Response 2

Respond to this post: I do not feel qualified to recommend one theory over another for global rhetorical problems, as I’m having trouble fully wrapping my mind around the theories themselves (much less their use within various cultural contexts, as opposed to being applied exclusively, in turn, to my own context). That said, the first theorist who comes to mind is Kenneth Burke, (1945).

I found Kenneth Burke’s pentad, as he described in A Grammar of Motives, to be particularly applicable as a framework for analyzing or organizing a broad variety of rhetoric. This is likely because his framework is short and simple, yet has the potential for depth of analysis as well as breadth. His analysis of motive seems particularly useful for cross-cultural rhetorical examination, as what one says is rarely fully equivalent to what one means, depending on the linguistic or cultural undercurrent at play.

I know English and Spanish, but I am still learning Japanese. For the last year or so, I’ve been studying Japanese in my free time, and I think the stark contrast between English and Japanese is an ideal example to display Burke’s pentad at work on a global scale. American language and culture are typically more direct and candid than Japanese language and culture, which is subtle, indirect, and polite almost to a fault. In Japanese, there simply isn’t a direct way to say all sorts of ideas, even ones so simple as “I want an apple” (which would literally be translated into English more as “an apple is desirable”), because the Japanese rarely come right out and say what they think or feel (thus nuance and double meanings abound). The agent is often literally not even named in Japanese, and the underlying purpose or motive is often more of a riddle than a clear message. In English, we generally follow the SVO (subject, verb, object) sentence structure (emphasis on the agent), whereas in Japanese the order is generally SOV, with an emphasis on the object rather than the agent. Approaching Japanese rhetoric with Burke’s motive-seeking lens is therefore an excellent place to start.

As can already be seen, Burke’s method of examining motive becomes immediately useful, enabling us to dig deeper into cross-cultural rhetoric to understand the “why” underneath the more obvious “what,” which I think is perhaps the most important goal in addressing global rhetorical problems.