"You persuade a man only insofar as you can talk his language by speech, gesture, tonality, order, image, attitude, idea, identifying your ways with his"
"Even if any given terminology is a reflection of reality, by its very nature as a terminology it must be a selection of reality; and to this extent it must function also as a deflection of reality."
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Source: Kenneth Burke (1966). “Language as Symbolic Action: Essays on Life, Literature, and Method”, p.45, Univ of California Press
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"Wherever there is persuasion, there is rhetoric, and wherever there is rhetoric, there is meaning."
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"Men seek for vocabularies that are reflections of reality. To this end, they must develop vocabularies that are selections of reality. And any selection of reality must, in certain circumstances, function as a deflection of reality."
"Rhetoric is rooted in an essential function of language itself, a function that is wholly realistic and continually born anew: the use of language as a symbolic means of inducing cooperation in beings that by nature respond to symbols."
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