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Chapter Ten
Contemporary Rhetoric II:
The Rhetoric of Situation, Drama, and Narration
Kenneth Burke
Identification
Used synonymously with consubstantial. It is the key to persuasion. As we share substances, we come to identify with others. As we speak each other's language, we become consubstantial.
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Identity or consubstantiation is the quality of sharing attributes.
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Identification is key to persuasion.
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Identification has several functions.
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Identification occurs through common goals/background.
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Identification occurs through common enmity/challenge.
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Identification occurs through unconscious association.
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Division, or lack of identification, is the natural state of separate human beings. o The human experience is inherently individual, and thus divisive. o Rhetoric is intended to replace division with identification. o Unconscious motivation occurs when identification is made without awareness or willful intent.
Consubstantial
We form selves or identities through various properties or substances, including physical objects, occupations, friends, activities, beliefs and values. Occurs when two entities are united in substance through common ideas, attitudes, possessions or properties.
Rhetoric’s goal, then, is to bring together individuals separated from one another by “alienation and competition.
Rhetoric as “Symbolic Inducement”
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As Herrick no tes, Burke saw rhetoric as “the use of symbols to shape and change human beings and their contexts” (224).
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Three fundamental elemts of human social and private existence that knowledge of rhetoric helps us understand o The symbolic means by which we define ourselves and our communities o the nature of meaning as a matter of interpreting symbols, and o human motivation and action
Terministic screens and Being Human
Terministic screens-the terms or vocabulary we use as a result of our occupations constitute a kind of screen that directs our attention to particular aspects of reality rather than others.
Human beings are the symbol-making, symbol-using, symbol-misusing animal, inventor of the negative, separated from our natural condition by instruments of our own making, goaded by the spirit of hierarchy, acquiring foreknowledge of death, and rotten with perfection.
Burke’s Pentad
Burke's most famous contribution to rhetorical theory is known as his dramatistic pentad, presented in his work, A Grammar of Motives in 1945. As the name "dramatistic pentad" implies, the concept is drawn from the world of drama and divides rhetorical situations into five constituent elements for analysis. Burke sought in the pentad a "grammar of motives," that is, a

Herrick, ch 10 2 means of understanding human motivation.
The five elements of the pentad are
1. the act —is what was done or is being done
2. the scene — the location of the act ; its setting
3. the agent — the person performing the action
4. agency — the means by which the agent performs the act. and
5. purpose —the reason for the action, the intended goal.
A tool or method of analysis used to discover the motivation in symbolic action. It is a critical instrument designed to reduce statements of motives to the most fundamental level
Function of the Pentad o It is used as a method of analysis to ascertain the motivation in symbolic action. o It is a critical statement designed to reduce motives to the most fundamental level.
Pentadic ratios o Pentadic ratios describe relationships between elements of the pentad. o Pentadic ratios can be used to determine the appropriateness of certain components of rhetoric.
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Ratios suggest a relationship of propriety, suitability, or requirement among the elements.
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An examination of all the ratios aids the critic in discovering which term in the pentad receives
Dramatism the greatest attention by the rhetor.
Burke uses this "critical metaphor" to explain human motivation through the analysis of drama. It is "a technique of analysis of language and of thought as basically modes of action rather than a means of conveying information."
Form
"An arousing and fulfillment of desires" or "the creation of an appetite in the mind of the auditor, and the adequate satisfying of that appetite."
Bitzer
Three essential components of Bitzer's "rhetorical situation"
In "The Rhetorical Situation," Lloyd Bitzer argued that a rhetorical situation is marked by three
1. an audience,
2. an exigence, and
3. constraints.
Exigence: Bitzer defined an exigence as "an imperfection marked by urgency; it is a defect, an obstacle, something waiting to be done, a thing which is other than it should be." Not all exigencies, however, contribute to rhetorical situations. The particular exigence in question must be one capable of modification by discourse.
Audience: The second element in the rhetorical situation is the audience. However, it is again important to point out that not all audiences are rhetorical audiences from Bitzer's point of view. A rhetorical audience is made up only of persons able to be influenced by discourse, and then to mediate change.
Constraint: Finally, Bitzer maintains that rhetorical situations exhibit constraints. Bitzer defines the concept of constraint as follows:
"[C]onstraints [are] made up of persons, events, objects, and relations which are parts of the situation because they have the power to constrain decision and action needed to modify the exigence."7 Bitzer compares constraints to the artistic and inartistic proofs of Aristotle's Rhetoric. He apparently has in mind, then, that constraints are any factors that a rhetorician must contend with in the inventional process. They are factors both limiting and liberating the rhetor as arguments and appeals are both discovered and advanced for audience acceptance.

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Bakhtin discourse is always ideological and social
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For Bakhtin, all language is inherently ideological in at least two ways. First, language does not merely reflect, but actually constructs our view of the world. As a result, speaking and writing are never value-free. Second, to speak is to articulate a position, to give voice to a system of beliefs.
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Language is inherently social for two reasons. First, speech is fashioned from preexisting, historically bound linguistic material. Speech itself is the product of prior social processes.
Second, we negotiate the meaning of every word we utter with the person to whom we speak. Thus, discourse always performs a social or relational function.
Wayne Booth an author of fiction being "invisible"
Wayne Booth in The Rhetoric of Fiction examines the relationship between author and narrator, and between authorial intent and textual content. Booth notes that some works of fiction pretend to an authorial objectivity. That is, author's pretend not to be present in the voices of their characters.
However, Booth affirms that the rhetoric of fiction is unavoidable, meaning that "the author's judgment is always present, always evident to anyone who knows how to look for it . . . ." Booth questioned whether a writer could adopt a value-neutral stance in writing. An author cannot achieve neutrality about values. A work's author is always present, never invisible.
Jurgen Habermas
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Communicative action —the possibilities of a rational society that stem from the use of interactive language.
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Critical theory —the exploration of ways communication is enhanced or limited by social, institutional, and structural parameters. o Used by the individual for liberation from domination, critical theory leads to society's rational interpretation and transformation.
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Universal pragmatics —the study of the general or universal aspects of language use.
Terminology
1. Dramatistic pentad —Burke's "grammar of motives," consisting of act, scene, agent, agency, and purpose.
2. Form —What Burke refers to as "an arousing and fulfilling of in an audience."
3. Symbolic inducement —Burke's definition of rhetoric
4. Terministic screens —Burke's term to describe the fact that every language or choice of words beomes a filter through which we perceive the world.)
5. Exigence —What Bitzer defines as "an imperfection marked by urgency;" part of the rhetorical situation.
6. F itting response —In Bitzer, a rhetorical response that is dictated to the rhetor by the rhetorical situation.
7. Dialogues —In Bakhtin, chains of assertion and response that reveal the presence of different voices.
8. Polyphonic —Bakhtin's term for quality of narrative in which each character is fully developed and speaks fully his or her perspective on the world.
9. Probability —In Fisher, the structural coherence, material coherence, and characterological

Herrick, ch 10 4 coherence of a narrative.
10. Fidelity —In Fisher, the criterion of narrative rationality that asks whether the components of a story "represent accurate assertions about social reality."
11. Rhetoric of fiction —Booth's insight that, in narrative, "the author's judgment is always present" in a novel.
12. Fantasy theme —In Bormann, a particular story line involving characters with which individuals identify themselves and other members of their or group, and plots that these characters participate in acting out.