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Extending the Burkeian system: A

response to Tompkins and Cheney
a
James W. Chesebro
a
Chair and Professor in the Department of Communication ,
Indiana State University , Terre Haute, IN, 47809
Published online: 05 Jun 2009.

To cite this article: James W. Chesebro (1994) Extending the Burkeian system: A
response to Tompkins and Cheney, Quarterly Journal of Speech, 80:1, 83-90, DOI:
10.1080/00335639409384058

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 QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF SPEECH
80 (1994): 83-90

EXTENDING THE BURKEIAN SYSTEM:

A RESPONSE TO TOMPKINS AND CHENEY
James W. Chesebro

I n their May 1993 QJS Forum essay, "On the Limits and Sub-stance of Kenneth
Burke and His Critics," Tompkins and Cheney responded to essays by Condit
and myself which appeared in the August 1992 Forum section ofQJS.1 In contrapo-
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sition, two lines of thought are developed here. First, the Tompkins and Cheney
thesis emerges from a problematic conception of the role of method in rhetorical
criticism which reifies Burkeian concepts and methods that should remain dynamic
and evolve as circumstances change. Second, Tompkins and Cheney's specific
conceptions of Burke's concepts and methods propose an inappropriate direction
for Burkeian studies.

METHOD IN RHETORICAL CRITICISM

Tompkins and Cheney employ a conception of method which diminishes the

utility of Burkeian studies. The misconception is reflected in the title of their essay
which focuses on "critics." Their title implies that I should be understood as a critic
stressing the faults of the Burkeian system. I am not a critic of Burke's writings.2 I
began my August 1992 Forum essay by noting that Burke is "one of the leading U.S.
critics in the second half of the 20th century" (350), and I end the essay by observing
that "few critics have revealed the scope, imagination, insight, and dazzling concern
for symbol-using which Kenneth Burke possesses" (365). Rather than functioning as
a critic, I specifically maintained that it is "inappropriate" to "either confirm or
reject Burke's system," for a "definitive" decision regarding the utility of Burke's
system will turn "on how Burkeian scholars employ Burke's works in the years to
come" (356).
Unfortunately, Tompkins and Cheney's label reflects an inappropriate notion
about methodology in general as well as its specific uses. A method is not inherently
good or bad, as Tompkins and Cheney imply, but it is judged by its utility. If Burke's
method serves a critic's objective, it is useful. Burke's critical assumptions and
methods will not be equally useful to every critic.3 Each individual critic must
determine how—not if—the distinguishing emphases of a method limit and bias
what is described, interpreted, and evaluated. Rather than deny that distinguishing
emphases reflect the limits and biases of a method, an alternative series of assump-
tions about a method—including the methods proposed by Burke—serve the
discipline of communication far more effectively:4 (1) every method is selective,
highlighting some—but not all—of the variables affecting the communication
process; (2) every method is inherently limited, serving certain objectives, but not
all; and (3) every method reflects the ideology and biases of its user. A critic is more
flexible and sensitive to the potentialities and limitations of a specific method if the
critic is receptive to and capable of recognizing the insights generated by alternative
methods.5 Rather than diminishing the power of a method, it is simply good
 84
QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF SPEECH FEBRUARY 1994

scholarship to recognize that the distinguishing emphases of a system also reflect

both the limits and biases of that system. And, in practical applications, the claims
made by critics are appropriately tempered when the distinguishing emphases of a
system are also explicitly recognized as the limits and biases of the methods being
employed.

EXTENDING T H E BURKEIAN SYSTEM

These preliminary observations provide a context for a larger question regarding

the future direction of Burkeian studies. Tompkins and Cheney list seven additions
to the Burkeian system, essentially calling for: elaborations of Burke's position
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regarding motives, the scope of the pentad, ethics, and logology; inclusions of visual
communication and empirical studies; and a response to the postmodern skepticism
about rationality. Tompkins and Cheney essentially insist that Burke's system
should maintain as it exists, ultimately requiring only elaboration or additional
applications. None of their proposals considers the possibility that basic assumptions
of the Burkeian system have been profoundly challenged.
In contrast, I am convinced that the challenges articulated by Burke's critics are
far more profound than Tompkins and Cheney admit. A thorough reassessment of
Burke's system is now warranted: "Burke's system of analysis must undergo transfor-
mations if it is to remain receptive to ever-changing human dynamics" (Chesebro,
364). Similarly, at the 1990 Burke conference, implicitly recognizing the need for
extensions of his system, Burke proposed operation benchmark, calling for others to
"say more in the same direction," "or" (as his alternative recommendation) "you
may change it in the reverse direction, or you may take it in another direction"
(quoted in Chesebro, 364). The essays contained in the volume Extensions of the
Burkeian System demonstrate the value and power of extending Burke's system.6
Ultimately, the question turns on the direction Burkeian studies should take in
the future. Tompkins and Cheney call for elaborations and applications in the
context established by Burke. I have suggested that the limits of Burke's system must
be recognized, particularly in terms of the system's monocentric, logological, ethno-
centric, and methodological biases.

Burke's Monocentric Bias

Tompkins and Cheney reject the notion that the Burkeian system possesses a
monocentric bias.7 In my August 1992 essay, I maintained that Burke's effort is to
treat "all human communication in terms of one systematic vocabulary or universal
language system" (357). This systematic vocabulary or universal language is gov-
erned by Burke's conceptions of dramatism and logology. Tompkins and Cheney
challenge this position by maintaining that Burke is dualistic, given his use of the
symbolic/nonsymbolic and action/motion dichotomies. They argue that "Burke's
corpus is usually seen to embrace too many perspectives" (228). However, Burke
uses the symbolic/nonsymbolic and action/motion dichotomies to define and deter-
mine the limits of his perspective, for he has denned (or de-limited) the proper
object of human motivation to be the study of symbolic action, not nonsymbolic
motion. In Burke's view, nonsymbolic forms of human motivation are treated as
motion which necessarily falls outside of the domain of symbolic action.8
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The critical question remains: Does Burke employ one fundamental principle to
construct his notion of symbolic action? The dramatistic/logological perspective is
consistently employed by Burke in all of his writings, and the issue thus turns on
whether or not Burke's perspective is limiting.
Burke himself has recognized the singularity of his conceptions. In 1945, he noted
in the "Introduction" to A Grammar of Motives that his "speculations" were interpre-
tations which reflected one "philosophic" orientation.9 More precisely, in 1983,
Burke specifically maintained that he was proposing but "one theory" which had
"too terms" (i.e., dramatism and logology).10 Similarly, Hyman has reported that
"the lifelong aim of Burke's criticism has been precisely this synthesis, the unifica-
tion of every discipline and body of knowledge that could throw light on literature
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into one consistent critical framework."" More universally, Burke's "chief aim" is
now understood to be the creation of one "workable frame" into which "all human
knowledge" might be "integrated."12 Burke has thus proposed one scheme for
integrating human knowledge. It is remarkably consistent and unified in its objec-
tive and application. He has accounted for other perspectives within his framework
by redefining and reducing them to the basic dramatistic/logological principle he
has articulated. Like all schemes, Burke's system is highly selective and reflective of
its originator. It is, however, only one philosophy of symbol-using.
Because of the singular perspective embodied in his dramatistic/logological
philosophy, Burke's conception of symbolic action is narrowed: "A representative
case of human motivation must have a strongly linguistic bias."13 In 1983, Burke
extended his own conception of symbolic action to include "dance, music, sculpture,
painting, and architecture."14 Nonetheless, a wide range of nonsymbolic forms
affecting human motivation are excluded by Burke from his system, including
biological factors,15 media systems,16 technological innovations,17 and tool-using, all
of which determine human motivations. The Burkeian system is only universal,
then, if one accepts each of Burke's presuppositions about what should and should
not be emphasized and how phenomena and experiences should be interpreted.

Burke's Logological Bias

Regarding the logological bias in Burke's conception of symbolic action, Tomp-
kins and Cheney maintain that the "logocentric" is "a term associated with Derrida."
Alternatively, I would maintain that the logocentric perspective is used by both
Derrida and Burke, but differently by each. Burke has proposed a logocentric view
of symbol-using, while Derrida has rejected such a view of symbol-using.
Burke has recommended a logological view of symbol-using for over thirty years.
Studies in Logology, the subtitle oiThe Rhetoric of Religion, reflects Burke's use of the
perspective.18 In The Rhetoric of Religion, Burke concisely specified his view of a
logological view of symbol-using. He maintained that words themselves possess
"motivational ingredients not intrinsic" to the "sheer materiality" of the object
specified by a word.19 Moreover, in 1983, Burke reasserted his commitment to a
logological view of symbol-using, observing that he originally thought "I had
invented the term." Burke reported that he later discovered that the term logology
was aptly derived from two eighteenth-century Oxford English Dictionary definitions
which placed the focal point for analysis upon intrinsic meanings associated with
"the Word," "the science of words," and "philology."20
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QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF SPEECH FEBRUARY 1994

In contrast, Derrida—as well as other postmoderns—directly denies a logological

perspective of language. Tompkins and Cheney believe Derrida is associated with
the "logocentric" because Derrida believes that "too much emphasis in the Western
world [is] upon the rational, the truth, and in particular the written word" (p. 228).
In constructing Derrida's view in this fashion, I believe Tompkins and Cheney
misstate and thereby understate the power of Derrida's position. The first two
chapters of Of Grammatology detail Derrida's rationale for rejecting a logocentric
view of symbol-using. I cannot repeat the entirety of Derrida's arguments here, but
several principles clearly emerge from his analysis. Derrida has specifically argued
that a logocentric view of symbol-using places too much attention on the word itself
(i.e., "word-centered thinking"). Rejecting a logocentric perspective of symbol-
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using, he has maintained that a logocentric conception of symbol-using ultimately

deflects attention from a functional analysis of language in societal contexts (i.e., a
critic's understandings are a substitute for actual audience-effects analyses), de-
emphasizes the fact that the communication systems themselves are controlled by
the privileged who determine which symbols become part of the public domain (i.e.,
the power, wealth, and ideology of a few—an oligarchy—determine what can
become public communication),21 and inappropriately treats symbol-using itself as a
self-contained, comprehensive, necessary and sufficient knowledge system. While
such assessments can be challenged, postmoderns have questioned Burke's basic
conception of a symbol. These challenges require that the fundamental assumptions
of Burke's system be reconsidered, and that responses to these challenges be
formulated which go beyond and extend what Burke has articulated.

Burke's Ethnocentric Bias

Regarding the ethnocentric bias in Burke, Tompkins and Cheney do not deny
that "Burke's system and critical analyses" are derived from and reflect a specific
cultural system which requires extensive revisions before Burke's system can be
used to respond to the diversity of multicultural symbolism. Rather, Tompkins and
Cheney defend what Burke has written with claims such as, "Burke was, after all,
following the conventions of his time" (227) and "Burke was merely using that which
was familiar, well-documented, and accessible to his readership" (229). Such com-
ments bypass the fundamental issues involved in recognizing multiculturalism as a
communication phenomenon. The issue is not if Burke is basically humane, sensi-
tive, caring, and/or liberal. The essential question turns on what happens to our
understanding of the communication process when culture—and specifically mul-
tiple cultures—is recognized as a significant factor determining meaning. In a
singular or monocultural system, a theorist like Burke might well posit that symbols
contain intrinsic motivational ingredients, but such a claim is meaningful only if all
communicators are part of the same culture which has structured these meanings
into symbols. For communication specialists, the recognition of multiculturalism
means that culture will be recognized as a decisive factor altering how symbols are
understood. In this cultural context, the same word means different things to
people if they are conditioned by different cultural orientations. Accordingly,
multiculturalism introduces a paradoxical element when discussing meaning. Within
a multicultural context, the same word possesses multiple and contradictory mean-
ings.
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Thus, the issue is not whether Burke and his system of analysis are a product and
reflection of his culture. They are. Being human, Burke cannot escape his cultural
conditioning. There is no reason to apologize for one's cultural orientation, but it is
necessary to recognize the selective and limiting conditioning generated by one's
cultural orientation when creating a critical system. Burke's quest for a universal
system is limited by his own cultural conditioning.
The ethnocentric bias of Burke's system is also evident in several different ways.22
An historical example is appropriate. In 1935, at the age of 38, Burke reviewed a
volume by Mark Waldman entitled Goethe and the Jews. The volume and review were
particularly relevant at the time because the Nazi persecution of the Jews and the
quest for a "final solution" had begun two years earlier in 1933. Regardless of these
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circumstances, Burke was true to the system he was developing. Burke's concern for
the strategic and pragmatic prescriptions of rhetoric dominated the review, for as
Burke was later to maintain in the introduction to A Grammar of Motives, "we sought
to formulate the basic stratagems which people employ, in endless variations, and
consciously or unconsciously, for the outwitting or cajoling of one another" (xix).
This governing objective or bias "blinds" Burke to alternative cultural, historical,
and humane issues when he reviewed Waldman's volume. Noting, by analogy, that a
"gentile" can "outwit" another "gentile" by metaphorically substituting "an epithet"
for physical aggression, Burke proposed that if a gentile is "outwitted by a Jew, the
enraged gentile" can reach "for the handiest epithet and call his commercial
antagonist a 'Jew bastard,' thereby damning him not merely as an individual, but as
a member of a race."23 Jewish scholars are currently deciding if Burke's subsequent
essay, "The Rhetoric of Hitler's 'Battle,' " constituted a meaningful counter-
statement to the orientation Burke provided in his Waldman review. The Burkeian
system—shaped by Burke's cultural heritage, be it "agnostic" as Tompkins or
Cheney claim, or "Christian Science" as Burke has maintained24—did not suffi-
ciently and adequately prepare him to deal with the question. Accordingly, to the
degree that Burke was "following the conventions of his time," a rationale exists for
extending the Burkeian system. The Burkeian system itself reflects the perceptual
understandings of one cultural system; the Burkeian system must be extended if it is
to respond to alternative ways in which experiences are understood by others whose
symbols are shaped by different kinds of cultural systems.

Burke's Methodological Bias

Regarding the methodological bias in the Burkeian system, I observed that
"Burke has provided explicit and convenient frameworks which invite their use
without major modifications" (362). Towards that end, I initially noted that "Burke's
pentad of terms" for "analyzing motives appear almost universal, readily applied to
any situation," and noted that "a 'stripped down' listing of Burkeian concepts"
employed "as a pre-fabricated 'cookie cutter' for any and all criticism" may spell the
destruction of the Burkeian system, much as Black argued of the neo-Aristotelian
system in 1965.251 additionally noted that Burke has equated philosophic schools to
his pentadic terms and then grouped diverse philosophers "under" each of the
pentadic terms. Under the pentadic term scene, for example, Burke has treated
Hobbes, Spinoza, Darwin, and Stoicism as though they possessed, in Burke's words,
a "substantial relationship to one another" (363). My endnote 51 provided a
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detailed explanation of the substantial differences among the writers. In response to

this analysis, Tompkins and Cheney claim that my analysis is "too truncated to be
useful" for it "glosses Hobbes, Spinoza, Darwin, and Stoicism in a single sentence"
(229). At this juncture, I would simply invite the reader to examine pages 362
through 363 and endnotes 44 through 51 of my August 1992 essay to determine if
Tompkins and Cheney are being reasonable.26

CONCLUSION
If the Burkeian system is to continue as a useful scheme for rhetorical critics, the
distinguishing characteristics of the system need to be reassessed as potential limits
and biases. Every method is selective, serves certain ends rather than all objectives,
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and reflects the cultural conditioning of its formulator. We can appropriately follow
the advice of Kenneth Burke when he recommends that sometimes we follow his
lead but at other times it will be more useful to "reverse directions" or take "another
direction." In other words, a critic's system of analysis is not justified because it
invokes Burke's name or works. The distinguishing characteristics of a critic's
system of analysis should be examined for its limits and biases, for, in the end, each
critic must assume responsibility for the system of analysis he or she employs.

NOTES
James W. Chesebro is Chair and Professor in the Department of Communication at Indiana State University,
Terre Haute, IN 47809. The author acknowledges the useful suggestions provided by Shewn J. Dailey and
Robert L. Ivie to an earlier version of this statement.
1
See: Philip K. Tompkins and George Cheney, "On the Limits and Sub-stance of Kenneth Burke and His
Critics," QJS, 79 (May 1993): 225-231; Celeste Michell Condit, "Post-Burke: Transcending the Sub-stance of
Dramatism," QJS, 78 (August 1992): 349-355; and James W. Chesebro, "Extensions of the Burkeian System,"
QJS, 78 (August 1992): 356-368.
2
In published form, I first used the Burkeian system in 1967. Since that time, I have consistently employed
the Burkeian method. I have found the method particularly useful in revealing longitudinal changes in cultural
symbol-using; see, for example, James W. Chesebro, "Communication, Values, and Popular Television Se-
ries—A Seventeen Year Assessment," Communication Quarterly, 39 (Summer 1991): 197-225. But even in such
studies, I have found it useful to recognize explicitly the limits of Burke's system and to supplement or extend
Burke's system with the conceptions of others, such as Northrop Frye.
3
For example, reacting to Burke's conception of a form and the types of form discussed by Burke, Tanno,
Delgado, and Gonzalez have maintained that the print and linear orientations of Burke's methods make it
extremely difficult to deal with the cyclical nature of Hispanic discourse; see Dolores V. Tanno, Form and Motives
in Latino/a Rhetoric, Fernando P. Delgado, Theory for a Multicultural World: Burke and the Notion of Identification,
and Alberto Gonzalez, Kenneth Burke, Otherness, and Mexican American Rhetoric, all papers presented at the
Kenneth Burke Society Second National Triennial Convention, May 7, 1993, in Airlie, VA.
4
For an example of this view, see Irwin DJ. Bross, "Methods," in J.H. Campbell and H.W. Hepler, eds.,
Dimensions in Communication: Readings (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1970) 12.
5
See, for example, Philip Wander, "The Ideological Turn in Modern Criticism," Central States Speech Journal,
34 (Spring 1983): 1-18.
6
James W. Chesebro, ed., Extensions of the Burkeian System (Tuscaloosa, AL: The University of Alabama Press,
1993).
7
Tompkins and Cheney initially react to my use of the word monocentric because it is an "unfortunate
neologism" (p. 228), apparently because of either its newness or because it is an "inaccurate" derivative use of the
words monism and monistic. Regarding this semantic issue, my August 1992 essay contains a survey of the range of
uses attributed to monism of which one use, according to Webster's Third New International Dictionary, includes my
use of "monocentric" as a derivative of monism which emphasizes a methodology that "reduces all phenomena"
to "one fundamental principle" (p. 357). See Webster's formal and complete definition of "monocentric" as
provided in Webster's Third New International Dictionary of the English Language Unabridged, Volume II (Chicago,
IL: Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., 1986), 1460: "having a single center—compare polycentric."
8
Burke has maintained that the domains of the symbolic (or, action) and nonsymbolic (or, motion) are
"unbridgeable"; see Kenneth Burke, "(Nonsymbolic) Motion/(Symbolic) Action," Critical Inquiry 4 (1978)
809-838, esp. 815.
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9
Kenneth Burke, A Grammar of Motives (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1969) xxiii.
10
Kenneth Burke, "Dramatism and Logology," [London] Times Literary Supplement, 12 August 1983, 859.
11
Stanley Edgar Hyman, The Armed Vision: A Study in the Methods of Modern Literary Criticism, rev. ed. (New York:
Vintage Books/Random House, 1955) 360.
12
The New Encyclopaedia Britannica, Vol. 2 (Chicago, IL: Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., 1987) 653.
13
Burke, A Grammar of Motives 59. Similarly, Booth has maintained that the "subject matter" of Burke's "way of
knowing" is "clearly language and how symbolic communication is effected through language"; see Wayne C.
Booth, "Kenneth Burke's Way of Knowing," Critical Inquiry 1 (September 1974) 5.
l4
Burke, Permanence and Change: An Anatomy of Purpose, 3rd ed. (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press,
1984)295.
15
See, for example, Celeste Michelle Condit, "The New Science of Human Reproduction: A Reflection on the
Inadequacy of 'Disciplines' for the Understanding of Human Life," QfS 79 (1993): 232-265.
16
Cathcart has identified the limited conception of media employed by Burke, and he has recommended
extensions of Burke's notion of media which allow critics to examine media systems as factors affecting human
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motivation; see Robert S. Cathcart, "Instruments of His Own Making: Burke and Media," in Extensions of the
Burkeian System, 287-308.
17
See, for example, Steve Woolgar, "The Turn to Technology in Social Studies of Science," Science, Technology,
and Human Values 16 (1991): 20-50.
18
Kenneth Burke, The Rhetoric of Religion: Studies in Logology (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1961).
19
Burke, The Rhetoric of Religion 9.
20
Kenneth Burke, "Dramatism and Logology" 859.
2l
Foucault has explored this issue extensively; see Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality Volume 1: An
Introduction (New York: Vintage/Random House, 1980), and Michel Foucault, Madness and Civilization: A History
of Insanity in the Age of Reason (New York: Vintage/Random House, 1988).
22
Tompkins and Cheney seek to engage me on the question of whether or not an ethnocentric bias of Burke's
system precludes a critic from effectively reflecting homosexual discourse. Toward this end, Tompkins and
Cheney first ask if "Chesebro understand[s] the significance of Burke's comparative study of Andre Gide's The
Immoralist and Mann's Death in Venice in the early thirties?" I do, but I doubt that I share the same understanding
with Tompkins and Cheney, for I am equally "impressed" by the cultural system in which Burke's system
emerged and by the context and inputs which Burke received on this topic, such as Malcolm Cowley's
observations to Burke that Hart Crane constitutes a case of "abnormalities of behavior" who "got angry at parties
because, since the mood was generally heterosexual, he felt subtly excluded," and Cowley's characterization of
Whitman as an "old cocksucker" but one who had a "vice he could keep secret" [see: The Selected Correspondence of
Kenneth Burke and Malcolm Cowley, ed. Paul Jay (New York: Viking), 183, 331, 273, and 279 respectively]. In this
context, Burke concluded in 1979 that "the most effective way to deal with the issue [of homosexuality] is to leave
it unsaid" (personal correspondence from Burke to Chesebro, June 13, 1979), a conclusion which—from a
symbolic perspective—can be understood as a "death sentence," for symbolic expression—in Burke's system—
uniquely defines the human being. As Tompkins and Cheney continue their discussion, they also report a series
of facts: homosexuality was not explicitly discussed in the 1930s; Burke sought to explicate Gide's and Mann's
works without mentioning homosexuality; and Burke supported the works of homosexuals. While certainly
appropriate actions on Burke's part, unfortunately none of these facts respond to the central question of
whether or not Burke's system possesses an ethnocentric bias. In my view, the cultural framework governing the
symbol system of gay males and lesbians emerges from an entirely different set of assumptions than those
presumed in Burke's system. Darsey has provided an initial foundation for this view when he holds that "the
historical emphasis on gay rights rhetoric on difference and diversity is antithetical to the tendency to define, to
order, to discipline, to regiment," and concludes that "there is no potential for radical commitment in such a
discourse, for there is no clear locus for commitment, no compelling principle"; see James Darsey, "Die Non:
Gay Liberation and the Rhetoric of Pure Tolerance," in Queer Words Queer Images: Communication and the
(Reconstruction of Homosexuality, ed. R. Jeffrey Ringer (New York: New York University Press, in press).
Alternative critical systems appear far more direct and relevant if one is to understand and reflect the cultural
framework governing the symbolic system of gay males and lesbians, such as: Alexander Doty, Making Things
Perfectly Queer: Interpreting Mass Culture (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1993); Frank
Browning, The Culture of Desire: Paradox and Perversity in Gay Lives Today (New York: Crown Publishers, 1993);
and Robert Goss, Jesus Acted Up: A Gay and Lesbian Manifesto (New York: Harper San Francisco/Harper Collins,
1993).
23
Kenneth Burke, "Goethe and the Jews," New Masses, 19 March 1935, 25.
24
Kenneth Burke, "An Interview with Kenneth Burke," Kenneth Burke Society convention, May 7, 1990.
23
Edwin Black, Rhetorical Criticism: A Study in Method (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1965).
26
Toward the end of my essay, I also report that "some view Burkeian scholarship as tied to Burke himself,
and for some, the link seems almost religious" (363). Tompkins and Cheney respond that it is "unfair" to blame
Burke "for the sins of 'religious' followers" (229). Tompkins and Cheney's statement is a misrepresentation, for I
have never blamed Burke for the "sins" of his "religious advocates." I would, however, ask the "religious
advocates" of Burke to become self-conscious of their adherence, individually responsible for their methodologi-
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cal and evaluative standards, and able to offer justifications for their own critical choices, particularly when they
are viewed, as Rosenfield has argued, as part of a "cult."
Additionally, Tompkins and Cheney conclude that, "Chesebro's 'extensions' demonstrate a remarkable
disciplinary bias in reverse. In summarizing them, Chesebro can cite only scholars and researchers outside the
field of communication" (229). Tompkins and Cheney conclude that I have a "disciplinary snobbery in reverse
[which] serves neither this journal nor scholars in the field of communication" (230). The paragraph to which
Tompkins and Cheney refer is intended to demonstrate that important extensions are being made of Burke's
works beyond the discipline of communication. Accordingly, I cite references in which Burke's words have been
extended in other disciplines, but also because I believe that an interdisciplinary orientation can serve all
Burkeian critics regardless of their specific disciplinary training. Moreover, my intention is to argue that
extensions of the Burkeian system should be—not that they have been—initiated within the discipline of
communication. Nonetheless, I would direct Tompkins and Cheney's attention to Extensions of the Burkeian
System, wherein eight of the eleven scholars represented are members of the discipline of communication. The
three scholars not identified as members of the discipline of communication include Kenneth Burke, William H.
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Rueckert, and Greig E. Henderson, all of whom have been regular participants at conventions sponsored by the
communication discipline. In all, Tompkins and Cheney's charge of "disciplinary snobbery" is misguided and
unwarranted.