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Attitudes Toward Attitude Kenneth Burke's Views on Attitude

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Attitudes Toward Attitude Kenneth Burke's Views on Attitude Örebro University School of Humanities, Education and Social Sciences HT 2012 Attitudes toward Attitude Kenneth Burke's views on attitude Master Thesis in Rhetoric Supervisor: Brigitte Mral Author: Waldemar Petermann Abstract In this thesis, a review of Kenneth Burke's use of the term attitude in his published works as well as in some unpublished notes, drafts and letters, is performed. Three periods of different usage are found. Early works feature a pervasive attitude with elements of both body and mind. This attitude is then subsumed into the pentad and the physiological connection is diminished, but attitude is given an important function as a connective between action and motion. The later Burke reinstates attitude as central to his theory of symbolic action, reconnects it to the physiological and includes it in the Pentad with parsimony-inducing effect. The attitude is then found to aid rhetorical analysis and show promise in being able to help analyse expressions not wholly in the realm of the conscious, be they in the form of a Bourdieu social practice or barely conscious rhetorical markers in conversation. Key terms: Kenneth Burke, attitude, symbolic action, Dramatism, Pentad, Hexad Waldemar Petermann 1 Contents 1Contents ......................................................................................................................................... 1 2Introduction .................................................................................................................................... 2 2.1Purpose and research questions ............................................................................................... 3 2.2Research on Burke and Attitude .............................................................................................. 4 2.3Material and methodology ...................................................................................................... 6 2.3.1On the Special Collections at Penn State ......................................................................... 8 2.3.2On the use of quotes in this thesis .................................................................................... 9 3On Burke's theory of symbolic action ............................................................................................ 9 3.1Symbolic action and its implications ...................................................................................... 9 3.1.1Perspective by incongruity and comic frame .................................................................. 11 3.1.2The Pentad ...................................................................................................................... 13 3.1.3Identification ................................................................................................................... 14 4Attitude ........................................................................................................................................ 15 4.1Driving history ...................................................................................................................... 16 4.2Subsumed .............................................................................................................................. 24 4.3Reinstated .............................................................................................................................. 30 5Discussion .................................................................................................................................... 36 6Conclusion ................................................................................................................................... 44 7List of references .......................................................................................................................... 46 7.1Published sources .................................................................................................................. 46 7.2Unpublished sources ............................................................................................................. 47 7.2.1From the Burke Archives at Penn State .......................................................................... 47 1 Waldemar Petermann 2 Introduction Rhetorics is a vast and changing discipline. The rhetoric of Aristotle – brilliant as it was – is not quite the one we have today. With the 20th century and its new forms of communication and societal organization rhetoric needed to – and did indeed – change through the ministrations of new theorists such as Kenneth Burke. Where Aristotle defined rhetorics to be ”the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion”1 Burke broadened the definition considerably. In his Rhetoric of Motives2 he defined rhetoric as ”the use of language as a symbolic means of inducing cooperation in beings that by nature respond to symbols.”3 Burke also declared that identification, not persuasion, was the key term for rhetoric.4 With this much broader definition of rhetoric, new things come into focus such as the persuasion to, or identification with, an attitude. The importance of attitude for our ways of forming and receiving as well as persuade toward opinions is something I find to be very interesting. There is here, I think, an enormous potential for explaining and exploring the somewhat messy underworks of our rhetorical lives. We are only partly rational beings and it is hard to explain why we adopt an opinion at certain times but not at others if you just consider cold factual arguments. Traditional explorations of pathos also falls somewhat short since we tend to receive the pathos-part of suasive communication differently depending on, well, attitude. Think of the common image of a negative teenager, arms crossed and not accepting anything. So what is attitude? It is a simple enough word and we can use it without fear of being misunderstood in ordinary language, but if it is to be a part of rhetorical analysis we need far more precise knowledge of what it is and what place it can take in rhetorical theory. Above mentioned Kenneth Burke and his works form a good starting point to an exploration into the inner workings of attitude. He is one of the great 20th century theorists within the field of rhetorics and he seems to have had a lasting interest in attitude. He named one of his earlier 1 Bizzell, Patricia & Herzberg, Bruce eds. (2001), The Rhetorical Tradition – Readings from Classical Times to the Present 2ed, Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, p. 181. 2 Burke, Kenneth (1950|1955|1962|1969), A Rhetoric of Motives, Berkeley: University of California Press. 3 Burke (1950|1955|1962|1969), A Rhetoric of Motives, p. 43. 4 Burke (1950|1955|1962|1969), A Rhetoric of Motives, pp. xiii-xiv. 2 Waldemar Petermann books Attitudes toward History5 and in an addendum to A Grammar of Motives6 he wrote that he sometimes added attitude to the five pentadic terms when conducting analysis.7 Originally, I planned to have an exploration of Burke's thoughts on attitude as a small part of this thesis and then to develop a practical method of rhetorical analysis based on it, but as it turned out, the exploration grew to be somewhat larger than I had anticipated. I was kindly provided the opportunity to study materials in the Burke Archives of the Penn State Special Collections and what I found there combined with what is in the published works of Kenneth Burke is more than enough to fill this thesis to the point of breaking.8 In short, this thesis is an exploration of the place and function of attitude in the theories of Kenneth Burke. Hopefully it can serve as a base for future developments of tools for rhetorical analysis. 2.1 Purpose and research questions The over-arching question this thesis tries to answer is how attitude may help us understand how communication works. To narrow it down, the immediate purpose of this thesis is, simply put, to figure out what attitude is according to Burke and what that implies for rhetorical analysis. It is, however, not a given that there is only one meaning to attitude. Burke lived through almost the whole of the 20th century and he worked on subjects dealing with, or at least touching on, attitude during a considerable part of his long and productive life. The way he uses the word attitude seems to change and the space it occupies in his writings certainly does change. It seems clear, especially in light of the additional page about attitude and the pentad published in the Meridian paperback version of A Grammar of Motives, that whatever else, attitude plays an important part in Burke’s dramatism. With that in mind and to help explore the subject, this thesis will try to answer the following research-questions: What does Burke mean by attitude in his earlier works? Is there a development of meaning of attitude in Burke’s works and if so, how does it develop? What place, if any, does attitude take in dramatistic theory and what is its impact on rhetorical analysis? 5 Burke, Kenneth (1937|1959|1961|1984), Attitudes toward History, Berkeley: University of California Press. 6 Burke (1945|1947|1962|1969), A Grammar of Motives, Berkeley: University of California Press. 7 Burke (1945|1947|1962|1969), A Grammar of Motives, p. 443. 8 I would not have found as much were it not for the excellent staff at the archives. Many well deserved thanks also go to Cheryl Glenn and the English Department at Penn State for help and hospitality. 3 Waldemar Petermann 2.2 Research on Burke and Attitude Research
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