Burke and the Epistemic Power of Language/Reflection

I've been reading the section in Kenneth Burke's Rhetoric of Motives called "Traditional Principles of Rhetoric" because I am becoming more interested in his views on rhetoric, particularly how he interprets classical rhetoricians. The chapter is dense and full of excellent "motives" of rhetoric, but I was particularly struck by a passage he has on page 178:

"For the distinctive insight into human invention is not the use of tools, since animals use tools; it is in the use of tools for making tools. And this insight-at-once-remove, this reflexive pattern, is much like the insight of language itself, which is not merely speech about things (a dog's barking at a prowler could be called that), but speech about speech. This secondary stage, allowing for "thought about thought," is so integrally connected with the human power to invent tools for making tools, that we call such power linguistic in essence (as Carlyle did)."

This passage is a typical Burkian moment of brilliance that he casts out like a jewel in the road--and then he moves on. Here he observes the inventional (epistemic) nature within our linguistic capacity to talk about our talk, to write about our writing, to think about our own thinking (since even our thoughts are an internal dialogue). "Inventing tools" is an interesting comparison for what we do with language since a word is not literally a hammer or a caliper or a GPS device. I think Burke captures what is important about reflection as a "tool for making a tool"; something emerges from reflection that is like a tool to transform our perspective, our assumption, or direction for action or thinking. And is is done linguistically!