Using Flag Burning to Teach Icons, Symbols, and Speech Acts

Speaking as generally as possible, this lesson plan seeks to help students think about the many different forms of rhetoric that exist aside from the written and spoken word.  More specifically, the plan seeks to establish the ways in which actions, objects and images can constitute rhetoric.  The definitions and uses of icons, symbols, and what the Supreme Court calls “speech acts” as rhetoric are then explored in the specific context of the definitive Supreme Court decision on the issue of flag burning, Texas v. Johnson (1989).

“Free Speech on Trial: Communication Perspectives on Landmark Supreme Court Decisions” is exactly what the title suggests.  It is organized by chapters, with each chapter authored by a different attorney, judge, or legal scholar of note.  Each chapter consists of a communications-based analysis of a different Supreme Court case, the vast majority of which revolve around First Amendment issues.  A copy of the chapter entitled “Texas v. Johnson” from the collection is posted on Canvas several days before class, with instructions to read and make note of any questions they have while reading.

After a general class discussion on the reading, we focus our attention upon the primary contention of the article’s author.  Specifically, that the conflicting opinions among the Supreme Court justices in this case came down to whether a particular justice viewed the burning flag as an icon or as a symbol, even though the justices were not aware that this is where their disagreement was founded.

The class discussion is directed in a quasi-Socratic method of instruction, with the instructor seeking to elicit contradictions among student responses to questions pertaining what it is that makes this case so nuanced and multi-layered.  The instructor asks a question outright: “If a person just douses something in kerosene and lights it on fire without saying or writing a word, are they “speaking?”  Again, a Socratic method is useful: asking students questions such as the above and challenging their answers with further questions and new contingencies lends itself to students rethinking their visceral responses to the original question, resulting in the class as a whole coming up with a more inclusive yet refined working definition of “speech.”  We look at explicit and implicit reasoning in the Supreme Court’s analysis of the same question(s).  Students are reminded that they’re allowed to disagree with the reasoning of a Supreme Court justice and that they shouldn’t be shy about challenging any of their statements and/or assumptions.

As we continue thinking about non-verbal rhetoric, the instructor directs the class to the portion of the assigned reading where the author begins elaborating upon his claim that whether the justices thought flag burning was speech or not came down to whether they treated the flag as an icon or a symbol.  Given that even the Supreme Court wasn’t able to make sense of this icon/symbol distinction (or so says the article’s author), it should come as no surprise that students struggle with the nuance as well.  Rhetoricians, linguists and the like disagree amongst themselves as to the precise definitions of these terms, but I tried to make the broad explanation that both icons and symbols are types of signs.