A Rhetoric of Motives

by Kenneth Burke

As critic, Kenneth Burke's preoccupations were at the beginning purely esthetic and literary; but after Counter-Statement (1931), he began to discriminate a "rhetorical" or persuasive component in literature, and thereupon became a philosopher of language and human conduct.

In A Grammar of Motives (1945) and A Rhetoric of Motives (1950), Burke's conception of "symbolic action" comes into its all human activities―linguisitc or extra-linguistic―are modes of symbolizing; man is defined as the symbol-using (and -misusing) animal. The critic's job becomes one of the interpreting human symbolizing wherever he finds it, with the aim of illuminating human motivation. Thus the reach of the literary critic now extends to the social and ethical.

A Grammar of Motives is a "methodical meditation" on such complex linguistic forms as plays, stories, poems, theologies, metaphysical systems, political philosophies, constitutions. A Rhetoric of Motives expands the field to human ways of persuasion and identification. Persuasion, as Burke sees it, "ranges from the bluntest quest of advantage, as in sales promotion or propaganda, through courtship, social etiquette, education, and the sermon, to a 'pure' form that delights in the process of appeal for itself alone, without ulterior purpose. And identification ranges from the politician who, addressing an audience of farmers, says, 'I was a farm boy myself,' through the mysteries of social status, to the mystic's devout identification with the sources of all being."

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, Language, Theory, Academic, Writing, Criticism

356 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1969

About the author

Kenneth Duva Burke was a major American literary theorist and philosopher. Burke's primary interests were in rhetoric and aesthetics.

Reviews

[Mike Rancourt · Rating 5 out of 5]

If Burke hadn't written this text, I wouldn't have been accepted into a doctoral program, and I don't think I would have enjoyed doing one very much, anyway. When we think of rhetoric as something more than Aristotle's observing the available means of persuasion, and look instead at processes of identification, we can see rhetoric at work everywhere, all the time. For me, Burke also forever defeated the pejorative connotations of "rhetoric," and it turned into something not about deception and manipulation, but also a tool for building community and learning to live with each other. Perhaps this sounds corny, but there are about 32 pages of Rhetoric of Motives that made me think rhetorical scholarship was a worthwhile endeavor.

[Andrea · Rating 5 out of 5]

sure--it's rhetoric but Burke uses really interesting examples to discuss a larger issue--amazing book--especially for the author's super long tangents

[amylea clemons · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book that changed my life. Pages 1-50 still make my head spin.

[Greg The Greg · Rating 4 out of 5]

I feel my rhetorical powers gaining power.

[Haley Lipford]

Read for school. Rating N/A

[Will Miller · Rating 3 out of 5]

Before reading him, I thought of Burke as a smart literary theorist along traditional lines, like Northrop Frye or Frank Kermode. Nuh uh. This book is more interested in closing the distinction between the rhetorical language we use everyday and the strategies of literature and philosophy. It's very difficult, tangential, personal, frustrating, and interesting. It might be better to pick it up once in a while and read a section carefully rather than attempt to plow through start to finish.

[John Fitzgerald · Rating 3 out of 5]

meh.

Burke is supposed to be "the guy," but I found this book to be long, disorganized, difficult, and poorly written. Maybe he's one of those people who are well-regarded because of the influence he has on others.

[Kathy Elrick · Rating 4 out of 5]

I only give it four stars because of the organization of it - otherwise, the thoughts are foundational and extensive. A good intro to new possible outlooks on an old topic of rhetoric.

[Daniel Liddle · Rating 4 out of 5]

More poop jokes than other burke.

[Jen Well-Steered · Rating 2 out of 5]

This type of book is why people hated lit theory classes in college.

[PMB · Rating 5 out of 5]

Like the Grammar, all the punch is up front. And why hold back? At times it is genius. At times it gets into dated Freudian style symbolism that does not resonate. But the genius...

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Identification: The statement of the thing's nature before and after the change (of killing, ending) is an identifying of it... We are proposing that our rhetoric be reduced to this term of wider scope... P. 20.

This strategic resource of terminology allows him to treat war as a special case of peace. P. 20.

To identify A with B is to make A consubstantial with B. P. 21.

...a thing is identified by its properties. P.23.

...put identification and division ambiguously together, so that you cannot know for certain just where one ends and the other begins, and you have the characteristic invitation to rhetoric. P. 25.

As regards autonomous activities, the principle of Rhetorical Identification may be summed up thus: The fact that an activity is capable of reduction to intrinsic, autonomous principles does not argue that it is free from identification with other orders of motivation extrinsic to it... Identification is the word for the autonomous activities place in this wider context, a place with which the agent may be unconcerned. P. 27.

...The rhetorical motive, through the resources of identification, can operate without conscious direction by any particular agent. Classical rhetoric stresses the element of explicit design in rhetorical enterprise. But one can systematically extend the range of rhetoric, if one studies the persuasiveness of false or inadequate terms which may not be directly imposed upon us from without by some skilful speaker, but which we impose upon ourselves, in varying degrees of deliberateness and unawareness, through motives indeterminately self protective and/or suicidal. P. 35.

...Under the heading of appeal to audiences, would also be included in the ideas or images privately addressed to the individual self for moralistic or incantatory purposes. Or for you become your own audience, in some respects a very lax one, in some respects very exacting, when you become involved in psychologically stylistic subterfuges for presenting your own case to yourself in sympathetic terms...
Education ("indoctrination") exerts such pressure upon him from without; he completes the process from within. If he does not somehow act to tell himself (as his own audience) what the various brands of reservation have told him, his persuasion is not complete. Only those voices from without are effective which can speak in the language of a voice within. Pp. 38 to 39.

Rhetorical language is inducement to action (or to attitude, attitude being an incipient act). P. 42.

Rhetoric is rooted in an essential function of language itself... The use of language as a symbolic means of inducing cooperation in beings that by nature respond to symbols. P. 43... The function of language as addressed... p. 44.

2 main aspects of rhetoric: Its use of identification and its nature as addressed. P. 45.

[Seth Pierce · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ill probably give it four stars after I go through it a second time :P

[VermilionBanditofHillhurst · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very dense but insightful at times

[Elyse · Rating 5 out of 5]

My father of rhetoric

[juliiiix · Rating 4 out of 5]

Doing my bachelor’s thesis, using Burke’s identification method about the rhetorics of the populist party (the Finns party) of Finland during the 2023 parliamentary elactions.

[Eric · Rating 4 out of 5]

If there is an “ultimate motive”—to twist one of Burke’s own terms—guiding A Rhetoric of Motives, it seems to be the prevention of war. Or, perhaps more modestly, directing readers’ attention to the ways rhetoric can both presage and create the conditions for war and, in turn, making one of rhetorical criticism’s goals the seeking out and exposing of violent rhetoric. In making his argument, Burke draws on numerous examples from literature (e.g. Milton and Henry James), popular culture (e.g. pneumatic tubes in grocery stores), politics (e.g. Nazi propaganda and burgeoning Cold War tensions), and philosophy (e.g. Plato and Kierkegaard). In addition to pointing out the implicit move toward and dialectical justification of violence in many of the texts he critiques, Burke offers his famous definitions of both rhetoric—“the use of language as a symbolic means of inducing cooperation in beings that by nature respond to symbols”—and humans—symbol-using animals. He also names modern humanity “homo dialecticus,” and argues that the biologically grounded drive to language and classification is more originary that other drives—psychological or sociological, for instance—in humans. The drive to language and classification does not displace other motivational factors in human life, but is their ground rather than something complementary or subsequent. Thus Burke can return to language and rhetoric as playing a key role in human existence and society, and link it to the potential tendency toward violence that he sees as so intertwined with language, rhetoric, human motivation, and the rhetorical foundation of human motivation.

[Mary · Rating 5 out of 5]

Admittedly, I often have no idea what K.B. is saying. He combines some very clear, beautifully world-changing rhetorical philosophy with long examples from literature, and I can’t entirely reconcile the two. Overall, I love the idealism of what Burke proposes—a sort of world peace based on what is similar and distinction of what is separate. Most exciting to me was his description of how Marxism combines the momentarily with the mythic as workers struggle not just for their own wage, but as part of the history of class struggle.

[Jeremiah Henry · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you are at all interested in composition and rhetorical theory, this is a must-read. Not only does Burke give a useful and thorough overview of rhetorical theory from the Greeks through the Enlightenment, he argues quite convincingly the antecedent purpose of rhetoric. As should be expected from a text that is predicated on philosophy to explore language theory, the text itself is rather "heady" and must be read at a walking pace.

[Mandy]

I'm not going to give it any stars because I didn't read it all, I only read the portion assigned for my rhetoric class... and I am looking forward to my professor making some sense of it because, well, I am LOST.

[Erin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thank goodness for professors that summarize everything we read or else I would be truly lost. I chose to write my paper on a different rhetorician and so I will probably never truly understand what he was talking about, and I am ok with that.

[Kalle Oskar · Rating 5 out of 5]

A difficult and thought provoking read. At times it becomes rather obscure. Burke's thought developed out of his love of words and the mystery of motivation.

[Zack · Rating 3 out of 5]

(Only read straight through pg 101.) I like a lot of Burke's concepts. Very thick and hard read.

[Tim]

Burke = valuable, but always difficult to read.

[Carl Laamanen · Rating 4 out of 5]

An important work, necessary for its time, but can come off as a bit unseemly today, considering most of us are fully aware of rhetoric's ubiquity.

[Randy Hulshizer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Burke is very hard to read, but some of his ideas are powerful.