DawgNotes

To understand motives, one must understand the five elements, or resources, of the pentad. First, and central to the whole, is the act: what took place. Then one must identify the scene: the background or setting for the act, also known as the situation, or the environment; the agent, or actor: the person that performed the act; the agency, or the means by which the act was carried out; and the purpose: why the act was carried out. Burke says any "complete statement about motives" must include some answer for all five of these resources. But naming these elements for a given act only offers a rhetorical surface. The understanding emerges from analyzing the interplay between specific elements, or the ratios. Ten such ratios are possible: scene-act, scene-agent, scene-agency, scene-purpose, act-purpose, act-agent, act-agency, agent-purpose, agent-agency, and agency-purpose. To understand the ratios, one needs the dialectic, the give-and-take between the two elements to determine what is at stake. The ratios show where the tension is, which in turn indicates what kind of rhetoric to expect in the situation, what kind of language (symbolic action) will be employed.

In the scene-act ratio, the scene and the act should match. Put another way, the scene as a container should be fit or appropriate for the act, and the act should fit the container. In the aftermath of hurricane Katrina, the scene was one of devastation. President Bush, in delaying a response to continue his vacation and having his first act to be one of flying over the area in tourist-like fashion, performed an act that was not in keeping with the situation. The response was insufficient to the scene. In such a situation, the scene controls the act, or represents the stronger of the two elements. The scene is what moves the agent to action.

Scene is not just physical, but can include conditions, such as those inferred by the term "ground," as on "on what grounds?", which can be translated as "what kind of scene calls for such an act" (GM12). Another synonym is situation, such as it is used by politicians in policy-making. Marx's dialectical materialism placed economic conditions as scene, and claiming that the scene (the economic conditions) limited justice. In civil rights terms, the scene of a systemically racist society limits the ability of non-white citizens to rise in power or economic status despite their abilities, skills, or education.

When Burke examines various philosophies, the pentadic element of scene is a related to the philosophic term of materialism, a theory that all the facts of the universe can be explained in terms of "matter and motion" or physical elements (GM 131). The philosophic terminology featuring the pentadic element of agent is idealism, a theory that explains the universe in the work of "reason and mind" (GM 171). For agency, the terminology is pragmatism, the tendency when making a choice of action to choose that which is practical, the "means necessary for happiness" as the Baldwin dictionary describes it (GM 275). Purpose is aligned with mysticism, which can be seen as the "ends" to agency's "means" (GM 287). The act is aligned with realism, as the act "realizes the matter," (GM 227), In each case, by constructing a grammar of motives, by providing these terms to analyze human motivation, Burke elevates the role of rhetoric relative to philosophy by making philosophy rhetorical, showing how different philosophies privilege different elements from the pentad, which in turn allows an understanding of the dynamics of these ideas, how the structures are built, and then how they persuade humans to action and the types of action that might be expected under these idea structures. From Plato and the Sophists, who privileged philosophy and dismissed rhetoric, through Aristotle who recovered rhetoric and gave it a place alongside dialectic, Burke provides an even stronger defense of rhetoric through the construction of this grammar, one in which rhetoric is superior.

Returning to the ratios, the scene-agent ratio is also a container/thing contained relationship. Both the act and the agent require a scene, so that these two ratios are "in the fullet sense positive" (GM 16). The scene-agent ratio has its relationship between person and place, Burke offers as examples Carlyle's description of the Arabs in their rocky-desert country, Swift's Laputans in their floating islands, and a sonnet by Wordsworth. Carlyle described the Arabs land as "fit habitation" for their race, indicating that they shared the harsh qualities of the land. Returning to the example of New Orleans after Katrina, the scene of devastation would need a presidential response of urgency, an expression of deep concern, perhaps even a disheveled appearance from lack of sleep, and appearance fit for the scene. The scene is still in the controlling position in this ratio.

The act-agent ratio is more of a "temporal or sequential" relationship than a positional one as the previous two are. Here the act flows from the nature or qualities of the agent, who may then, in turn, be modified by the act. Though the scene-act and scene-agent ratios can often be extended to explain motives within this ratio, Burke says that with stress on the agent, there can be "very vague treatment of scene" (GM 17). So Russian soldiers acting out of patriotism does not require an explanation of socialist politics to allow understanding of the motive.

Burke begins with the end product (the speech, the words) and asks: what's behind this product? What are the speaker's true motives? His genius in providing the ratios as a means of analysis was to be look at the reversal of the two terms to find the dilemma and the real motive. In this way, the analysis moves beyond the stated motives and looks for either corroborating evidence in the remaining elements of the pentad, or to the truth of the motives by examining the reverse of those stated. For example, when President Bush made his speech from New Orleans, he claimed the actions of the government would overcome the situation. He proclaimed an act-scene ratio, precisely because he did not have it. Analyzing his attempt to speak a state into being using the scene-act ratio reveals the truth of the situation (scene still in control), and the motive for the act of giving the speech (to convince the public the scene was not still in control). The concept of the negative is also important in Burke's work as a human construction. There is no "not" in nature. What makes the "not" possible is that we are symbolic creatures. The scene is only what it is. It takes human perspective to add the "not," and the motivation to gain that which is missing can become purpose driving human action (as in a purpose-act ratio). The need to fill that which is not is part of the human sense of and need for order.

Dramatism allows for study of human relations and motives along a hierarchy that includes the desire for order. In Burke's view, life is drama, with the act at the center. Where there is an act, there must be an agent, and a scene, and so on. There is action, and where there is action, thus drama, there is conflict. If there is conflict, there is victimage. Humans see the world hierarchically and are motivated by that hierarchy. The hierarchy moves from guilt and the motivation to overcome guilt to reach redemption. This movement includes sacrificing, victimizing, and scapegoating as means to attain the redemption. The sacrifice is not always literal. It can be figurative because human are symbolizing animals and willing to accept symbolic sacrifice as redemptive.

Humans are moved to action through language not just because it is a one-way speaker to hearer persuasion, but also because it is a dialectical exchange where the speaker and hearer have some identification with one another. This concept of identification is one of Burke's biggest contributions to the field of rhetoric, and is a very useful resource for analyzing speaker motives, particularly language that seeks to build degrees of identification (likeness or sameness) across divisions. Burke recognized the universality of difference in humans, even prior to race, class or economic status. This inherent difference is the basis for rhetoric, for linguistic persuasion. If there were no division, there would be no need for the rhetorician to proclaim unity.

Burke's dramatistic theory of rhetoric and the terminology he developed to analyze human relations and motives is arguably the most significant contribution to the field of rhetoric in the last century. By broadening the classical view of rhetoric, by developing an analytical frame that could apply to philosophical theories as well as draw connections to disciplines such as psychology, sociology, anthropology, and even mysticism and science, Burke demonstrated the superiority of rhetoric over dialectic and reinvigorated rhetoric as a discipline.

Works Cited:
Burke, Kenneth. A Grammar of Motives. Berkeley: University of California Press. 1969.

"Kenneth Burke: Theory of Dramatistic Rhetoric." James L. Golden, Goodwin F. Berquist, and William E. Coloeman. The Rhetoric of Western Thought. Fourth Edition. Dubuque, Iowa, Kendall/Hunt Publishing Co., 318-351. (JWT).