A Rhetoric of Motives

Abstract

The key term for rhetoric in Kenneth Burke&s;s usage is not persuasion, but identification. Traditionally, the key term for rhetoric is not &s;identification&s;, but &s;persuasion&s;. And since identification and persuasion imply an audience, a third aspect of rhetoric—its nature as addressed to others and the self—rounds out Burke&s;s scheme for a rhetoric of motives in the triad: identification, persuasion, and address. For Burke, rhetoric promotes social cohesion by making it possible for men to act "rhetorically upon themselves and others". In Burke&s;s approach, and specifically in his sociology of language, analysis is designed to "throw light on literary texts and human relations generally". Burke argues that he can "place in terms of rhetoric all the statements by anthropologists, ethnologists, individual and social psychologists that bear upon the persuasive aspects of language, the function of language as addressed, as direct or roundabout appeal to real or ideal audiences, without or within".