Burkean Identification and Dramatism

Kenneth Burke recast rhetoric around identification—the shared substance that lets one mind move another—and built dramatism, a method for analyzing motives as symbolic action.

Definition

Burkean rhetoric is the theory that treats human beings as symbol-using animals and rhetoric as the use of language to induce cooperation through identification, analyzed via the dramatistic study of motives.

Scope

This topic covers Kenneth Burke's reconception of rhetoric in A Rhetoric of Motives and A Grammar of Motives. It treats identification and consubstantiality as the central rhetorical principle, the dramatistic pentad (act, scene, agent, agency, purpose) for analyzing motives, the definition of humans as symbol-using animals, and key terms such as terministic screens and the negative.

Core questions

• How does identification rather than overt persuasion explain rhetorical effect?
• How do the five terms of the pentad reveal a rhetor's view of motives?
• How do terministic screens shape what discourse reveals and conceals?
• What follows from defining humanity through symbol use?

Key concepts

• identification and consubstantiality
• dramatistic pentad
• terministic screens
• symbol-using animal
• the negative

Key theories

Identification

Burke makes identification the key term of the new rhetoric: persuasion works when a rhetor and audience share substance, becoming consubstantial, so that rhetoric addresses division and the cooperation that overcomes it.

Dramatism and the pentad

Burke analyzes statements about motives through five terms—act, scene, agent, agency, purpose—and their ratios, treating language as a mode of symbolic action rather than mere reflection of reality.

History

Working outside the academy as a critic and theorist, Burke developed across the mid-twentieth century a sweeping theory of language as symbolic action. A Grammar of Motives (1945) introduced the pentad; A Rhetoric of Motives (1950) placed identification at the center of rhetoric. His ideas, gathered in works such as Language as Symbolic Action, became foundational to American rhetorical criticism and communication studies.

Debates

Scope of identification

Scholars debate whether identification subsumes or merely supplements classical persuasion, and how far Burke's expansive sense of rhetoric as coextensive with symbol use risks making the term unbounded.

Key figures

• Kenneth Burke

Seminal works

• burke1969rhetoric
• burke1969grammar

Frequently asked questions

What is the dramatistic pentad used for?

It is a critical tool for uncovering how a text attributes motive. By asking which of the five terms—act, scene, agent, agency, purpose—a discourse emphasizes, the critic exposes its underlying view of why things happen.