Kenneth Burke Burke's Pentad and

Kenneth Burke Burke's pentad and its effect on communications study If one was to create a list of the greatest American rhetoricians and communications theorists of all time, Kenneth Burke would undoubtedly rate very highly. Burke was as remarkable a force in the development of rhetorical and communications theory as he was an unlikely one.

A college dropout who got his start writing about music and for trade publications, Burke, who dabbled widely in genres ranging from academic writing to poetry to novels, steadily worked toward the founding of some essential truths in communications study. Burke devotes much of his research to advancing the perception of language as symbols and as humans as a group that responded, often predictably, to signals (Rountree, 1998).

Arguably one of Burke's greatest contributions to communications theory was the notion of the pentad - the five factors that influence motives and reaction in communications. Although experts believe the notion of the pentad, which includes act, scene, agent, agency and purpose, was initially conceived as a literary criticism device, it has been expanded to include a wide variety of communications, including public speaking. One can argue that Burke, through his notion of the pentad, created a foundation for analyzing communication.

This foundation has engendered a wealth of secondary works and has even led to the expansion of the original pentad to provide an even more comprehensive analysis of communications. The pentad explored Burke's "A Grammar of Motives," originally published in 1945, was a seminal work in the field of communications theory. Burke intended the work to expand on the notion of dramatism, to which Burke subscribed, which saw language as a means of taking or encouraging action (Henderson, 1997).

In short, Burke wanted to work toward an answer to the question "What is involved, when we say what people are doing and why they are doing it?" (Burke, 1969). Burke concluded that language was, in effect, a symbol that could be used to motivate people toward a certain action, depending on a number of factors (Burke, 1969). Burke did not see this notion as particularly original, pointing out that it had been contemplated by ancient philosophers such as Aristotle (Rountree, 1998).

The communications world latched on to a key Burkean notion in "A Grammar of Motives" - the pentad.

Burke envisioned that human behavior - which can be extended to human language behavior - depended on five factors: Act: What happened or was said? Scene: Where did it happen and what was the background? Agent: Who is involved in the action? What was that person's role? Agency: How, or by what means, do the agents act? Purpose: Why did the agents act? What was their motivation? (Burke, 1969 and Burke's Pentad, No Date) Consider, for example, a television advertisement for McDonald's.

The communications act was the commercial, which reminded us how tasty a cheeseburger can be; the scene is at your home, on a television screen, perhaps around dinner time; the agents are McDonald's, the narrator, and, to some extent, the television station that made the advertising time possible; the agents act by showing you a delicious looking cheeseburger, designed to trigger a hunger reflex; and, now, we can quite clearly see the purpose - to get you to leave your house and visit McDonald's for a meal purchase.

Burke believed that as we analyzed each piece of the pentad, we could come to understand the motivations of communicators or why they employed the words or methods they used. David M. Boje is just one communications theorist who imagined how powerfully the pentad formula could apply to advertising situations, which motivate people to make purposes (Boje 2002).

But, really, Burke laid the foundation for such analysis because he took the notion of the pentad to a logical extension and theorized how various aspects of the pentad could be manipulated to direct action. Burke introduced the notion of 'ratios' when looking at each element of the pentad. More appropriately, these ratios could be identified as the intensity of each element, or the influence that element may have in relation to the other elements of the pentad (Burke, 1969).

For example, we need to inquire beyond who the agents were and what the scene was, and ask what influence the agents had on the scene (Burke, 1969). Or how did the purpose affect the act that was taken? Burke believed that as these 'ratios' were changed or adjusted, end results could be influenced (Burke, 1969). Consider, for example, the McDonald's commercial again. The agents in this case had quite a significant effect on the scene - in essence, they selected it.

McDonald's selected the date and time for the commercial and which station it would run on. The purpose (to get you to go to McDonald's) was worked toward by the agent influencing the scene for maximum effect. Now, let's change the 'ratio' or the dynamic. Let's suppose, for example, that McDonald's has simply purchased some advertising time from a cable television holding company that sells ads for a number of stations.

McDonald's pays a discount rate and, in exchange, the cable provider will run the commercials on stations that have availability, whenever they have such availability. In this situation, the end result can significantly be impacted. McDonald's (the agent) has lost the ability to influence the scene (date, time and TV station). Now, instead of running commercials at dinner time, McDonald's is seeing its commercials run at 2 a.m. On a public access channel with limited viewership.

The purpose (getting you to McDonald's) may still be the same, but the results may be much worse now that the agent can not influence the scene. It is clear how Burke's pentad - and pentad analysis - can be powerful tools in the hands of the communications theorist, literary critic or rhetorical analyst. And, in fact, the Burkean pentad has served as a critical research tool used by academics to analyze a wide variety of communications.

As the Burkean pentad is applied to a variety of communications genres it has held up well, although at least one researcher would like to see the five elements expanded to six. Works and research spurred by the Burkean pentad One of the most well-known applications of the Burkean pentad was David Ling's use of its structure to analyze a speech given by Edward Kennedy to explain a famous accident involving Kennedy that led to a woman's death at Chappaquiddick, Mass. In 1969 (Rountree, 1998).

The accident was famous as Kennedy, who was considered a presidential contender, was reported to be drunk when he was driving the victim home and may have made little effort to save her life. In performing a pentad-based analysis of Kennedy's speech on the night of the accident, Ling discovered how Kennedy manipulated various ratios within the pentad to diminish his personal responsibility for the victim's drowning (Ling, 1996). Ling argued that Kennedy essentially created a rhetorical pentad where he emphasized the scene-agent ratio (Ling, 1996).

Kennedy focused on himself as agent in an extraordinary scene - essentially, he painted himself as a victim of a scene that involved an unlit bridge, a twisting road, and murky water with a strong tide when his car went off the bridge (Ling, 1996). By emphasizing the power of the scene and the effect it had on him as agent, Kennedy was trying to convey his helplessness and blamelessness - although Ling speculates that the helplessness conveyed by Kennedy eventually weakened his status as a leader and presidential candidate (Ling, 1996).

This type of analysis may be an extension of what Burke initially imagined, but it fits well. And, in fact, Ling's interpretations using pentad analysis make good sense. Kennedy does emphasize the agent-scene ratio in his speech. Consider the following speech excerpt, with key words highlighted: "the car that I was driving on the unlit road went off a narrow bridge which had no guard rails and was built on a left angle to the road. The car overturned in a deep pond and immediately filled with water.

I remember thinking as the cold water rushed in around my head that I was for certain drowning. Then water entered my lungs and I actual felt the sensation of drowning. But somehow I struggled to the surface alive (Kennedy, 1969). Clearly, Kennedy was trying to paint a powerful scene that influenced his acts (or lack thereof) as an agent. Ling's analysis of Kennedy's speech may be one of the best known examples of pentad-based analysis, but it is by no means the only one.

In fact, the Kenneth Burke Society - which also publishes the KB Journal - holds a triennial conference where various papers on Burkean theory are presented. Topics have included the application of pentad analysis to increasingly high-tech communications; rhetorical analysis of the press; pentad analysis of George W. Bush's communications on the Iraq War; and much more (Burke Papers, 2006). In fact, the Kenneth Burke Society has already announced plans for a 2008 conference in Philadelphia, to ensure the application of Burke's theories continues.

Expanding the pentad As Burke's pentad continues to be applied and dissected, perhaps we will also see it transform to some degree. In fact, Boje argues that Burke's pentad should be expanded to include a sixth factor - attitude - and that Burke himself would have supported such expansion of his pentad to a 'hexad' (Boje, 2002).

Burke himself had said that he had contemplated adding a sixth element - attitude - to his pentad and Boje points out that Burke had been experimenting with the role of attitude during "A Grammar of Motives" (Boje, 2002). It is clear that attitude can have a tremendous effect on actions taken as a result of a communication.

To resurrect the example of the McDonald's commercial, it is clear that McDonald's attitude toward consumers (are they intelligent, what do they care about, how much coaxing do they need, etc.) could have a significant impact on its communications. Further, the viewer's attitude (perhaps he or she loathes McDonald's or is very health conscious) can affect the action that person takes as a result of seeing the commercial. In essence, attitude allows us to arrive at a more informed account of why people take the actions they.