Dramatistic pentad
The dramatistic pentad forms the core structure of dramatism, a method for examining motivations that the renowned literary critic Kenneth Burke developed. Dramatism recommends the use of a metalinguistic approach to stories about human action that investigates the roles and uses of five rhetorical elements common to all narratives, each of which is related to a question. These five rhetorical elements form the "dramatistic pentad". Burke argues that an evaluation of the relative emphasis that is given to each of the five elements by a human drama enables a determination of the motive for the behaviour of its characters. A character's stress on one element over the others suggests their world view.
Burke introduced the pentad in his 1945 book A Grammar of Motives. Burke based his pentad on the scholastic hexameter which defines "questions to be answered in the treatment of a topic: Who, what, where, by what means, why, how, when". Burke created the pentad by combining several of the categories in the scholastic hexameter. The result was a pentad that has the five categories of: act, scene, agent, agency, and purpose. Burke states, "The 'who' is obviously covered by agent. Scene covers the 'where' and the 'when'. The 'why' is purpose. 'How' and 'by what means' fall under agency. All that is left to take care of is act in our terms and 'what' in the scholastic formula".
The pentad also closely follows the journalistic 'Five Ws': who, what, when, where, why. 'Who' maps to agent. 'What' maps to action. 'When' and 'Where' map to scene. 'Why' maps to purpose. There is no direct mapping from the Five Ws to the pentads category of agency but Geoff Hart states "Some authorities add a sixth question, "how", to this list, but "how to" information generally fits under what, where, or when, depending on the nature of the information."
Rhetorical elements
The dramatistic pentad comprises the five rhetorical elements: act, scene, agent, agency, and purpose. The "world views" listed below reflect the prominent schools of thought during Burke's time, "without dismissing any of them," to read them "at once sympathetically and critically in relation to each other," and "in a wider context than any of them recognizes."Act
Act, which is associated with dramatic action verbs and answers the question "what?", is related to the world view of realism; What happened? What is the action? What is going on? What action; what thoughts? Burke defines the act as that which "names what took place, in thought or deed." Since an act is likely composed of many separate actions, Burke states that "any verb, no matter how specific or general, that has connotations of consciousness or purpose falls under this category."Scene
Scene, which is associated with the setting of an act and answers the questions "when?" and "where?", is related to the world view of materialism and minimal or non-existent free will. Burke defines the scene as "the background of an act, the situation in which it occurred."Agent
Agent, which answers the question "by whom?", reflects the world view of philosophical idealism. Burke defines the agent as "what person or kind of person performed the act."Agency
Agency, which is associated with the person or the organization that committed the deed and answers the question "how?", implies a pragmatic point of view. Burke defines agency as "what instrument or instruments he used."Purpose
Purpose, which is associated with meaning and answers the question "why?", indicates that the agent seeks unity through identification with an ultimate meaning of life. It reflects the world view of mysticism. Purpose is inextricably linked to the analysis of "motive" which, derived from the title of A Grammar of Motives, is the main subject of its analysis. Since purpose is both the subject of analysis and an element of the dramatistic pentad, it is not a common element to be included in a ratio.Ratios
In A Grammar of Motives, Burke provides a system of analysis for the scene-act ratio and the scene-agent ratio, though his analysis of ratios in the analysis of rhetoric is not limited to these. He states that, "The principles of dramatic consistency would lead one to expect such cases of overlap among the terms; but while being aware of them we should firmly fix in our minds such cases as afford a clear differentiation. Our terms leaning themselves towards merger and division, we are here trying to divide two of them while recognizing their possibilities of merger." Thus any two dramatistic elements can be analyzed in relation to each other, creating a ratio, and can produce individual, yet separate meanings which are equally valid. However, the rhetor's selection of elements to compose a ratio should be scrutinized, as it can deflect attention away from or direct attention towards aspects of the rhetor's desire.This is what Burke calls the "Ubiquity of the Ratios", claiming that the composition of ratios "are at the very centre of motivational assumptions." For example, "The maxim 'terrain determines tactics' is a strict localization of the scene-act ratio, with 'terrain' as the casuistic equivalent for 'scene' in a military calculus of motives, and 'tactics' as the corresponding 'act.'" The analysis of a situation as a multi-faceted occurrence is central to Burke's concept of ratios.
Likewise, the substitution of a dramatistic element with another can change an interpretation of the motive, allowing the analyst to modify the ratio in order to highlight the importance of a specific factor. For example, "the resistance of the Russian armies to the Nazi invasion could be explained 'scenically' in terms of the Soviet political and economic structure; or one could use the act-agent ratio, attributing the power and tenacity to 'Russian' traits of character. However, in deriving the act from the scene, one would have to credit socialism as a major scenic factor, whereas a derivation of the act from agents would allow for a much more felicitous explanation from the standpoint of capitalist apologists."
The rhetor-agent also has a significant amount of power in crafting the perception of these ratios to their effect, "If an agent acts in keeping with his nature as an agent, he may change the nature of the scene accordingly and thereby establish a state of unity between himself and his world."