Intro to Burke: Some of the Reading for Theory of Rhetoric Class

This is an entry assigned for tomorrow by Kenneth Burke.

I recommend Professor Jason Ingram of the Communications Department for his Communications Class 321 and his corresponding graduate course.

This is part of the reading that is due tomorrow that I'm typing in order to break up the monotony of reading. Hopefully you readers at home can get some enjoyment out of this. The Professor has chosen this reading out of about 15 authors chosen for the course from 30-50 total authors available in the book itself. The text is edited at large by Brummett.

This should not count as copyright infringement because 1) I'm not making a profit. 2) This is for scholarly research and 3) This is only a very small excerpt. Let the record show that I hereby recommend Brummett's Reading Rhetorical Theory.

Kenneth Burke introduced by Brummett as such:


Kenneth Burke (1897-1993) is the most influential rhetorical theorist and critic of the twentieth century. Most of t major themes of twentieth century rhetoric come together in Burke's writings, which spanned nearly the entire century. Burke was born in Pittsburgh. He attended the Ohio State University and Columbia University briefly, but never earned a university degree. He did, however, receive many honorary degrees and taught at a number of colleges and universities. In addition to teaching, Burke was a literary critic, translator, music reviewer, book reviewer, novelist, poet, and essayist. His description of himself as a "word man" fairly summed up the center of his many interests and competencies.

It is difficult to synthesize the work of such a prolific theorist, but a good place to begin is with the idea, found throughout Burke's writings, that the most fundamental human reality is grounded in symbol usage (HELLO KANT) , primarily language (HELLO WITTGENSTEIN). Burke believed that how people speak generates their perceptions, social organization, beliefs, attitudes, and values. The observations of scientists are already inherent in the vocabularies they use, he argued. Our motives for reacting to any situation arise not from the situation itself but from what we call the situation. Writing during the Great Depression, he argued that a faulty economic language led to that social catastrophe, and that different way s of speaking about finance and money could lead the nation out of it. Burke sometimes called his system of thought logology because it was the study of language systems, and he sometimes called it dramatism because it treated human action as if it were dramatic action, or a play. But whatever he called his thought, it was based on the centrality of language.
The power of language to generate reality and thought is the theme underlying the Burkean works selected for inclusion in this book. When Adolph Hitler's book Mein Kampf was published in the 1930s, it was widely criticized for its fascist, intolerant views. Rather than simply joining the chorus of condemnations, Burke wrote a classic critical essay, "The Rhetoric of Hitler's 'Battle,' " in which he argued that the world could predict what Hitler and his followers would do by analyzing the language they were using. Burke argued that Hitler's language followed an ancient pattern called scapegoating, and that he would use the Jews to take the blame for the failings of the German people themselves.
Before the twentieth century, the discourse of criticism was largely directed at better understanding of literature, art, and other aesthetic experiences. Burke was in the forefront of critics who broke with that tradition to think critically about the rhetoric of art and literature. We turn to books, films, television, and other aesthetic experiences not only for enjoyment but also for the ways in which they help us to confront real-life problems. Burke's essay on Hitler is an influential example of how such criticism can advise the public on how to react to the serious effects of discourse.
The idea of literature as rhetorical is also central to the next essay included here, "Literature as Equipment for Living." Burke's view of what was "literature" was very broad; he really means any text. That definition not only opens up the field of literature to include political speeches, television shows and commercials, and technical manuals, but it makes criticism relevant to texts not traditionally considered aesthetic. So Burke introduces this essay by claiming that the is outlining a "sociological" criticism, by which he means a method for appraisal of a text with social (that is to say, rhetorical) implications.
Burke starts with the example of proverbs. He shows how proverbs sum up situations that people face and offer them motives for reacting to those situations. In other words, proverbs are rhetorical, for they give people the resources for responding to real-life problems and decisions. then Burke extends the principle beyond proverbs: All texts, he argues, size up situations and suggest ways of responding to them. Some texts size those situations up accurately, and some do not. Some suggest desirable responses, some do not. The role of the critic, then, is to evaluate whether a text is valuable as "equipment for living" through the challenges of everyday life.
Criticism was not Burke's only rhetorical concern; he was also a rhetorical theorist of great influence in the twentieth century. the next essay included here is the introduction to Burke's book, A Grammar of Motives. The grammar of a language is its basic components. you have learned that English is based on a grammar of nouns, verbs, adverbs, and so forth. We know that all nouns behave in a certain way, and they facilitate thinking in a certain way; likewise, so do verbs and the other parts of speech.
Perhaps Burke's most original and influential theory holds that any language may be organized not only according to its nouns, verbs, adjectives, and so forth, but also according to groups of words that generate motives for perceiving and reacting to the world. If we think about the language spoken by any society we can think in therms of different ways for seeing and responding to the world that are embodied in that language. This is because every time anybody speaks, the language they use is making attributions about why the world is the way it is and how one should respond to the world. Burke begins this essay with that point by considering what is happening when we say what people are doing and why they are doing it.
What happens when we refer to the world in this way, Burke argues, is that our language explains the world to ourselves and others form one or an combination of five different perspectives. This scheme of five perspectives is called Burke's pentad. It consists of act (something that is done), agent (someone who does the act), agency (the means by which the act is carried out), purpose (the purpose served by the act), and scene (the context within which the act takes place). Every time we talk about crime, welfare, global warming, our neighbor's behavior, our cousin's new job-- every time we talk about anything, our language unavoidably speaks of the world as if it is the way it is because of acts, agents, agencies, purposes, scenes, or some combination of those terms (in his later years Burke expanded the pentad to a "hexad," adding attitude as a sixth term). Critics have found Burke's pentad enormously useful in explaining ta rhetorical dimension of texts that may be out of people's conscious awareness but nevertheless powerfully effective.
It is not possible to survey Burke's entire system of rhetorical theories, but one final set of theoretical concepts must be examined. These concepts are contained in the final selection reprinted here: three chapters from Burke's book, A Rhetoric of Motives. We have noted that in the divisive and divided twentieth century, rhetoric has often sought to establish common ground, in contrast to traditional rhetoric that could assume common ground already existing in an audience as a basis for further appeal. Theorists such as Richards in the twentieth century have therefore sought to explain ways in which rhetoric might foster cooperation and coming together as much as the more traditional view of the triumph of a single persuade over others. In A Rhetoric of Motives, we find that much of Burke's theoretical work in support of that new away of understanding rhetoric.
Acknowledging that persuasion" was the key term for older, more traditional rhetoric, Burke argues here that a wider, more inclusive term, especially for the rhetoric of his and our time, is identification. Identification occurs when people perceive that there interests are joined, and that they share ways of thinking and valuing. This sharing is embodied in shared ways of speaking. Burke expresses this idea through use of the term substance. Substance is what something is made of: The substance of this book is largely paper and ink, for instance. Bu t the substance of people cannot really be defined physically or chemically: A list of the carbon and other materials of which or bodies are mad would scarcely do justice to what a human is. People are made out of motives, values, beliefs, ideas, emotions, reasoning, and above all, language. Another way of thinking of the word "substance" is to divide it: "sub" and "stance." If one takes a physical stance, there must be something underneath (sub) that stance to hold one up. Likewise, if one takes a stance on some social or political matter, there must be a set of motives, values, and so forth "holding up" that stance.
Burke puts these terms together ingeniously: To achieve identification with each other, we must share substance with others, which means we must become consubstantial with other people. Identification through consubstantiality is therefore Burke's master vision of how rhetoric might work, beyond the narrower purposes of persuasion and gaining advantage. Rhetoric seeks to create a common substance, or a set of motives and values, upon which people may jointly take a stance to address the problems they face. Successful rhetoric allows people a way to achieve identification with one another on the basis of consubstantiality. The vehicle for achieving that consubstantiality is a shared language, or a common vocabulary.
More than any other rhetorical theorist of the twentieth century, Burke has helped us imagine what rhetoric might become as it changes to meet new social challenges and conditions. His theories integrate new interests in criticism, language, and a more inclusive view of rhetoric. no critic has written more, or more influentially, about rhetoric in the twentieth century than has Kenneth Burke.