Burke, Kenneth. A Grammar of Motives

Burke, Kenneth. A Grammar of Motives. Berkley: California UP, 1969.

I had a lot of trouble finding things I found useful in this book. I love Burke, and I don’t know if it is just me being foggy headed, or if it is the infinite ability of Burke’s to be obscure. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

“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); and also you must indicate what kind of person (agent) performed the act, what means or instruments he used (agency), and the pupose” (xv). =M
Aristotle did not talk of motives, per se; but he did speak of what needed to be placed in the mind of the rhetorician when he was inventing. All of these things were in there albeit mentioned in different terminology. Bitzer’s rhetorical situation is also in this one small piece. One must know how to “situate” what is being said, or what one will say. Agency could be seen as pathos or logos. This is reflective, or reflected in, a whole slew of other authors.
“For in the course of this work, we shall deal with many kinds of transformation—and it isi in the areas of ambiguity that transformations take place; in fact, without such areas transformation would be impossible” (xix). =B
So, Aristotle’s speakers are attempting to transform—move—the audience into a newly formed idea about a certain structure.
“The word ‘ground,’ much used in both formal philosophy and everday speech when discussing motives, is likewise scenic, though readily encroaching upon the areas more directly covered by ‘agent’ and ‘purpose’ (12). =B
“Political commentators now generally use the word ‘situation’ as their synonym for scene, though often without any clear concept of its function as a statement about motives” (13). =M
In The Rhetorical Situation, Bitzer asks, “Why and how do they result in the creation of rhetoric?” (1). This speaks directly to motive in my view as it is apparent that the why and the how tell us what has spurred the writer/speaker into action.
“The most clear sounding of words can thus be used for the vaguest of reference quite as we speak of a “certain thing” when we have no particular thing in mind” (52). =B & M
This reminds me of Aritstotle’s “fridgidity” a term he uses to voice the opposite of clarity. Fridgidity creates ambiguity through a number of means, including inappropriate metaphors and double wording. Both Aristotle and Burke have a problem with this, but it does appear in most rhetoric, that lack of clarity.
“Our five terms are “transcendental” rather than formal (and are to this extent Kantian) in being categories which human thought necessarily explifies” (317).
“Language being essentially human, we would view human relations in terms of the linguistic instrument. Not mere ‘conciousness of abstracting,’ but consciousness of linguistic action generally, is needed if men are to temper absurd ambitions that have their source in faulty terminologies” (317). =B&M
Booth mentions something similar in Rhetoric of Rhetoric, by explaining that we must be able to recognize faulty arguments in order to genuinely communicate what is going on around us. Aristotle talks of faulty arguments which must, of course, begin with faulty terminologies in order to recognize what is wrong with an argument. Being able to view the faults within language and argument are important to rhetoricians in order to be able to, in Aristotle’s terms, “untie” another’s argument.
“The attitude of itself would be grounded in the systematic development of method. The method would involve the explicit study of language as the ‘critical moment’ at which human motives take form, since a linguistic factor at every point in human experience complicates and to some extend transcends the purely biological aspects of motivation” (318). =B
“Remember always that no modern instrument could have been invented, or could be produced, without the use of a vast linguistic complexity” (319).