Rhetoric Review Sep 2007

“The New Deal”: Burkean Identification and Working-Class Poetics

William DeGenaro University of Michigan

Abstract

Working-class people perform class identities. These performances are marked with ironies in which working class symbolizes power and powerlessness. Such performances elide linear meaning-making in favor of poetic paradox and help us understand the contradictions of working-class life. The New Deal, a chapbook by my great-grandfather, represents an occasion for understanding how one working-class person used language to consider his life's contradictions. The chapbook articulates a unique “working-class poetics” and suggests why rhetoricians ought to locate representations of the paradoxes of working-class life.

Journal
Rhetoric Review
Published
2007-09-13
DOI
10.1080/07350190701577918
CompPile
Open Access
Closed
Topics
Export
BibTeX RIS

Citation context

Cited by in this index (0)

No articles in this index cite this work.

References (29) · 4 in this index

  1. Aristotle (2002)
    On Poetics
  2. Aune James Arnt (1994)
    Rhetoric & Marxism
  3. Bakhtin M. M. (1981)
    The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays
  4. 10.7560/720466
     ↗
  5. Beech (2004)
    Redneck and Hillbilly Discourse in the Writing Classroom: Classifying Critical …
    College English
Show all 29 →
  1. 10.2307/355048
     ↗
  2. 10.1525/9780520352018
     ↗
  3. Burke Kenneth (1931)
    Counter-Statement
  4. 10.1525/9780520340664
     ↗
  5. Burke Kenneth (1935)
    American Writers' Congress
  6. Burke Kenneth (1950)
    A Rhetoric of Motives
  7. Carlton Susan Brown (1996)
    Encyclopedia of Rhetoric and Composition: Communication from Ancient Times to the Informa…
  8. Catano James V. (2001)
    Ragged Dicks: Masculinity, Steel, and the Rhetoric of the Self-Made Man
  9. Daniels Jim (2005)
    New Working-Class Studies
  10. DeGenaro Marian. E-mail Interview. 14 October 2005.
  11. Desser (2001)
    Reading and Writing the Family: Ethos, Identification, and Identity in My Great…
    Rhetoric Review
  12. Foley Douglas E. (1989)
    Does the Working Class Have a Culture in the Anthropological Sense?
    Cultural Anthropology  ↗
  13. Fox Aaron (1994)
    The Poetics of Irony and the Ethnography of Class Culture
    Anthropology and Humanism  ↗
  14. George et al. (2003)
    What happened at the first American writers’ congress? Kenneth Burke's “revolut…
    Rhetoric Society Quarterly
  15. Gramsci Antonio (1971)
    Selections from the Prison Notebooks
  16. Husted D. B. (1938)
    The New Deal and Other Poems
  17. Jordan (2005)
    Dell Hymes, Kenneth Burke's "Identification," and the Birth of Sociolinguistics
    Rhetoric Review
  18. 10.1093/oso/9780195140378.001.0001
     ↗
  19. Logie John. “‘We Write for the Workers’: Authorship and Communism in Kenneth Burke and Richard Wright.” KB Jo…
  20. Lukacs Georg (1968)
    History and Class Consciousness: Studies in Marxist Dialectics
  21. Ricoeur Paul (1997)
    Rhetoric and Hermeneutics in Our Time
  22. Shipler David K. (2004)
    The Working Poor: Invisible in America
  23. Zinn Howard (2001)
    A People's History of the United States: 1492-Present
  24. Zweig Michael (2000)
    The Working-Class Majority: American's Best Kept Secret
CrossRef global citation count: 0 View in citation network → Build reading path →

Related articles

  1. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication Mar 2026
    Canon to Code: Rhetorical Rulemaking for Generative AI Content Audits and Governance ↗
    Miriam F. Williams
    classical rhetoric modern rhetorical theory rhetorical criticism assessment technical communication artificial intelligence
  2. Rhetorica Sep 2025
    Herrick, Hoskyns, and the Ars Praedicandi : Sartorial Metaphor in the Rhetorical Tradition ↗
    Brent Nelson
    classical rhetoric modern rhetorical theory rhetorical criticism discourse analysis
  3. Rhetorica Jun 2024
    Sit sacrilegus— A neglected “topos” of Roman invective in Cicero’s indignationes ↗
    Christoph Schwameis
    classical rhetoric modern rhetorical theory rhetorical criticism
  4. Rhetoric & Public Affairs Mar 2024
    Disorder in the Court: Morality, Myth, and the Insanity Defense ↗
    Jaclyn Bruner
    classical rhetoric modern rhetorical theory rhetorical criticism argument
  5. Rhetorica Jan 2024
    Mind the Audience: Forensic Rhetoric, Persuasion, and Identification by Reference to the Social Identity of Athenian dikastai ↗
    Vasileios Adamidis
    classical rhetoric modern rhetorical theory rhetorical criticism argument