Burkeian invention, from pentad to dialectic

1978

Folklore Forum, 1996

Rhetorica Scandinavica, 2022

Burke og retorikken set gennem Ivies øjne-Kenneth Burke er, med Chaïm Perelman og Lucie Olbrecths-Tyteca, blandt de mest markante skikkelser i moderne retorisk teori og kritik, og hans tanker og begreber har fortsat relevans og forklaringskraft i en verden der ser meget anderledes ud end hans samtid før og efter 2. Verdenskrig. Uanset om man interesserer sig for de kommunikative dynamikker i sociale og andre medier, for populistisk retorik eller for retoriske virkemidler i aestetiske genrer, har Burke stadig meget at byde på. Men hans forfatterskab er notorisk vanskeligt tilgaengeligt. For nogle kan det virke meget indforstået med sine mange referencer til den engelsksprogede litteraere og dramatiske tradition, for andre kan det vaere frustrerende at der sjaeldent optraeder én samlet diskussion af et begreb, men at man må spore det på kryds og tvaers af forfatterskabet. Derfor bringer Rhetorica Scandinavica her en introduktion til Kenneth Burkes forfatterskab skrevet af en kender, nemlig Robert Ivie.

Biographical essay, 2004

This ambiguous, abstract and arbitrary instrument of communication consensually named language, is a set of symbols, words as symbolic structures that differs in meaning from person to person, varying in its signification. We use symbolic structures of language to describe reality. We select nouns, adjectives, and verbs to conjugate ideas. But, how do we know if the final picture of what we observe is the same as in other's minds? That is why Kenneth Burke's focuses in a theory of symbolic action instead of symbols themselves as previous theorists have done. Burke faced the metaphor as a way of symbolic action, since there is no way to avoid uncertainty; following, a brief synthesis of the rhetorician who decided to face unravel paradox. According to the Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism (1997) Kenneth Duva Burke was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1897. He became intensely interested in European and modern literature early in high school, and by the time he graduated he had decided on writing as a vocation. He attended Ohio State University (1916) and Columbia (1917-18), dropping out of Columbia, where he had been studying philosophy and the classics, in the winter of 1918. After abandoning the university Burke decided to buy land and go back to his essence. In the early twenties, he left the city moving to a farmhouse in Andover, New Jersey, where he lived most of his life. Burke got his first steady job as editor at a small paper called The Dial. He worked there during the late twenties until the paper ceased publication in 1929. As Burke continued his studies, he began to turn his attention more and more to social criticisms rather than simply fiction surviving the Great Depression in the philosophical umbrella of Karl...

Rhetorica, 2014

2020

Most scholars of American theorist Kenneth Burke consider him a founder of the post-war New Rhetoric, a movement to shift rhetorical studies from a historic focus on persuasion to a more expansive understanding of language, dialogue, and communally constructed truths. However, Burke throughout the 1930s and 40s thought of himself primarily as a literary critic, albeit one who turned literary critical techniques to the social scene around him. Without his ongoing, often contentious dialogue with the literary scholars of the New Criticism, Burke’s rhetorical theories on the power of language to answer questions of human motivations may well have never materialized. New Criticism and New Rhetoric, therefore, forged each other in the crucible of the mid-century years of depression and war and the intellectual ferment they generated. It was Burke’s attempts to explain himself to these literary critics and exhort them to turn their critical lens to the world around them that provided the ...

1992

Many basic writers, who are virtually unable to create a coherent paragraph, are nonetheless capable of presenting orally well-constructed narratives of depth and feeling. Thus, teachers must try to get students to harness the strength of their oral abilities to improve their writing skills, and Kenneth Burke's pentad may provide a key. Burke's pentad of five key terms (act, agent, agency, scene, purpose) can act as building blocks, making up a rough outline, for sentences, paragraphs or longer stories. In effect, the pentad allows the students to play the role of reader for their own writing. Numerous examples demonstrate how the pentad and a worksheet based on the pentad can be used to show students how to attain three goals: (1) how to construct sentences; (2) how to construct paragraphs; and (3) how to [de] construct sentences. A chart, devised on a word processing program and distributed to the students, can be used to map out the five elements of the pentad for a sentence or paragraph. The charts can also be used to teach students what may be missing from their writing. While this system is no instant cure for any basic writer, it does allow students to utilize their strengths. The use of Burke's pentad translates the writing process into terms that the students have a greater hope of understanding. (Numerous examples of the charts used to map out the pentad are included.) (HB)

Rhetoric Review, 2007