Kenneth Burke and Contemporary Rhetorical Theory - Portray

"Portraiture" in contemporary composition research

Dee Drive — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 10:44:06 -0500

For my final project, I am looking closely at the idea of identification. Part of its process seems to be "identifying," or understanding both the material conditions that a certain person or group faces, plus the way they see themselves positioned in the social world. I get the feeling that there Burke is giving us a way to address these issues. In fact, he describes the rhetorical motive of "portraying" as "biography" or even "portraiture":

We can conceive of biography in the most minute sense: detailed
information regarding some particular taxpayer at some particular
time and place. Or, at the other extreme, we can think of the given
work’s “personality” as the snapshot of some one posture that is at least
momentarily typical of “mankind” in general. (43)

Portrayal

Maria Granic-White — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 10:29:16 -0500

To Cicero’s three offices, docere (Lat. “to teach”), delectare (Lat. “to charm”), and movere (Lat. “to move”) Burke adds a fourth, one, “portray” (ETSM 41). According to Oxford Dictionary online, the term means: 1. Depict in a work of art or literature. 2. Describe in a particular way. 3. (of an actor) play the part of. The term derives from the Old French portaire, from traire “to draw.” Words relfect "reality"; therefore, it is important for one to utilize the right words (This sounds like Mark Twain) (effective rhetorical devices) in order to obtain certain responses from one's audience. As self-expression, portraiture depends on the “’moral principle’ in the agent” (ESTM 44). This poses a problem in that the speaker/writer will draw his/her view of a certain topic based on a certain motive in a certain setting in order to move his/her audience to action.

The Rhetorical Appeals

mah — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 09:36:04 -0500

When reading Burke's discussion of the fourth purpose, "to portray," I immmediately thought of the rhetorical appeals of ethos, pathos, and logos. When describing the fourth purpose, Burke writes, "there is a fourth “office” still to be taken care of. We refer to the utterance as “portraiture,” as the “self-ex-pression” of an agent, as an act characteristic of the poet’s “personality” whether or not he so wills it" (41). Burke continues in the next sentence, "Aristotle deals with this problem from the purely rhetorical point of view when discussing devices whereby the speaker can deliberately promote an audience’s confidence in him simply as a person, regardless of the cause that is being advocated or of the speaker’s true nature" (41). I focus on Burke's use of the word "devices" and the phrase "to promote an audience's confidence" when describing the three rhetorical appeals to argue my point.

Adding the author

Duder — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 08:46:03 -0500

It appears, and I might be wrong here, that by adding “portray” to the Ciceronian offices Burke seems to be attempting to insert the agent in to rhetorical act. According to Burke, the three offices of Cicero are: “The first office (docere) would be the indicative or scientific function of speech, its relation to matters of knowledge. The third office (movere) would be the persuasive or rhetorical function of speech, its use to arouse in an auditor some attitude that implies a desired kind of act or acquiescence in a desired kind of policy. The second office, to please or entertain (delectare), must, for our purposes, be redefined” (ETSM 37). Notice from this definition of terms that there is no consideration for the author of the product and all three definitions deal with the product itself or the product’s audience (notice that it is the function of speech rather than the function of the speech’s generator that does the persuading in the definition).

Rapport

LKC — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 17:55:04 -0500

His discussion of the fourth ‘office’ appears in “The Language of Poetry ‘Dramatistically’ Considered.” Here he tells us, “We refer to the utterance as ‘portraiture,’ as the ‘self-expression’ of an agent, as an act characteristic of the poet’s ‘personality’ whether or not he so wills it” (ETSM 41). He seems to be suggesting that the text reveals something about the agent responsible for its production, particularly within a given scene, for he goes on to write: “[H]ere would seem to be the situation, as regards the ‘portraiture’ (be it voluntary or involuntary) in a work of art: