Kenneth Burke's prolegomena to the study of the rhetoric of form

Rhetorical analysts have had difficulty dealing with phenomena of form. Kenneth Burke's ideas regarding the rhetoric of form provide a productive way to begin to conceptualize and analyze the rhetoric of form. Burke traces human forming from the most fundamental level of tacit symbolic “fixing” through more sophisticated kinds of systemic “knowing” to the manipulating of technical forms for the purpose of evoking response. Certain critical operations to account for the rhetoric of form are appropriate in view of Burke's conceptualization.