welcome in this lesson we're going to be taking a look at kenneth burke so kenneth burke is going to give us another method we've been looking at basically different ways of doing our analysis kenneth burke is going to give us actually two ways of doing that analysis we're going to take a look at those but first before we do that let's take a quick step back and do a really quick review so that we all can can put in context what it is that burke is actually going to be offering us all right so you know that if you're going to do your job as a critical uh analyst and a critical a rhetorical critic what you're gonna have to do is you're gonna have to go in you're gonna have to the first thing you've got to do is tell us what it is you're working with so that's essentially what the the rhetorical critic does first they describe the artifact describing the artifact just simply means you make it clear to us what it is you are working with and once we know what you're working with you will then analyze that artifact so once you've described your artifact told us what you're working with you're going to step in and you're going to do an analysis of that artifact when that's finished you're going to make some kind of a judgment you're going to interpret you're going to evaluate the artifact you're going to do that based on the insights that you found during analysis so your analysis should lead naturally to your judgments to your interpretation and evaluation and it should be a case that um it reads like one complete paper not like three separate papers so when you finish with your analysis and you're going down to make your judgments these need to be connected those need to have the same uh backbone if you will that will show us that they're all part of the same set of ideas that when you told us about the artifact you're going to look at and then you looked at it looking at that artifact led to these judgments they should be coherent and tied together you will remember also that we've defined criticism as a process of making reasoned judgments now making those reasoned judgments is pretty straightforward and pretty clear it comes from our method a method remember is just a set of very specific directions that's going to help you do the analysis it's going to help you think about it's going to help you reason through it's going to help you consider your artifact that's the job of the method the method is going to guide your analysis it's the analysis step method and analysis go together when you follow your method it's going to show you things about your artifact and those should be things that you have not noticed before the goal of the artifact is to present you insights those insights show you elements of your artifact that you hadn't noticed similarities or differences patterns that appear and occur in your artifact and the goal there is to basically help you see and understand your artifact more clearly to bring it into focus so that we have a clearer sense of what is happening here that's what a method should give us it should give us a sense of what's happening here in a way that allows us to of course bridge over to those judgments because once we have seen our artifact more clearly we're in a position where we can make judgments and those judgments will be rooted as we've said in what we've found in our method so we're going to interpret and evaluate based on what our method showed us about our artifact now you have been taught a series of different methods all right you have been introduced to a number of different methods essentially you've been introduced to the classical method but you've also met several other methods since introduction to the classical method we've also been introduced to toolman with his data and claims and warrants you've met the new rhetoric perlman and ulbrix titeca you have struggled with the universal audience there in the new rhetoric you've also met narrative analysis with fisher and we've talked about metaphoric analysis as well the thing that you need to remember is that classical method that classical method that we started out with that is what you're going to be using for essay 1a and 1b both of those essays are going to be done with the classical method however sa2 any of these other methods that we have talked about you can use for sa2 you cannot use the classical method for sa2 but you can use any of these methods down here for essay 2. those can guide you they can be your your set of instructions for how to analyze your next artifact whatever artifact you are going to choose for yourself in your second essay now i started out saying we're going to introduce burke okay burke can also fit into this group so you can use burke as well so if you wanted to um burke can be added to that number six so we're going to get to know burke a little bit in this lesson and then you get to add him to your list and actually he's going to be as we mentioned earlier he'll be 6 and 7 or if you wish 6a and 6b because we're going to pick up two different methods from burke and burke's writings and thought and we'll talk about each of those so let's introduce you to burke just a little bit so you can come to know who burke is and get a sort of sense of what he's doing with his sometimes strange approach to criticism so burke went to columbia university he was um a brilliant brilliant undergraduate student and therefore was failing all of his classes and left well i don't know if he was failing all of his classes but he decided that that kind of education wasn't for him so he dropped out of columbia university as a young man in the 20s he went to work um for a magazine called dial and he went to work as a as a critic for the uh for the drama so he he wrote up about the plays um that were being performed in town he would go in and critique those plays now burke having left school um you know that left a mark on his on his writing and on his reflections everything he writes as an adult has the mark of uh of a mind that is incredibly sharp i mean he's clearly brilliant a very mind he can he can draw things together things seem to germinate in his uh in his thoughts um and he they grow together he sees syntheses he's great he's brilliant but all of his writing is also sometimes really hard to get through because he never got that formal education he never got the discipline necessary to write um in that way with clarity but he was quite the drum the drama critic he he was uh um fascinated with drama and in fact he became increasingly captivated by what he saw inside the world of drama so he would be in and he would be doing his writing and so forth um that drama work brought him to a place where he said wow you know i go in and i watch these plays um and they're the same play every every play i go in and see i mean okay so there's some variation sure but honestly burke begins to say to himself there are actually very few limited patterns and all the good stories follow them all the really good stories they follow the same set of patterns let's talk about those patterns that all good stories compose here and let's get a look at those essentially the kinds of patterns that burke is thinking about are things like possession loss and then that's followed by this climax of recovery okay that's the kind of pattern that burke is thinking of now it's it's very general it's very generic but it's very recognizable you can think of movies you've seen that follow this particular arc and burke says this is fundamental stuff it's it's really really at the core of the kinds of stories we tell ourselves all over the world everywhere there's the darkness followed by some kind of painful experience that leads to insight and that that darkness um can be the kind of darkness that exists for us inside or it might be the kind of darkness that exists for us in the situation or the circumstance it might be some kind of ignorance that we have but it's some kind of of block that keeps us from understanding and we pass through painful experiences after which we understand better and we have insight that's how it works well there's also a very similar pattern right we have that same darkness can again it can be inside it can be outside but that same darkness appears but instead of some kind of painful experience leading to insight we have some kind of growing resentment that bubbles up inside of us and it leads to retaliation that's another story that we tell um think of edgar allan poes cascavamentiato wow there's nothing if if if not that exact arc right there where somebody is carrying a sort of darkness inside of them that has been growing and fermenting until it leads to a sort of horrifying retaliation right and you know there's the the peril uh arc where after peril once we face certain danger we come to understand something the danger clarifies our sight and it leads us to take actions that of course result in security that's another so you know in a case like this um and these can be realistic stories they can be wild fictions fantasies you know and this this is a story about um you know a a dragon that is going to destroy the village and yet we discover that in fact um there is a magic sword and the that magic sword is the only thing that can kill the dragon and so we march ourselves up into the mountains we discover the magic sword we come back and and in the nick of time of course we destroy the dragon and we reestablish our security here's what burke finds about these you'll you'll notice that as you look at these darkness and darkness and insight and insight um you know possession and security there are a lot of parallels here and a lot of shared events in these various kinds of um plots if you will that he's seeing in all these stories and and what that leads burke to do is he begins to do some comparison and he says after reading and reading and reading and he did a lot of reading he says these dramatic patterns that i see they're somewhat adaptable but they are amazingly consistent and they're consistent not just in the the plays i'm watching today they're consistent across time they're constant they're universal i see exactly the same patterns in chinese opera that i see in the grimm's fairy tale i see exactly the same kind of pattern in contemporary cinema as i see in ancient greek cinema the patterns themselves these arcs these dramas are and these are not this is not an exhaustive list this is just a a few examples but these patterns these dramas are in fact simply an aspect of what it means to be human in fact burke calls them an innate form of the mind these patterns are innate forms of the mind they are everywhere they cut across culture they cut across time they cut across languages the same patterns you see over and over again and they are so common and they are across so many different various cultures that burke says this is just the innate way the human mind engages in culture in life he will come to say that they are that these patterns they are inherent in the very germplasm of living out a human life that's just how human life is we come to know these things and brooke says we come to know them um from the earliest days so this this possession lost recovery burke says you knew that you knew that you know before you were a year old um you had had your your pacifier and you know you were content and you were happy with your pacifier because you possessed what you wanted for happiness and then gravity came and you you know it stole your password you lost it it fell out of your mouth and you could not know where it was and you were in turmoil and you suffered terribly ah but someone came to rescue you your mom or your dad or one of your siblings they came along and they returned the loss what you once had was recovered and returned and and burke says you know that kind of experience that's that's what we're doing that's what drama is drama draws exactly those kinds of experiences from our earliest days this is simply how human beings order and put together the experiences of their humanity they do it basically through these kinds of dramas dramas express how it is to simply be human in the world now here's the thing if these are the patterns that all good stories follow burke is very very captivated by this idea this is simply how we human beings live in the world it's what it means to be human and these are incredibly powerful good stories that we tell this is how good stories work now you need to contextualize this because burke is writing in the late 20s and early 30s and so there are some other stories that are starting to show up in the 1920s adolf hitler um releases the first volume of mein kampf means my struggle my my war hitler was laying out in his mine conf the plan he had for taking germany back to the the era before the first world war the first world war had been particularly um costly and painful for germany long story short they had lost a whole lot and they were bankrupt and hitler appeared on the scene and promised to set things right again that was his goal that's what he sought out you know he set out to do and in mein kampf hitler lays out quite plainly what the plan is um you know the plan is three sevenths fever dream uh you know it's it's it's there's there's just a whole lot of crazy in it but there are these other moments of just terrifying clarity where hitler taps into an understanding and it's intuitive it's an intuitive understanding of how to get large groups of people to do things some things they might not at first think are a good idea but hitler's talking about how to change people's minds and how to get large groups to act in a certain way when hitler begins to talk about how the country the culture the the world will respond to his new ideas he talks about it being very important that those ideas be presented in a certain way and that certain way is really scary because he seems to understand and anticipate virtually everything about how to manipulate large groups he seems to tap in intuitively to what the kind of rhetorical drama would be that could mobilize an entire country when burke gets his hands on and he reads mein kampf in the the middle 30s burke is terrified in fact burke will write a review of hitler's mein kampf called the rhetoric of hitler's battle and it'll be released in 1939. in this one of the things that burke lays out with terrifying uh accuracy as it turns out is burke is aware that what hitler is doing is taking these dramatic patterns that are this universal constant that are innate that are inherent in the very process of living out your human life and burke realizes hitler has tapped into exactly those dramatic narrative stories and has done it in a way that creates burke is clear hitler is going to create a massive movement because he's tapping into these ideas that more or less define who we are they are core to our identity these narrative structures these dramas that that burke has been seeing these patterns of drama burke says these are the way we understand our identity and what you find in hitler in mein kampf is that hitler plans on picking up those universal constant forms and using them to empower his nazi movement he's planning on creating a social enactment a real life drama that taps in burke immediately sees to these innate forms in the mind and therefore when mind conf taps into these innate forms in the mind that are that are just the core of our identity burke says that kind of rhetoric is going to be incredibly powerful and frightening now that brings us to this idea of a few limited patterns that all good stories follow now burke's got a problem all of a sudden because when he looks at mineconf he knows perfectly well he's not looking at a good story and yet it's a story that is in fact tapping into those very things that burke says make rhetoric work those few limited patterns that more or less shape our identity those those are what empower rhetoric they're what make rhetoric work okay so now what well rhetoric we have defined as the artistic use of language to build convictions with enthymemes that is to say you know we build our our convictions our beliefs our um our trust our faith we put our faith in things we get persuaded by things because language is used well to build those convictions and enthymemes remember are just any reasons that are given to embrace convictions burke is watching the artistic use of language over here and he's very concerned about what it's doing when burke looks at rhetoric and he thinks about rhetoric he understands that rhetoric works in politics and works in religion and relationships and aesthetics all those areas that we have talked about as well these are the arenas in which we form our convictions as you know at this point in the semester but burke's idea that there are good stories that come out of our identification with these constant universals that are inherent in our very act of living those good stories require a different kind of assessment now what they require is a way to take into account what burke is looking at when he turns his attention to the terrible things that adolf hitler is putting together when he finishes his rhetoric of hitler's battle he's up here and he's assessing this idea that oh wow these are these are the patterns these are the dramas this is the way to make good stories and he realizes that's not going to work his idea of this is the limited pattern that make good stories he begins to reshape and he begins to understand oh these limited patterns don't make good stories this is not a good story they make powerful stories you can use them burke comes to understand to do terrible things not just good things and that's going to set burke on a quest to understand for the rest of his life he's going to be trying to understand how we're going to be able to unpack and get back to this idea of making sure the stories are not just powerful but also good in some way and the only way we're going to be able to do that burke thinks is by trying to assess our motives and figure out how human beings put together motives powerful rhetoric can be used for evil things he's trying to think now of a way to get to good rhetoric and that's going to require us to assess human motives when burke writes as an adult and a scholar and a genius he's writing about how language is functioning at this level at this level of creating sort of universal dramas now when we say universal drama in these patterns remember burke is clear you know these patterns are very particular they change okay um the kinds of things that you need to do to have insight to solve the problem of darkness in one culture might might of course be a different kind of story than what you would have in a dif in another culture so the greeks have an idea of how to how to create honor and that is different from what you get in the medieval stories the medieval stories have a very different idea of what it means to be honorable okay so in the greeks it's it's going out and taking what you want and being a being a man's man and it's it's uh to some degree it's uh it's not it's not entirely it's a little unfair um but to some degree it's kind of taps into that idea that we would have today of toxic masculinity the middle ages has some of that of course but boy has an entirely different approach on how to become a hero right because in the middle ages you can be a hero by being a powerless monk it's not about asserting yourself it's about submitting to some kind of honor that will form and shape you uh whether it's divine or whether it comes out of the state or wherever so i mean he understands there are differences in the culture so he's not he's not naive our our genius burke he's not being naive about the idea that these are universal patterns he just wants to emphasize that when you step back from the particulars the patterns stay the same and that leads him to look at language from a variety of different ways that cut across a lot of our classifications today he's not exactly a post-modernist but he's not exactly a classicist he's certainly not a modernist although he talks you know he just doesn't fit very comfortably and well to be frank into almost any of our definitions today he's not really really i mean he's kind of crazy liberal in some ways he's kind of crazy conservative in other ways um and when i say crazy i don't mean you know i mean he he seems almost an extreme liberal liberal on on some issues and almost an extreme conservative on others he just does not fit comfortably and i think that happens often with people who are who have a lot going on up here you know they tend not to fit comfortably into a lot of our common classifications but when he begins to look at drama and look at language he gives us a lot of different insights we're going to spend time looking particularly at two all right dramatism and logology they go together so dramatism and logology that's what we're going to look at and a second analysis option that he gives us is cluster analysis we're going to start with cluster analysis in this lesson and then we will go back and pick up dramatism and logology in the next lesson so cluster analysis and this is option one of burke all right cluster analysis is option one of burke basically in cluster analysis we have a single goal the idea behind this particular method and now we are talking about a very specific method the idea behind this method is to isolate the motive that led to this rhetoric that's what burke is after you saw the the title on the previous slide that the title of one of his famous books the rhetoric of motive he wants to talk about how the artistic use of language and he means language broadly the artistic use of language structures our motives our our reasons for doing things the goal here is going to be identify and evaluate okay so i hope you hear this is that final step in the critical process after analysis you're going to identify and evaluate the world view the perspectives that went into making this particular artifact the the real reason you're doing this evaluating the worldview and the perspectives is because burke believes that with this method cluster analysis you're going to be able to focus in on and actually recognize and identify the motive that brought about this particular artifact by this particular author that's what he believes you're going to be able to do now there is an absolute pay dirt question that you are going to use so this is the question right here that will introduce your evaluation if you do cluster analysis if you do cluster analysis this is what you're going to ask yourself when you transition out of analysis and into making your judgments making your inferences making your your interpretation and evaluation the question is this given the way certain terms specific terms have specific meanings for this rhetor what was the motive for producing this rhetoric in this way likely to have been okay if that is kind of weird and you don't quite follow that hang on because we're going to go through and we're going to talk about these terms and this redder and motive in a little bit more depth in detail but in order to do that we're going to need to understand some really important vocabulary that is part of this method all right three big ones first of all there's identification that's a huge and absolutely essential term and idea inside cluster analysis key terms that's the core of cluster analysis right there you got to know what the key terms are and then there are the clusters so those are the three things you got to do all right obviously if that's the important vocabulary we need to look at that important vocabulary a little bit more carefully and closely we'll pick them up in order we'll talk about identification key terms and clusters so here are the terms that you've got to understand if you want to do cluster analysis identification in essence here's what you get with identification burke says look you can't persuade somebody until you are able to tap into their own understanding of themselves and show how your ways your proposals your claims even the way you live your life is in some way connected with that other person people are not persuaded by absolute otherness that doesn't do it burke says the only way you're going to manage to understand what's going on in rhetoric is to look at what it is that a person is being offered in terms of identity your message the writer's message the artifact you're looking at is tapping into somebody's identity in a way that allows them to take whatever they think of as the core of their own definition and unite it to your particular plan that's what rhetoric will do and burke is going to tell you that's what cluster analysis will show you cluster analysis will show you what identification is being offered and that's going to be one of the key ways you will come to understand and to debate i'm sorry to understand and to explain the debate that's happening inside this artifact it's you look at what an audience is being asked to identify with that's going to reveal motives that's what burke is going to tell you the second huge vocabulary term that you got to work with here key terms now a key term is what burke says it's the most important word or words in the artifact now words in quotes because of course if you're you know if you're doing a cluster analysis of uh you know a medieval um uh cathedral then it's not the words it's the images it's the it's the angles it's maybe the light um there there are a lot of things that can serve as words words in quote here burke is thinking of logos he's thinking of that idea that you know what is it that comes in here and orders this keeps it in place makes it make sense and burke says you got to find the most important words in the artifact that's what you got to do find the key terms find the words that are actually important okay well that's that's great advice um how how do you do that oh burke says it's easy according to burke nothing to it there are two ways to find the significant words frequency and intensity that's how you do it you literally count all the words inside the artifact and you find the ones that show up the most often those are significant words those are key terms find the key terms by finding the words that happen most often now obviously we're not talking here about the and a and an you know we're talking about basically nouns and verbs and adjectives and adverbs okay we're not you know the word of or the is going to show up you know a lot more than anything else but burke says frequency of terms that have significance terms that have meaning that's what you're after or burke says there's this other way that key terms show up now maybe you've got a term that does not happen very often but the few times it happens wow it's like a gut punch it's carefully planned maybe it only happens once but when it happens it hits hard that is intensity so where it says you got to read your text you've got to examine your artifact really carefully you've got to find the terms that keep showing up and you've got to find the ones that don't show up very often but when they do they pack a punch that is how you find your key terms now when you find key terms burke says understand those key terms are going to come in sort of two groups all right there are two kinds of key terms both of these are you know can be discovered either through frequency or through intensity they are what burke calls god terms or devil terms he's not talking here in religion you know he's not referring in any way to religious terminology here he just means by god terms the highest ideals the most defining aspect of your identity that's what he means by a god term so when he wants to when he wants you to recognize a god term well maybe you find it because it's a very frequent term maybe you find it because it shows up freedom and it shows up only at a place that's very intense but but what burka is going to tell you is that god term is the most powerful term it's the term of all the other terms it is the highest goal the the clearest ideal the thing that most touches your identity that's a god term a devil term not surprisingly is exactly the opposite right the devil term is simply a term that in fact dismisses whatever is clearest cleanest about your identity whatever it is that most would unmake you that would be central to you having lost all contact with who you are that's a devil term so maybe the devil term is communism it is for ronald reagan right um maybe the devil term is um slavery maybe the devil term is poverty so the double term can be almost anything the god terms can be almost anything but what makes them god terms or what makes them devil terms is that they are the ones that are most closely linked up with your understanding of who you are that is what makes them god terms or devil terms and if you find key terms that seem to emerge as god terms or devil terms then you are getting closer and closer and closer to the question of motive all right that's what you're after now we've said identification that's certainly one clear clean thing that you've got to understand in burke if you're going to see how cluster analysis works you kind of understand now why the key terms the most significant words those are crucial but once you find those key terms we're ready for a different question clusters pick up the idea of the key terms and then what they do is they begin to look at these ideas that seem to gather around those key terms in fact understanding those ideas may help you understand whether you're looking at a god term or a devil term but clusters are this they're this set of key term plus the ideas that seem to appear whenever this key term shows up so if freedom is your key term um and if it's perhaps close to a god term what you begin to do is you begin to say okay wow freedom occurs very frequently in this artifact let me look around when freedom comes up what else am i seeing what gets associated with that key term that is to say what gets identified with that key term that's your cluster and that's what you're going to analyze that's this that's the core of your analysis so your cluster is a key term plus the ideas that seem to get associated with that key term that set constitutes a cluster this is where you will in fact find yourself um most likely to make um inroads okay you're gonna discover really really important stuff when you begin to put your clusters together now clusters the ideas that that frequent around those clusters you want to look for patterns in those frequencies i mean you know in rhetorical criticism we're all about patterns right so you want to find ideas that hopefully you know ideally the ideas that are clustering around your key term of freedom would be ideas that have a lot in common and that you wouldn't find scattered everywhere else inside your artifact that's kind of the the gold standard now that never happens you know fully but it's kind of the gold standard of what you're after now ideas that cluster around your um your key terms understand your key term might be a god term or your key term might be a devil term they could go either way but you really want to focus on these ideas that get clustered around them in order to to get a sense of what it is you're actually dealing with so those are the three steps to doing cluster analysis first thing you do is you identify your key terms and you do that basically through frequency or intensity keep an eye out especially for god terms and devil terms once you've identified your key terms you start looking for the clusters now clusters remember and key terms they're closely related but you need the cluster you need the key term and the ideas that have been gathering around that key term burke sometimes talks about key terms as if they were a magnet and they draw in these other ideas that have certain polarities that have certain directions or commonalities right so your freedom might draw in your freedom freedom is your key term perhaps it will draw in the idea of security perhaps it will draw in the idea of of um maybe it will draw on the idea of love okay so security and love freedom might also draw an idea of honor okay so these are the kinds of ideas that we might see clustering around freedom um if we have a keyword like freedom we might also see ideas clustering around it that are in opposition to that key term so you might see freedom but every time freedom comes up there is the idea of threat there's the possibility of slavery there's the idea of chaos there's the idea so we might have a key term one maybe one of our own god terms like freedom and we begin to talk about freedom the ideas that get associated with it are actually very scary ideas like freedom may not survive okay that's the cluster that's the cluster that's the pay dirt now once you have gone that far remember that the clustered ideas hopefully will be somewhat similar to each other but different from other things in the artifact that's again the pay dirt that's kind of what we're hoping for all right so identify your key terms frequency and intensity look for the clusters get those key terms and then figure out what the ideas are especially the kind of similar ideas that are gathering around similar to each other that are gathering around your key term once you have that in place you're ready to take another step you're ready to reveal the motives this is where you're going to interpret and evaluate now what are you interpreting and evaluating as you start this process now remember burke is kind of messy on those borders we've been talking about about you know um here's analysis and then here's making your judgments here's analysis then here's interpretation evaluation okay burka is gonna it's gonna kinda you know he doesn't have a hard fast line between discovering clusters and revealing motives this is kind of all going to blend together for him so you may have a harder time drawing out an absolute break but there is a there's a there's a difference here between discovering the clusters and mapping the ideas that are around the clusters mapping your clusters is how the language often goes and when you reach this place where you are revealing motives by interpreting and evaluating what are you interpreting and evaluating the key terms and the ideas that are around them so here you know in the analysis you're more or less discovering these you're showing us what they are and then when we get down to talking about the motives we're going to interpret and evaluate we're going to look at these clusters and begin to see what is it that they mean and we're going to try to figure that out with that really magic question now we can understand that question maybe a little bit better given that these terms okay the key terms have the meanings have these meanings for this letter okay how do we know what meaning that key term has we look at the ideas that keep clustering around it don't listen pay no attention when a writer defines a key term for you burke says they're just that's that's just a shell game that doesn't count that's not real um understanding of the key term if you want the real understanding of the key term look at the ideas that keep popping up whenever that key term is used that's how you understand what the meaning is so given that these you can think of these key terms have the meanings that are shown to us by the clusters by the things that cluster around that key term given that these key terms have the meanings that are shown to us by the ideas that cluster around them so this redder thinks that key term has this meaning then what do you think the motive was for producing rhetoric like this what do you think the likely motive was that's the question that gets you into making your judgment calls given what we have learned about how these key terms have meaning what do you think the rhetoric was up to because these burke would say the clustered ideas that gather around the key term they tell us what the key term means to this redder so given that this this redder thinks this term has this meaning what do you think their motive was that is what burke wants you to get to now these are the steps of doing a cluster analysis we showed you a book earlier burke had a book the rhetoric of motive he's got another one too the grammar of motives i'm telling you he's obsessed with this idea of motivation right he wants to fare it out he wants to understand motives he says here are three ways to understand motives identify what your key terms are discover the clusters that have gathered around that key term that will reveal the motives if you can think clearly about these clusters you'll come to understand motives even the secret motives that are present to this rhetoric you do that with the magic question given what we've learned about how these key terms have meaning to this particular rhetorician then what was the likely motive for putting this rhetoric together in this way and burke wants you to make judgments he wants you to make a judgment call about the quality of the motive okay now this is a guy remember who started out down this path saying okay how in the world do you respond to the rhetoric of somebody like hitler and it wasn't an academic question in his world right he was watching uh world war ii unfold around him and he said how do we find a way to critique the motives even of powerful rhetoric well he says uh i got a way do a cluster analysis identify the key terms discover what the clusters are there when you study those clusters you'll discover the motives of this person and if those motives are terrible you need to call a spade a spade and say those are terrible motives don't listen to this person all right what can we tell you about cluster analysis in general then well a few things cluster analysis is going to work better on larger texts okay this is not the kind of thing that is going to be a real heavy hitter if you're doing a you know a 200 word um editorial in the newspaper it's not going to be a it's not going to be the kind of thing you can do with a commercial all right they're just too small so there's not enough space for things to cluster together okay you need space for these things to gather together so burke is saying you know look for something larger to work with look for an entire movie look for you know two or three chapters out of a novel or maybe an entire novel not um an editorial in in the wall street journal or the new york times cluster analysis needs a it needs space it's got a stretch um to work so look for larger texts that's one thing to tell you here's another thing to tell you remember your key terms and and your clusters they can be similar to each other or they can be what burke calls agonistic agonistic is where they come into conflict with each other so remember we talked about you might have a key word like freedom but the clusters around it are peril danger risk failure suffocation you know these might be the kinds of things that are clustering around this idea of freedom now that's either going to mean when you have an agonistic cluster like that it's either going to mean that in the writer's mind these two things freedom and these ideas clustering around freedom that are like threats and suffocation and and fear those two things are in conflict in the wretter's mind and they're trying to tell you how to resolve the conflict which side of the conflict you need to be on or um it means that the redder is not clear about what they really believe that's another option too the rhetoric is saying one thing but down deep inside they actually believe something else the rhetor themself is in conflict and that's why you don't get clarity clusters are designed to tap into issues of identity it you can't emphasize this enough the clusters reveal the identity that is being touched on that's being called to that's being summoned okay there's an identity that the clusters show they give you [Music] what you're supposed to be at your core if you walk into this rhetoric okay that's central it's inescapable and it's one of the things that you are making a judgment call about you are fixating on motive all right you are fixating on the motive for this rhetoric and how is that motive leading to a certain kind of identity that's what you've got to answer now burke believes that this method is going to show you the motives of the redder and he thinks even if the motives are unconscious he thinks his method can get you to even the unconscious motives of the rhetoric motives the writer is appealing to that the rhetor does not understand the the retter may not even know their own motives clearly and this method might in fact probably will almost certainly will if you know depending on which chapter of burke you're reading at that moment um this method will get you insight will reveal will they bear even the unconscious motives that are hidden from the wretter the author of the artifact okay that is cluster analysis burke has another way of looking at language and looking at rhetoric and that other way is dramatism sometimes called logology sometimes it's it's simply called the pintad but the pintad is simply the first step in the dramatism logology story that's going to be coming up in our next lesson if you would like to look at cluster analysis a little bit more carefully and if you want to see some examples of it go into canvas for the readings that are due this week and those readings contain two examples of cluster analysis one of them is is simply a student description of how cluster analysis works and i think the student description is going to lay out four steps instead of the three we've laid out here don't worry about that you'll see that that basically they're trying to break apart one one step but basically look through it because it gives you a sense of how these methods ought to be described in a student paper and then there's another um that's an article that uses cluster analysis to look at um a debate and a discussion that's going on or that was going on you know ages ago now but it's uh it's a cluster analysis that's done on a very vivid debate back in the middle of the last century so you can take a look at that as well so there's an example of cluster analysis there and there's a student paper that describes how cluster analysis works feel free to take a look at those next time we do a lesson we'll be picking up this idea of dramatism and logology and we'll be looking at that method more closely