| Abstract: | The social-anthropological studies of “Yankee City” by W. Lloyd Warner are reconsidered, with concentration on his taxonomy of symbolic activities. Several of Warner's central analytic foci are reviewed and applied to a modern context. The American Revolution Bicentennial is characterized as a societal-level symbolic observance, directly analogous to civil ceremonies in Yankee City. Three major themes from Warner's studies of that community's symbolic life—types of symbolism, socializational effects of symbolism, and rhetorical persuasion—are analyzed with regard to the Bicentennial observance. Illustrative data provide some conceptual and empirical support for the generalizability of Warner's taxonomy to other civil religious phenomena. |
