This research is meant to rhetorically explore the application of Burke’s dramatistic pentad elements to the texts of four chapters taken from three self-helped books in order to discover their authors’ worldviews. These elements were introduced by Burke in 1945 in his book A Grammar of Motives as part of the Dramatism Theory of Motives are Act, Scene, Agent, Agency and Purpose. It is important to determine and apply the dominate ratios of these elements when analyzing the texts to get to the conclusion of discovering the analyzed chapters’ worldviews. These ratios are “scene-act, scene-agent, scene-agency, scene-purpose, act-purpose, act-agent, act-agency, agent-purpose, agent-agency, and agency-purpose” (p. 15). The textual written language of each of the four chapters was distinctively analyzed. The chapters are mainly concerned with the person’s self-intrinsic development. The research concluded that, based on Burke’s dramatistic pentad elements and ratios, each chapter adopted different approaches in introducing their worldviews in their writing. However, they all have the same goal, which is to encourage the development of the person’s intrinsic source
Keywords: dramatism, pentad elements, self-help rhetoric, textual analysis, writers’ worldviews
