Kenneth Burke--A Grammar of Motives

A Grammar of Motives, excerpted from The Rhetorical Tradition, 2nd ed.

Keywords

• Dramatism
• Casuistry:
  
  specious, deceptive, or oversubtle reasoning, especially in questions of morality; fallacious or dishonest application of general principles; sophistry;
  

  the application of general ethical principles to particular cases of conscience or conduct.
• Pragmatism
• Dialectical
• Metaphysics
• No Metaphysics-the unmasking; applying material terms to immaterial subjects. (reify?)
• Motivational Theory- used to explain behavior, desires, needs; what causes a person to repeat behavior.
• Hortatory: urging to some course of conduct or action; exhorting; encouraging:
• Terministic Screens: by selecting or focusing on what part, something must be lost from another contingent part.

Introduction: The Five Key Terms of Dramatism

The Pentad can be used to construct arguments of our own in a more informed manner, or tear apart what is being perceived or argued as true.

Burke relies on a pentad to explain or understand people's motivation in doing things. Motives are linguistic actions. Actions are purposeful behaviors or basic forms of thought performed by humans. "Motives are the particular way people understand events and the recommendations for response inherent to the discourse that it presents for its audience"--underlined information borrowed from Cal State Fresno and can be found here).

J. Clarke Rountree, III argues in The American Communication Journal that Burke's pentad isn't entirely original since it borrows from Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics. He further notes that Burke borrows the terms heavily from the medieval questions "quis (agent), quid (act), ubi (scene defined as place), quibus auxiliis (agency), cur (purpose), quo modo (manner, 'attitude'), quando (scene defined temporarily). Burke argues that we can derive and terminate motives within our understanding of the pentad. How we privilege each part of the pentad or answer each question influences how we interpret other parts of the pentad. Essentially, Rountree states that the symbiosis of parts of the pentad means "our understanding of one term necessarily is tied to our understanding of all of the other terms."

• Act-what took place in thought or deed
• Scene-the background of the act, the situation in which it occurred
• Agent-the person or kind of person that performed the act
• Agency-the means or instruments the agent uses
• Purpose-why

• Act: What happened? What is the action? What is going on? What action; what thoughts?
• Scene: Where is the act happening? What is the background situation?
• Agent: Who is involved in the action? What are their roles?
• Agency: How do the agents act? By what means do they act?
• Purpose: Why do the agents act? What do they want?

"any complete statement about motives will offer some kind of answers to these five questions: what was done (act), when or where was it done (scene), who did it (agent), how he did it (agency) and why (purpose)."

Burke explains that in making this book, they  "sought to formulate the basic stratagems which people employ, in endless variations, and consciously or unconsciously, for the outwitting or cajoling of one another."

• Is Burke defining rhetoric as the "outwitting or cajoling" of others?

Because motives remain shrouded in mystery, we struggle to define what motives are. In struggling to define motives or understand them, the enigma "will manifest itself in inevitable ambiguities and inconsistencies."

Burke believes the pentad, when examined closely enough, will reveal itself to be related and will therefore merge into one term, rendering dialectical unnecessary. He likens the pentad to fingers whose "extremities are distinct from one another, but merge in the palm of the hand. If you would go from one finger to another without a leap, you need but trace the tendon down into the palm of the hand, and then trace a new course along another tendon."

Burke terms his method (the palm and fingers together?) "dramatism, since it invites one to consider the matter of motives in a perspective that...treats language and thought primarily as modes of action."

Burke also develops a system of ratios:

• Scene-Act Ratio: "the scene is a fit 'container' for the act, expressing in fixed properties the same quality that the action expresses in terms of development." Essentially, actions are done in direct relation to their surroundings, which helps make sense of motives. As Burke explains, "men's behavior and development are explained in terms of environment...From a motivational point of view, there is implicit in the quality of a scene the quality of the action that is to take place within it. This would be another way of saying the act will be consistent with the scene. 
• Scene-Agent Ratio: a connection between the scene and agent wherein the scene influences the agent.
• "The principles of consistency binding scene, act, and agent also lead to reverse applications. That is, the scene-act ratio either calls for acts in keeping with scenes or scenes in keeping with acts--and similarly with the scene-agent ratio."

From changingminds.org: link

• Language expert Kenneth Burke identified a method of analysing the semantic dimensions of language through a five-part 'dramatism pentad' that describes our living stories. Burke said that we choose words because of their dramatic potential, and that we each have preference for particular parts of the pentad. Burke also noted how you can understand a story or speech by identifying how pairs interrelate, such as the scene-act ratio of Hamlet.
  

• Scene

• The scene is a 'container', the place where the action of the act occurs. This includes both physical location and the the contextual situation, occasion, event, time. People who put emphasis here believe that changing the scene changes everything else.

• Act

• The act is a motivated and purposeful action. It may be a simple, single action, such as moving or speaking, or may be more complex and compound. The act is an important part of the meaning, thought it is not the whole meaning, even though it may sometimes be thought to be so. The other four parts of the pentad of course also contribute. The act should align with the scene. A dance in a church, for example is not appropriate, though a wedding is. In a persuasive sentence, the verb indicates the act.

• Agent

• The agent is the person or group of people who perform in the act. They are the characters in the story, the people who enact the meaning. Motives, such as hatred, envy and love can also act as agents as 'they' are the moving force that acts. Countries and organizations can also act as agents. People who focus here believe that you need strong individuals to make things happen.

• Agency

• Agency is the technique or method by which the agent achieve their goals. This may be a sequence of acts encompassed by an idea or principle. People who focus on agency tend to be pragmatic in life.

• Purpose

• The purpose is the reason that the agent acts, the outcome they are seeking from what they do. Sometimes it is obvious and in the open, at other times the agent's purpose may be covert and hidden. Purpose may be layered and distracting, for example where an apparent good purpose cloaks an underlying selfish motive.

Ubiquity of Ratios

Burke believes the pentad is universal and conceived of throughout history and in other disciplines in other ways.

His ontological framework seems illusive. He writes, "Let us not worry at this point what it may 'mean' to say that 'Reason' is at once the mover of history and the substance of which history is made. It is sufficient here to note that such terministic resources were utilized, and to detect the logic of the pentad behind them."

For Burke, the pentad subsumes other disciplines, and in philosophy (Hegelian) reason becomes synonymous with scene. However, he doesn't divulge or focus on how we can affirm the existence of reason and the epistemic implications saying reason becomes the setting, the container, for acts and agents. Instead he focuses on how the pentad informs the motives.

• Does this imply that our interpretations of how the pentad works informs how we construct meaning and reality? If I privilege the scene as the creator of the agent and act, then is this indicative of how a create reality and meaning?

Diverging from the scene-agent & scene-act ratios, the agent-act ratio cannot be seen as position or related in way that one contains the other. Instead, Burke says that the agent-act relationship is temporal or sequential. He writes, "The agent is an author of his acts, which are descended from him, being good progeny if he is good, or bad progeny if he is bad, wise progeny if he is wise, silly progeny if he is silly. And conversely, his acts can make him or remake him in accordance with their nature." So, one does not contain the other, but they can both influence the "nature" of the other. 

• I'm struggling to differentiate between the containership of the scene-agent-act and the agent-act relationship. If the scene predetermines the type of agent or act that will take place, how is this any different than the agent determining the quality of its progeny (the act)?

• Does Burke view the pentad as a way to interpret motives or a way to understand the nature of reality? When he tries to explain how analyzing the difference between the scene-act and agent-act ratios in democracy in American, he seems to imply that comparing the truthfulness of each ratios output will help determine the reality. 
• If democracy is borne of an inherent democratic people (agent-act), then democracy would flourish despite the scene in which it is set. However, if democracy is scene as a relationship between the static democracy of the state (scene-agent), then once the country stops behaving democratically, so will its people. By measuring the truthfulness of these two lenses of inspection, one could argue the agent-act ratio hold up to the most scrutiny, which could then lend it some ontological significance.

Burke hints at the non-ontological nature of the pentad, writing, "The ratios may often be interpreted as principles of selectivity rather than as thoroughly causal relationships...Thus, a given political situation may be said to change people in their essential character, but rather to favor or bring them to the fore...certain kinds of agents...rather than others." Therefore, the scene doesn't change the nature of the man, but it issues a call and exigency for a different type of man.

Burke argues the inter-relatedness of the pentad leads to the possibility of acts influencing agents influencing scenes so that one may "establish a state of unity between himself and his world," but the "Edenic" paradigm falls under the weight of our ability to only produce partial acts, "acts that but partially represent us and that produce but partial transformations."

• Why? Why are we only capable of producing partial acts? Earlier, Burke likens the pentad to fingers unified by a palm. It seems that the palm is the "Edenic" space where we could, if we were able, merge all the ratios into "one unending 'moment.'" Burke doesn't really explain, however, why this isn't possible. Is he saying the flow between ratios encounters less resistance if it flows from scene to agent to act? If so, how does this shape his ontology?
• He does recognize that the agent's ability to affect the scene is faulty, which is why "Only the scene-act and scene-agent ratios fit with complete comfort...on the relationship between container and contained."

Class Notes:

Agency: difference between humans and non-humans about who can act.