Five Fingers or Six? Pentad or Hexad?

KB Journal: The Journal of the Kenneth Burke Society Apr 2010 web Open Access

Five Fingers or Six? Pentad or Hexad?

Abstract

IS KENNETH BURKE'S pentad actually a hexad? The answer is complicated. In the original edition of A Grammar of Motives , Burke discusses just five terms—act, scene, agent, agency, and purpose—as part of his dramatistic vocabulary for discerning human motivation. In fact, Burke likens these terms to five fingers on a hand (xxii; “The Study of Symbolic Action” 13-14). When elaborating the interrelationships of these concepts, Burke explores a separate term—“attitude”—that refers to one’s disposition to respond in a particular way to his or her circumstances. However, he classes attitude under either act, agent, or agency, rather than as a separate sixth term. Attitude, he says in Grammar , may be “the preparation for an act, which would make it a kind of symbolic act, or incipient act.” 3 As it may also be a “state of mind ,” attitude may “be classed under the head of agent ” ( Grammar 20). Additionally, Burke occasionally refers to attitude as a variation of agency ( Grammar 443; “Counter-Gridlock” 367; Attitudes 394; “Questions and Answers” 332). He reinforces his preference for a pentad in at least two other works. In The International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences , he calls the pentad “incipiently a hexad” (446). In Dramatism and Development , he expresses some regret that he "had not turned the pentad into a hexad, with attitude as the sixth term. However, the Grammar contains a chapter that implicitly performs this very function. It is entitled ‘Incipient’ and ‘Delayed’ Action” (23). Despite these assertions, Burke's "hand" sprouts a sixth digit. In the 1969 edition of Grammar , he states, “I have sometimes added the term ‘attitude’ to the…five major terms” (443), thereby making the pentad a hexad. In 1984, he admits that, had his view of attitude been “clear” years ago, the “Pentad would have been a Hexad from the start” ( Attitudes 393-394). Burke’s oscillation has undoubtedly contributed to differing views of the hexad. For example, Trevor Melia embraces six terms, pointing out that attitude “was implicit in the pentad from the beginning” and maintaining further that, “were Burke writing the Grammar today [in 1989], he would treat the pentad as a hexad” (72, note 21). However, other scholars—among them Dana Anderson, Debra Hawhee, and Cheryl Tatano Beck—have performed significant scholarship highlighting attitude while working with only five terms, with attitudinal considerations being adequately included under act, agent, or agency.

Journal: KB Journal: The Journal of the Kenneth Burke Society
Published: 2010-04
CompPile: Search in CompPile ↗
Open Access: OA PDF Gold
Topics: modern rhetorical theory grammar and mechanics
Export: BibTeX RIS

Citation Context

Citation data not yet available for this article.

Citation data is not available for KB Journal: The Journal of the Kenneth Burke Society. This journal's publisher does not deposit reference lists with CrossRef.