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34 of 37 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Kenneth Burke's developing concept of Symbolic Action, December 9, 2000
This review is from: A Rhetoric of Motives (Paperback)
"A Rhetoric of Motives" was published in 1950, five years after "A Grammar of Motives," the first volume of a planned trilogy "On Human Relations" that was never officially completed. Having established the critical vocabulary of the dramatistic pentad in the first volume, this second work explores how all forms of human activities, whether linguistic or not, are modes of symbolizing. Specifically, Burke focuses on the relationship between persuasion and identification (hence, the focus on rhetoric rather than grammar). This is where his definition of man as the symbol-using/misusing animal comes into play. Within this context, the goal of the critic is to interpret human symbolizing in whatever arena it can be found (which necessarily means all human interactions) in order to explain human motivations. Part I "The Range of Rhetoric" sets up the key Burkeian concepts of Identification and Consubstantiality. Part II "Traditional Principles of Rhetoric" reworks those concepts into Burke's framework, using diverse texts from Dante and Machiavelli to Carlyle and Rochefoucauld to support the analysis. Part III on "Order" develops positive, dialectical and ultimate terms to establish the idea of forms that are paradigmatic of the rhetorical process as well as those that are better termed caricatures. Students of rhetoric and social theory should certainly read "A Grammar of Motives" before making their way through this volume, although a thorough appreciation of Burke would require starting with his pre-war "trilogy" of "Counter-Statement," "Permanence and Change," and "Attitudes Towards History." That middle volume is especially important in light of Burke's argument in "A Rhetoric of Motives." Burke never wrote "A Symbolic of Motives," which was to complete the trilogy. Both "Language As Symbolic Action" and "A Rhetoric of Religion" are sometimes represented as the third volume in some embryonic form, which is about as valid as such considerations can go. My argument would be that Burke's earlier works are much better sources of enlightenment and inspiration than either of those particular volumes.
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9 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
He lost his dialectic along the way, November 28, 2005
This review is from: A Rhetoric of Motives (Paperback)
No matter how much and how well you understand the project - to determine the rhetoric that correspond to a motive according to the nature of this motive, you find the approach artificial because it only uses linguistic means to define this rhetoric of the said motive or motives. No body language, no facial language, no language beyond language. At times it becomes purely absurd. How can we follow a « discourse » and its rhetoric if we do not consider what happens when it is « uttered » to a crowd and « enacted » physically. The case, when it is so obvious that we feel floating in thin air, is when he pretends symbols are anterior to all human inventions. This is philogenetically absurd. Man when he emerged out of animality invented the symbols, the first words let's say, in and out of his daily survival practice, hence his daily economic practice and then these symbols amplified the practice by making its transmission and improvement easier. We cannot accept this assertion : « The laws of symbols are prior to economic laws. » At this moment we feel that Burke, in spite of his great insistance on the central dimension in human thinking of dialectical processes, loses his dialectic. Symbols and socioeconomic practices are absolutely linked together genetically as well as structurally in the most dialectical way imaginable. The key to that loss of his dialectic comes later, I think, when he pretends that the oxymoron, the basic dialectical figure of speech that significantly associates two antagonistic elements (and oxymorons must not be reduced to words as Burke does it), when he pretends that this oxymoron is a realization of mysticism. Absurd. Mysticism states an absolute unity of a one and only being that dominates you because it is your creator. And this creator is not oxymoronic, even if you may thing this concept of a creator is a moronic idea. In this book Kenneth Burke traps himself by limiting his rhetoric to language. There is no rhetoric that is not also material, corporeal, emotional, and even repressive, military, agressive, using all kinds of bodies and corps to impose one's point of view, even if officially the orator only uses words. Others, behind him, use other means, but far more effective means. If you want to keep a historical site clean, you have to use written and oral rhetoric to incite the public to keep it tidy, but you also use special visual signs, specially devised trashcans that attract the attention and reinforce all the other signals, but also some wardens who enforce the rules by asking politely at first and then more forcefully if necessary the trespasser to please comply with the rule. That is the full rhetoric of cleanliness on an historical site, and it can go as far as showing the unreformable, un redeemable trespasser the way out. It also includes some cleaning people that are here to remind you of the dirt visitors create, and thus make you feel guilty and comply with the inciting rhetoric of cleanliness.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, Université Paris Dauphine, Université Paris I Panthéon Sorbonne
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1 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Skip it, August 25, 2011
This review is from: A Rhetoric of Motives (Paperback)
Everyone told me how important this book was while I was in undergrad; I still don't see why. The book is unnecessarily hard to read and follow. He uses thousands of words, when a few short paragraphs will suffice. Even my professor admitted he had read it multiple times and still doesn't understand it completely. It's as if he thought being incomprehensible would give his ideas more clout; it actually just shows what a poor writer he was. Not a fan.
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