Kenneth Burke’s “A Grammar of Motives” introduces the five key terms of his Dramatism theory, in order to understand human relationships: “What is involved, when we say what people are doing and why they are doing it?”. (Burke, 1945:xv) His pentad has been applied by rhetorical critics and discourse analysts alike and presents itself as a universal heuristic of motives capable of discerning between the motion of objects and the action of humans. For this distinction the five motives arise and ask of any human action: What was done? (Act); Within what context? (Scene); By whom? (Agent); Through what means? (Agency); With what end? (Purpose). Burke poses that, “statements that assign motives can be shown to arise out of them and to terminate
