vocabularies of motive
vocabularies of motiveA concept outlined by the literary critic Kenneth Burke as one of his five dramatistic terms: who, what, when, where, and why? The term was first developed sociologically by C. Wright Mills (in American Sociological Review, 1944) to capture the language by which people describe their motivations and account for their conduct. The important point is that Mills's idea is not rooted in a psychology of motivation: he was not interested here in needs, drives, or inner compulsions, as was (for example) Sigmund Freud. Rather, his concern was with the ways in which people talk about their motives, in particular social contexts. Motivational talk is usually part of a wider ideology, such that certain stated motives will be much more acceptable in given contexts than in others, and motivational statements are hence relative. For...
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