BURKE’S METHODS MAKE THE BEST STRATEGIES FOR ANALYZING RHETORIC

BURKE’S METHODS MAKE THE BEST STRATEGIES FOR ANALYZING RHETORIC

1. THE PENTADIC ELEMENTS ARE BEST USED TO GET AT A RHETOR’S MOTIVES

Kenneth Burke, A GRAMMAR OF MOTIVES, 1950, p. xv.

What is involved, when we say what people are doing and why they are doing it? An answer to that question is the subject of this book. The book is concerned with the basic forms of thought which, in accordance with the nature of the world as all men necessarily experience it, are exemplified in the attributing of motives. These forms of though can be embodied profoundly or trivially, truthfully or falsely. They are equally present in systematically elaborated metaphysical structures, in legal judgments, in poetry and fiction, in political and scientific works, in news and in bits of gossip offered at random. We shall use five terms as generating principle of our investigation. They are.‑ Act, Scene, Agent, Agency, Purpose. In a rounded state­ment about motives, you must have some word that names the act (names what took place, in thought or deed), and another that names the scene (the background of the act, the situation in which it oc­curred); also, you must indicate what person or kind of person (agent) performed the act, what means or instruments he used (agency), and the purpose. Men may violently disagree about die purposes behind a given act, or about the character of the person who did it, or how he did it, or in what kind of situation he acted; or they may even insist upon totally different words to name the act itself. But be that as it may, any complete statement about motives will offer some kind of an­swers to these five questions: what was done (act), when or where it was done (scene), who did it (agent), how he did it (agency), and why (purpose).

Kenneth Burke, ATTITUDES TOWARD HISTORY, 1937, p. 166

We hold that it must be employed as an essentially comic notion containing two‑way attributes lacking in polemical, one-way approaches to social necessity. It is neither euphemistic nor wholly debunking-hence it provides the charitable attitude towards people that is required for purposes of persuasion and co-operation, but at the same time maintains our shrewdness concerning the simplicities of “cashing in.” The mystifications of the priestly euphemisms, presenting the most materialistic of acts in transcendentally “eulogistic coverings,” provided us with instruments too blunt for discerning the play of economic factors. The debunking vocabulary (that really flowered with its great founder, Bentham, who developed not merely a method of debunking but a methodology of debunking, while a group of mere epigones have been cashing in on his genius for a century, bureaucratizing his imaginative inventions in various kinds of "muck‑raking" enterprises) can disclose material interests with great precision. Too great precision in fact. For though the doctrine of Zweck im Rech veritable Occam's razor for the simplification of human motives, teaching us the role that special material interests play in the "impartial" manipulations of the law, showing us that law can be privately owned like any other property, it can be too thorough; in lowering human dignity so greatly, it lowers us all. A comic frame of motives avoids these difficulties, showing us how an act can "dialectically" contain both transcendental and material ingredients, both imagination and bureaucratic embodiment, both "'service" and "spoils.
3. TRAINED INCAPACITY STOPS US FROM MAKING CREDIBLE INTERPRETATIONS

Sonja Foss, Professor of Rhetoric at Washington University, Karen Foss, and Robert Trapp is Professor of Rhetoric at Willamette University, CONTEMPORARY PERSPECTIVES ON RHETORIC, 1991, p. 189

The result of occupational psychosis and its accompanying terministic screens is "trained incapacity," the condition in which our abilities "function as blindnesses." As we adopt measures in keeping with our past training, the very soundness of that training may lead us to misjudge situations and adopt the wrong measures for the achievement of our goals; thus, our training becomes an incapacity. A person trained to work in the competitive business world of the United States, for example, may be unable to cooperate with other businesspersons because of that training, even when cooperative action alone will prevent the failure of the business. Given different occupations, terministic screens, and the consequent trained incapacity, some differences among members of a hierarchy are likely to be significant‑as with a king and peasant, for example, an accountant and a musician, or a Sunday painter and a renowned professional artist. In other cases, the differences among beings are imaginary; members of different racial groups, for example, may see differences where none exist. In either case, members lack knowledge about other beings and see different modes of living in other classes as implying different modes of thought.

BURKE’S PROJECT IS FUNDAMENTALLY FLAWED

1. BURKE OVEREMPHASIZES THE INDIVIDUAL RHETOR

Carole Blair, Associate Professor of Rhetoric and Communication at University of California, Davis, KENNETH BURKE AND CONTEMPORARY EUROPEAN THOUGHT, 1995 , p. 131

A discourse thus cannot be understood by understanding its authorship, nor can a discourse “reveal” a unitary author. Discourses constitute and are constituted by numerous forces. Certainly people speak, but they do not speak as independent, unsituated, or unconditioned ethoi. What “accounts for” a particular discourse is other discourse and the social sanctions that enable or constrain it. Foucault does not thematize the ethos or cogito of an author as an end or a means of studying discourse; he subverts the relation between author and work. Thus, the humanistic themes that continue to pervade Burke’s critical program despite his own occasional suspicions about them, are set aside in Foucault’s project. This posthumanism, which separates Foucault from Burke, finds its source in their differential views of language use.

Carole Blair, Associate Professor of Rhetoric and Communication at University of California, Davis, KENNETH BURKE AND CONTEMPORARY EUROPEAN THOUGHT, 1995 , p. 141

It is rarity that invests the statement with power. Since not just anyone can speak, at just any time, in just any manner, about just any topic, the rules of discursive practice function as enablers and constrainers of who can speak, when, in what ways, and about what. As a result, what is said counts; it makes a difference, even if a small one, in the field of discourse it enters.
3. RHETORICAL MOTIVES DO NOT EXIST

James W. Chesebro, Chair and Professor in Communications at Indiana State University, KENNETH BURKE AND CONTEMPORARY EUROPEAN THOUGHT, 1995 , p. 177

Third, writing no longer represents reality. For Derrida, all of the traditional relations among the signified (reality), signs (language), and signifiers (human beings) have been drastically reconfigured. Signs (language) no longer represent the signified (reality). Even more pointedly, not only have signs become a reflection of signifiers, but also the signified is not solely and absolutely a reflection of the signifiers. As Derrida has put it, “in the last instance, the difference between signified and signifier is nothing”. Thus, an exploration of a text becomes a study of only a human construction. As Derrida is now famous for noting, “There is nothing outside of the text.” In context, Derrida has maintained that reading “cannot legitimately transgress the text toward something other than it, toward a referent (a reality that is metaphysical, historical, psychobiographical, etc.) or toward a signified outside the text whose content could take place, could have taken place outside of language, that is to say, in the sense that we give here to that word, outside of writing in general”. Thus, human beings are “trapped inside language.” In Derrida’s view, writing has never and will never contain “positive terms” for the “positive entities” in reality. He likewise maintains that speech, now conditioned and determined by the written mode, provides only an illusion of immediacy and directness as a signifying system for dealing with reality. Human knowledge is literally and solely contained within the texts human beings have created. Accordingly, insofar as we understand through language, the unidimensional nature of language encourages political oppression, inhibits explorations of reality and the search for truth, and perhaps more profoundly for a philosopher such as Derrida, no longer allows human beings to equate being or essence with the subjective.