Kenneth Burke's concept of motives in rhetorical theory

Abstract

Recognizing the centrality of motives in Burke's rhetorical theory, the authors suggest that the concept has so far not been adequately dealt with. The article begins with an explanation of the pentad, whose elements are “five motivational points of view.” The terms of the pentad can be assigned to the elements in a human event only after an examination of the event; nothing is to be assumed. The authors recognize that others—Holland, Nichols, Fisher, for example—have drawn various connections between the pentad and motives, but each has been too narrow in a different way. The first point to be made is that each element in the pentad is the locus or potential locus of motive forces. Then, acknowledging the suggestion by Ling that each man describes a human situation by featuring and ordering particular elements in the pentad, the authors argue that such featuring implicitly also features the motives associated with those elements. They then speculate about what featuring tells us of various periods in rhetorical history: the renaissance featuring of schemes and tropes, the elecutionary movement, etc., each one emphasizing a different element in the pentad. They conclude that Burke calls for a thorough investigation of all the elements as well as their interrelationships or, ratio, and a synthesis of the results. This advice is immediately taken up by the authors in a lengthy analysis of George Wallace's “stand in the school house door” at the University of Alabama in 1963.