Terms In Reference To Kenneth Burke's Pentad

Form

"An arousing and fulfillment of desires" or "the creation of an appetite in the mind of the auditor, and the adequate satisfying of the appetite."

Trained Incapacity

A condition in which our abilities "function as blindness." People may misjudge situations due to training.

Redemption

A temporary rest or stasis of some kind that represents symbolic rebirth. At this stage, a change has taken place within the rhetor (in logology).

Occupational Psychosis

A term borrowed from John Dewey is a pronounced character of mind relating to one's occupation or "a certain way of thinking that went with a certain way of living."

Pentad

A tool or method of analysis used to discover the motivation in symbolic action. It is a critical instrument designed to reduce statements of motives to the most fundamental level. Act, Scene, Agent, Agency, Purpose (and later attitude).

Division

Also called "alienation" or "dissociation", this is the notion that human beings are inevitably isolated and divided from each other as a result of their separate physical bodies.

Pollution

Also called "guilt," this is Burke's term for the secular equivalent of the original sin, an offense that cannot be avoided or a condition that all people share (in logology).

Entelechy

An Aristotelian concept where each being aims at the perfection natural to its kind, and things are seen according to the "perfection" or "finishedness" of which they are capable.

Human Being

Being bodies that learn language thereby becoming wordlings, humans are symbol-making, symbol-using, symbol-misusing animals, inventor of the negative, separated from our natural condition by instruments of our own making, goaded by the spirit of hierarchy, acquiring foreknowledge of death, and rotten with perfection.

Dramatism

Burke uses this "critical metaphor" to explain human motivation through the analysis of drama. It is "a technique of analysis of language and of thought as basically modes of action rather than a means of conveying information."

Logology

Burke's later effort to discover motivational systems and orientations through the examination of words about Gods/gods/religion. A second "critical metaphor" (after dramatism). The source of this study is theology.

Rhetoric

Burkean rhetoric is defined as "the use of words by human agents to form attitudes or to introduce in other human agents." 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." Includes spoken and written discourse.

Animality

The biological aspect of the human being that corresponds to motion and is concerned with bodily processes.

Purification

The cleansing needed to rid ourselves of the language-caused guilt in order to achieve redemption (in logology)

Symbolicity

The neurological aspect of the human being that corresponds to action that is concerned more with mental processes.

Terministic Screen

The term or vocabulary we use as a result of our occupations constitute a kind of screen that directs our attention to particular aspects of reality rather than others.

Ratio

The term used to describe the cosubstantial relationships between the elements of the pentad. There are ten ratios.

Identification

Used synonymously with cosubstantial. It is the key to persuasion. As we share substances, we come to identify with others. As we speak each other's language, we become cosubstantial.

Cosubstantial

We form selves or identities through various properties or substances, including physical objects, occupations, friends, activities, beliefs and values. Occurs when two entities are united in substance through common ideas, attitudes, possessions or properties.