Dell Hymes, Kenneth Burke's "Identification," and the Birth of Sociolinguistics

Abstract

During his long scholarly career, Kenneth Burke interacted with numerous other important twentieth-century thinkers. Several of these relationships have been documented and studied through article- and book-length projects. However, Burke's long correspondence with prominent folklorist and sociolinguist Dell Hymes, while mentioned by some Burke scholars, has not been extensively explored. This article examines their written correspondence and elements of their published works and argues that Burke's articulation of key rhetorical concepts—especially "identification"—figures large in Hymes's early articulation of the basis of sociolinguistic study.