Towards a Grammar of Design Motives

Designers routinely justify or substantiate their design decisions and need to persuade various stakeholders that their verbalized rationales are legitimate and appropriate. This paper thus starts from the assumption that verbal justification, as a major part of any design process, may be interrogated from a rhetorical perspective. Furthermore, insofar as designers are socialized to provide “proper” justifications for their design actions, their selectively expressed rationalizations can reveal ideological orientations within the larger design community. To interrogate the discursive framing of design actions, this paper introduces Kenneth Burke’s theory on a “grammar of motives.” This paper shows how a “grammar of design motives” can be utilized to analyze and critique design justifications and enhance designers’ awareness of how they articulate themselves rhetorically. Furthermore, as an interpretive guide, Burke’s framework can reveal patterns in design discourse, providing clues about dominant discursive conventions and, by extension, more deeply held conceptions of good practice.