Rhetorical Analysis of The Talking Heads’ “Once in a Lifetime” Essay

Rhetorical Analysis of The talk Heads Once in a Lifetime Kenneth Burkes volt Master Terms exist to bring to light the motivation behind, theoretically, whatsoever bit of text to which we care to apply them. The beauty of this Pentad is its fundamentality in regards to the motivations humans have in creating nomenclature and meaning using the tools of lyric poem available. This doesnt just apply to long-winded theses regarding the nature of dramatistic meaning, though perhaps something like that would be more up Burkes alley. No, in this case I plan to utilize his methods for a more evidently mundane example, the motivations behind something as simple as song lyrics.I say song lyrics are simple, but in this case I am going to attempt a feat of rhetorical digest few have considered possible by analyzing the song Once in a Lifetime by The Talking Heads. I emphasize the clog of this analysis because I fear that I am about to send on a journey to make sense out of betise a 1984 documentary of the bands music is entitled bridle Making Sense, for unmatched example. For another more drastic example, songwriter David Byrne was one of the most intentionally abstract lyricists of his time in an early circumstance of apparent madness, he took to the stage of his college and shaved his hair and beard in front of the faculty to the accompaniment of piano accordion and a chorus girl displaying phrases in Russian. He was promptly ejected from that school. Regardless, his song Once in a Lifetime is symbolic of the introspective, neurotic, and post-modern approach he often uses to create his melodic identity. Though I at first found it to be a rough fit, I believe the Pentad can be successfully applied to describe the motivation ... ...it becomes clear that everything is unclear. I will summate my application, however, for the sake of my own understanding. The dominant Term here is tour, the balance mingled with essence and existence carefully he ld by Byrnes dialectic of pee and time as a unified sameness. Working symbiotically with Act is the idea of Agent, a theoretical character defined as finding, investigating, and ascertain a situation without Acting within it. Byrnes purpose is to receive right or wrong in the Scene of his lifetime. The Agency done which he defines truth within the Scene is time, which shares more than a fingers fullness of space with my first term, Act. Ive come to the end of the analysis with a sense that Ive just begun a lot of fancy words to describe the futility of change. I did preface this application by noting The Talking Heads aptness to stop making sense.