A Rhetorical Analysis Of Pentadic

The field of rhetoric has been around for millennia, encompassing a wide variety of ideas and unique perspectives. Indeed, stretching back to the classical era of Aristotle & Plato and into the contemporary spheres of public discourse, rhetoric, as an academic study, has been hotly examined & challenged for ages. But what exactly is rhetoric? Well, as it turns out, answering this question is quite complex as it requires a thorough level of knowledge in regard to rhetorical methodology and argumentative strategy. This is because there abundantly are intellectuals within this area of expertise whose viewpoints in defining rhetoric differ significantly, resulting in very narrow room for consensus as far as conceptualization goes. As such, the …show more content…
So, basically, rhetoric/rhetorical criticism functions as a scientific analysis that studies the argumentation and persuasive directions within cultural movements, hence constituting the social sciences. One such example includes the rhetorical methodology of pentadic analysis, which fundamentally uses sophisticated analytical modes of examining societal discourse. According to contemporary philosopher Kenneth Burke, who created this methodology, pentadic analysis within rhetoric examines discourse through the lens of dramatism. This is a framework for analyzing societally significant rhetorical artifacts in a highly technical way. That is, it considers five key components that tie together contextual information to frame artifact analysis, looking into what was done: the act, the setting in which it occurred: the scene, who did it: the agent, how so: the agency, and why: the purpose (Burke …show more content…
Meaningly, as previously mentioned, rhetoric deals with multiple means of argumentation as much as it drives persuasive artistic convention. As Aristotle explains, “Rhetoric is the counterpart of Dialectic. Both are alike and concerned with such things as come, more or less, within the general ken of all men and belong to no definite science” (Aristotle). Here, Aristotle, a classical pioneer of rhetoric, places it within dialectic: an argumentative art form, rejecting any notion of it being a social science, although it can now be said to be both given the findings of contemporaries to which Aristotle’s classical understanding of rhetoric predates. This is important to me. In fact, rhetoric, as a discipline, actively works to address societally significant issues, through its application of vocal argumentation. For instance, the scope of rhetoric surrounding climate change, being a highly polarizing controversy, contains drastically differing viewpoints as well as different forms of argumentation to which these viewpoints are articulated within various

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