that reality unknow-
able. The other side of the picture, how-
ever, is equally important. To make the
study of communication fully meaningful
we must go beyond analysis to the state
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at which man, through his symbolic acts,
effects a fusion of self-language-environ-
ment. At that stage, analysis must yield
to dialectic.
I haye already argued that there is a
basic sense in which man is language.
Now I would add the idea that there is a
sense in which language is the environ-
ment, a sense in which language is con-
stitutive of the outer world as well as the
self.33 A note of caution is at once neces-
sary, for in this direction lurks a per-
nicious metaphysic. We cannot assume
that the world around us does not exist
or that it is simply and completely un-
knowable, for that is to reduce the uni-
verse and ourselves to a "world" of
words or symbols that floats in a vacuum
or in a perfect mystery. We know a great
deal about our environment, but that is
not to say tha,t our knowledge rests on
direct, objective verifiability. Rather, our
knowledge includes a necessary and
harmless metaphysic—a metaphysic that
inheres in language.
Words, at least in context, are symbols,
but there can be no one-to-one relation-
ship between those symbols and aspects
of the "real" world. Such a relationship
would immediately transform symbols
into signs and man into a creature who
merely reported contacts between him-
self and the objective environment.
Words, then, are not symbols of objects
or events, but are symbols of our experi-
ences with objects or events.34 To the
extent that our experiences are similar,
we may communicate and study the proc-
ess of communication, but we should not
13
be led thereby to the assumption that our
experiences are objective reality. The
symbolic fact is that we create beauty
and ugliness, order and disorder in the
act of experiencing.33 We do not respond
passively to the world around us, but act
on it,
and even in observing environment, [the
human animal] modifies, dismantles, an-
alyzes, and reassembles it after its own
fashion,u converting "noise" into "informa-
tion."
As symbolizers, we do not merely adapt
to the environment, but adapt the en-
vironment to ourselves. Thus, the envi-
ronment is not simply the environment,
but is our environment. We may agree
that it is such-and-such, but we must also
recognize that in experiencing it we have
created it. Not out of metaphysical whole
cloth, but out of the contact between an
objective out-there and the symbolic
transformer that is the human mind.
We can make no direct contact with
the objective world. If we try to do so,
we go through one reductive process
after another until the world simply dis-
appears—and here is an equally perni-
cious metaphysic. Our contacts are neces-
sarily indirect, necessarily symbolic; we
impose ourselves on what we see and
know. And because, in the symbolic proc-
esses of his language, man constitutes
himself and his world and communicates
tha(t constituted inner and outer reality to
others (and to himself), it follows that we
must study both man and his world
through those constitutive and communi-
cative processes, i.e., through language.
For language is the first "given"; what is
common to all problems of knowing is
the nature of the knower, and that nature
is a symbolizing, a language-using one.37
Necessarily, then, we will begin with
analysis and end with dialectic—a sus-
pensive dialectic. We will study man, lan-
guage, communication, words, world, etc.,
separately at first, but we will end by
recognizing that those separate elements
are incomplete, even unreal. And we will
search foi completion, for reality by
 14
creating wholes. "Pencil," we will say, is
a word and symbolizes our experiences
with the thing pencil, but we will then
look at the thing through the word to see
how "reality" has been symbolically
shaped, we will look at the word through
the thing to understand that particular
shaping, and we will look at man the
shaper through the thing shaped and the
act of shaping to understand the nature
of the shaping process.38 Such an ap-
proach is dialectical in that it makes the
symbol and what is symbolized depend-
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ent on each other; and it is a suspensive
dialectic in that all statements about man
and the world are partial, though neces-
sary, and find full significance only in the
study of the process of symbolization.39
All this leads to a radical reordering of
symbolic priorities. Traditionally, we
have said that the major discursive forms
are poetic, rhetorical, philosophical, and
scientific,40 and in so saying we have im-
plied that the four are of similar or equal
importance. We have considered our at-
tempts to describe the objective universe
as scientific discourse, our efforts to de-
scribe man and his place in that universe
as philosophical discourse, our tries at
influencing our fellows in more or less
practical ways as rhetorical discourse,
and our searches for aesthetic rewards as
poetic discourse. But if it is true that
symbolic acts are at bottom constitutive
and aesthetic and that, on the communi-
cative level, such acts inevitably present
the viewer's view of himself and his
world, the two processes that are im-
manent dimensions of language are poetic
and rhetorical discourse. As we consti-
tute ourselves and our world symbolic-
ally, we engage in poetic discourse, and
as we describe and define ourselves and
our world to others, or even to ourselves,
we engage in the inevitable advocacy that
is rhetorical discourse. These are the pri-
mary symbolic processes; we cannot
avoid them, for they exist in all language
acts. The study of communication usually
emphasizes those purposive or instru-
mental processes that are clearly rhetori-
TODAY'S SPEECH
cal,41 but the area of Communication
Aesthetics would extend that emphasis
to the poetic and aesthetic foundation
that undergirds our persuasive and com-
municative acts.
Philosophical and scientific discourse,
on the other hand, we may easily and
frequently avoid. Philosophical discourse
is the secondary language process be-
cause it rests on poetic and rhetorical
bases but precedes the other language
form(s). It precedes them because it in-
volves a systematic disclosure and de-
scription of the pre-suppositions of those
forms or of particular statements made
in those forms. The depths of the sym-
bolic process cannot be studied philo-
sophically, but must be explored "logo-
logically," to use Burke's term.42 There
are no constitutive, metaphorical, rhythm-
ical, etc., presuppositions for philosophy
to explore, and therefore philosophical
discourse can be used as a method of
dealing with all processes save one—the
symbolic process that is language. For
example, in his own works Burke makes
clear the fact that he uses logology or
symbology to explore philosophy, not the
reverse.43 His famous term "dramatism"
gives us the clue to the nature of the
reality that he explicates—not a philo-
sophical nor a scientific reality, but a
human and dramatic reality that com-
bines the objective, the subjective, the
process, the particular means employed,
and the goal.
Scientific discourse is the symbolic
form that deals with discrete objective
realities objectively. This is the tertiary
language process because it, too, rests on
the poetic and the rhetorical, because it
can be explored philosophically, and be-
cause it can be applied to all succeeding
language events. Scientific discourse often
attempts to avoid or minimize the poetic
and rhetorical dimensions of language,
and though it may in some sense mini-
mize them, avoiding them is impossible.41
In fact, its most creative users seem to
have recognized the fact that it is neither
possible nor desirable to avoid the aes-
 SUMMER 1971
thetic,45 and several of them have argued
that the very structure of science is poetic
or metaphorical.46 Scientific discourse can
be examined philosophically because
there are important presuppositions that
must be made before one can engage in
this tertiary form—chief among them, the
notion of a mechanistic universe.47 And
scientific discourse precedes those lan-
guage forms that are identifiable by their
content because science itself is not de-
fined by content, but is a methodology.
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Following these primary, secondary,
and tertiary processes come those lan-
guage forms identifiable by their subject
matter—History, Psychology, Biology, etc.
These are not discursive forms, but in-
tellectual disciplines. All such disciplines
may be investigated using any one or any
combination of the three discursive proc-
esses, but there is both a relationship be-
tween the discipline and the discursive
form(s) employed primarily therein and a
progression through the discursive forms
that is indicated. In all disciplines, in-
cluding Communication, we will begin
with scientific discourse because that is
the process that is needed to discover the
basic data. In some fields—Chemistry,
Biology, Physics—scientific discourse will
be used most of the time, for it is profit-
able to do so. In others—Psychology, So-
ciology, Communication—we arrive more
rapidly at the point at which scientific
discourse per se becomes profitless. We
must then turn to philosophical discourse
to discover the presuppositions on which
we had based our earlier efforts. And in
certain fields—Communication, Art, Mu-
sic, Literature—we will come to the stage
at which philosophical efforts are fruit-
less, and we must then move to logologi-
cal discourse, to symbology. But it is only
in the field of Communication that logo-
logical inquiry itself can proceed at
length, for in fields such as Art, Music,
and Literature this level of study is nar-
rowed to a certain sort of symbolic proc-
ess, a certain kind of aesthetic. Only in
Communication can symbology itself
15
exist as a major area; only in Communi-
cation can the study of the aesthetic
bases of all symbolic acts be incorporated
as a, principal and integral part of the
field.
Such a reordering of symbolic proc-
esses is, as I said, radical. To define the
field of Communication as the study of
the aesthetic and communicative sym-
bolic processes is to assert that that field
is the foundation on which all others
rest. An extreme notion, surely. Yet it
seems to me that it is the exploration of
the aesthetic arid communicative dimen-
sions of language that must concern us.
The importance of this concept is, as I
see it, profound, for it provides for a
definitional base of extraordinary value.48
At the same time, I must emphasize the
interpendent nature of the concepts I
have described as the foundation of Com-
munication Aesthetics. No one of them
possesses sufficient generative power to
warrant the sort of expansion I have ad-
vocated in this essay. Together, they
create an area of study, for they form an
organic whole. That organicity can be
briefly sketched thus: to symbolize is to
act on the environment and/or the self;
this act is a. dramatic one, for there is
conflict here, an opposition of namer and
named; yet the two are fused in the
drama itself, in the symbolic process; and
that process immediately implies man, for
only man can alienate himself from the
real world, yet create an aesthetic by
combining the real and the symbolic; that
aesthetic is the basis of language, and
language constitutes the ultimate dialectic
in which separate entities exist yet merge
in the over-all process, form and dis-
solve, reform arid disappear again in the
drama of symbolization.
Why use the term "Communication
Aesthetics"? Because the two words
taken individually indicate the funda-
mental currents of language. More im-
portant, because the term is very nearly
an oxymoron. There is a pull between
 16 TODAY'S SPEECH

"communication" and "aesthetic" that re- and between symbolizer and symbolized.
fleets the tension between the symbolic PAUL N. CAMPBELL
and the real, between man and language, Queens College, CUNY

Notes
1
A condensed statement of this view, as held by both Kant and Cassirer, is
found in Charles W. Hendel's introduction to Ernst Cassirer, The Philosophy of
Symbolic Forms, Volume I: Language (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1953),
especially pp. 3-11 and 57-59.
2
Susanne Langer, Philosophy in a New Key: A Study in the Symbolism of
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Reason, Rite, and Art (New York: Mentor Books, 1951), Chapter I, and Feeling
and Form (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1953), Part I.
3
Eric H. Lenneberg, Biological Foundations of Language (New York: John Wiley
& Sons, Inc., 1967), pp. 1-4.
4
Noam Chomsky, "A Review of B. F. Skinner's 'Verbal Behavior', "Language,
XXXV (1959), pp. 26-58. This is perhaps Chomsky's most famous attack on be-
haviorism, but he raises the issue in many works—for example, Language and
Mind (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., 1968), pp. 1-20.
5
Herbert Feigl, "The Power of Positivistic Thinking: An Essay on the Quan-
daries of Transcendence." Presidential Address delivered at the 61st Annual
Meeting of the Westrn Division of the American Philosophical Association, at
Columbus, Ohio, May 3, 1963.
6
Michael Polanyi, The Study of Man (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press,
1963).
7
Hugh Dalziel Duncan, Symbols in Society (New York: Oxford University Press,
1968), especially Part II.
8
Godel's argument is described briefly in William Barrett, Irrational Man (Garden
City, New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1958), pp. 33-36.
9
Jean-Paul Sartre, Search for a Method, trans., Hazel Barnes (New York: Alfred
A. Knopf, 1963), pp. xxxiv, 3, 8-14, 153, 156, and R. D. Laing and D. G. Cooper,
Reason and Violence: A Decline of Sartre's Philosophy 1950-1960 (New York:
Humanities Press, 1964), pp. 93-176.
10
Kenneth Burke, A Grammar of Motives, bound together with A Rhetoric of
Motives (Cleveland: The World Publishing Co., 1962), pp. 171-226.
11
Arthur Koestler, The Act of Creation (New York: The Macmillan Company,
1964), pp. 240-52, 342-43, 495-512.
12
Non Aristotelian rhetorical theory might have served such a purpose, but we
have placed too little stress on that approach(es) for it to function as a safeguard.
13
In terms of curriculum, I see the area of Communication Aesthetics as a four
course sequence: the first course dealing with the concept that literature is dramatic
discourse—texts, my own The Speaking And the 'Speakers' of Literature, Langer's
Philosophy in a New Key, and Frye's The Well-Tempered Critic; the second, an
upper division course exploring the first two concepts described in this essay—
texts, Langer's Feeling and Form, Burke's Language as Symbolic Action, and read-
ings from Barfield's Poetic Diction and Saving the Appearances; the third, a gradu-
ate course investigating the third and fourth concepts discussed in this paper—
texts, Langer's Mind: An Essay on Human Feeling, Burke's A Grammar of Motives
and A Rhetoric of Motives, and Cassirer's The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms,
 SUMMER 1971 17

Volume I, Language; the fourth course a graduate seminar studying the relation-
ships between the four basic concepts—texts, Cassirer's The Philosophy of Sym-
bolic Forms, Volume 2, Mythical Thought and Volume; 3, the Phenomenology of
Knowledge, Burke's The Rhetoric of Religion and Attitudes Toward History, and
Michel Foucalt's The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences.
14
Don Geiger, The Sound, Sense, and Performance of Literature (Chicago: Scott,
Foresman and Company, 1963), Chapter 6.
15
I have argued this issue at some length in "Language as Intrapersonal and
Poetic Process," Philosophy and Rhetoric, II (Fall, 1960), pp. 200-12.
16
Richard Luchsinger and Godfrey E. Arnold, Voice-Speech-Language, Clinical
Communicology: Its Physiology and Pathology, trans., Godfrey E. Arnold and
Evelyn Robe Finkbeiner (Belmont, California: Wadsworth Publishing Company,
Inc., 1965), pp. 347-48.
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17
Koestler, pp. 454-66.
18
Kenneth Burke, Language as Symbolic Action: Essays on Life, Literature, and
Method (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968), p. 29.
19
Koestler, p. 315.
20
Among the further notions that must be explored in relation to this first con-
cept are the similarities and differences between verbal, nonverbal, natural, and
artificial symbolization and the nature of the conflicts between the person and
the persona and the constitutive and communicative language processes.
21
Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on Phenomenological On-
tology, trans., Hazel Barnes (New York: Philosophical Library, 1956), pp. 476-77,
and Burke, A Grammar of Motives, pp. 14-15.
22
Maurice Natanson, "Sartre's Philosophy of Freedom," in Literature, Philosophy
and the Social Sciences: Essays in Existentialism and Phenomenology (The Hague:
1964), p. 67.
23
Thomas H. Olbricht, "The Self as a Philosophical Ground of Rhetoric," Penn-
sylvania Speech Annual, XXI (September, 1964), p. 33.
24
Koestler, p. 188; Langer, Philosophy in a New Key, pp. 134-35, and Burke,
Language as Symbolic Action, pp. 295-307.
25
Lenneberg, pp. 326, 330, 335; Langer, Philosophy in a New Key, pp. 99-100,
and William H. Perkins, "Language and Articulation," Voice, XV (November,
1966), pp. 33-37.
26
Prominent among the ideas to be examined in relation to this second concept
are the interdependence between acting on the self end acting on the environ-
ment and the similarity between the nature of a symbol, a metaphor, and language
itself.
27
Burke, Language as Symbolic Action, pp. 3-9; Langer, Philosophy in a New
Key, pp. 45-49.
28
Lionel Rubinoff, "The Pornography of Power (New York: Ballantine Books,
1968), p. 63.
29
Arthur Koestler, The Ghost in the Machine (New York: The Macmillan Com-
pany, 1967), pp. 233-66.
30
Kenneth Burke, "The Rhetoric of Hitler's 'Battle'," in The Philosophy of Liter-
ary Form: Studies in Symbolic Action (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University
Press, 1967), pp. 191-200.
31
The symbolism of the rite of the kill is described by Frantz Fanon, The
Wretched of the Earth (New York: Grove Press, Inc., 1966), pp. 65-74, 87-117. Also
pertinent here are Robert L. Scott and Donald K. Smith, "The Rhetoric of Con-
 18 TODAY'S SPEECH

frontation," The Quarterly Journal of Speech, LV (February, 1969), pp. 1-8, and
Michael H. Prosser, "A Rhetoric of Alienation as Reflected in the Works of
Nathaniel Hawthorne," The Quarterly Journal of Speech, LIV (February, 1968),
pp. 22-27.
32
The most important idea to be dealt with in relation to this third concept is
the necessity for fusion, for complete interdependence of the communicative and
aesthetic dimensions of language. "Purely" communicative or aesthetic processes
are fragmented, meaningless, even pathological.
33
Ernst Cassirer, The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, Volume I: Language (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1953), pp. 53, 85-93.
34
Lenneberg, pp. 332-34, 344, 355-56; Langer, Philosophy in a New Key, p. 37.
35
I. A. Richards, The Philosophy of Rhetoric (New York: Oxford University
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Press, 1965), p. 131.

36
Koestler, The Act of Creation, p. 448.
37
Burke, Language as Symbolic Action, p. 5 and A Grammar of Motives, p. 189,
Cassirer, pp. 53-54.
38
Dorothy Lee uses this example in "Lineal and Nonlineal Codifications of
Reality," in Explorations in Communication, eds., Edmund Carpenter and Marshall
McLuhan (Boston: Beacon Press, 1960), p. 137.
39
The clearest description of suspensive dialectic that I have seen is in the trio
of articles by Richard McKeon: "Communication, Truth and Society," Ethics,
LXVII (January, 1957), pp. 89-99, "Dialectic and Political Thought and Action,"
Ethics, LXV (October, 1954), pp. 1-33, and "Philosophy and Action," Ethics, LXII
(January, 1952), pp. 79-100.
40
C h a r l e s W . Morris, Signs, Language a n d Behavior ( N e w Y o r k : Prentice-Hall,
1946), Chapters 5 and 6.
41
The argument that communicative processes are rhetorical or persuasive is
put succinctly by David K. Berlo, The Process of Communication (New York: Holt,
Rinehart and Winston, Inc., 1960), pp. 9, 233-34.
42
Burke, Language as Symbolic Action, p. 47.
43
Burke, A Grammar of Motives, pp. 21-61, 127-320.
44
Koestler, in The Act of Creation, p. 252, makes this comment: "The glory of
science is not in a truth 'more absolute' than the truth of Bach or Tolstoy, but
in the act of creation itself. The scientist's discoveries impose his own order on
chaos, as the composer or painter imposes his; an order that always refers to
limited aspects of reality, and is biased by the observer's frame of reference,
which differs from period to period, as a Rembrandt nude differs from a nude
by Manet."
45
The British physicist Paul Dirac has commented, "It is more important to
have beauty in one's equations than to have them fit experiment." Cited in Koest-
ler, The Act of Creation, p. 329.
46
Koestler, The Act of Creation, pp. 240-267.
47
Lenneberg, p. 220.
48
Other ideas that must be studied in relation to this fourth concept include the
differences between discursive, presentational, and artistic symbols and the sense
in which each of the three requires the other two.