Dramatism and Dramatistic Pentad

Dramatism, or dramaturgy, is an approach taken to understand the uses of symbols in the social world. This approach is important to communication theory because a primary use of symbols occurs through language. Such a focus on the symbolic uses of language to influence is inherently rhetorical. In addition, dramatism seeks to understand the human world as a symbolic world of drama in which language is a strategic, motivated response to specific situations. As such, language is viewed as a mode of symbolic action rather than a repository of knowledge, and the use of language or other symbols to induce cooperation among human beings is the focus of investigation. To develop the concept of dramatism further, this entry will look at the contributors to and key assumptions of dramatism and its associated method, the dramatistic pentad.

Introduced by literary theorist Kenneth Burke in the early 1950s, dramatism has penetrated many disciplines, including political science, sociology, literary criticism, rhetoric, organizational communication, and interpersonal communication. Burke's students have applied the concept of dramatism in philosophy (Susan Sontag), sociology (Hugh Dalziel Duncan), political science (Doris Graber), and interpersonal communication (Erving Goffman). Still others in many additional disciplines have been influenced by dramatism, including Harold Bloom, Stanley Cavell, Clifford Geertz, Rene Girard, Frederic Jameson, Geoffrey Hartman, and Edward Said. Dramatism continues to develop as an aid to understanding the complexity of human symbol use.

Several assumptions undergird dramatism, the most important of which is the understanding of human beings as symbol-using animals. Humans create symbols (language is the most obvious example of a human symbol system), respond to symbols, and understand their circumstances through symbols. It is by way of symbols that humans have the unique ability to conceive of the negative or the absence of something. Symbols function to create and sustain hierarchies of power and identification among dissimilar groups. Symbols also allow for incongruities, such as creating the conditions for conflict while simultaneously unifying individuals to resist conflict.

Another assumption is that human interaction can be approached as a drama, hence the name dramatism. For Burke, the relationship between life and theater is literal rather than metaphorical. Humans enact real roles on live stages as [Page 321]they attempt to impact others. These dramas guide the ways that individuals, groups, and organizations conduct their behaviors. Dramatism also acknowledges that human beings act rather than move. The distinction between action and motion is that human beings make choices to act, often through symbols, while animals, plants, and other physical objects simply engage in motion. This human choice to act is the basis of all human motivation. Thus, symbols become sites for discovering motivation.

Finally, dramatism suggests that symbols form a grid or screen through which the world is viewed. Such terministic screens select or favor some realities and deflect others; doctors arriving at the scene of a car accident will look first for injuries because of the medical terministic screen operating for them; lawyers, while equally concerned with injury, will also note possible factors of blame because of the terministic screen implicit in their training. The terministic screens through which we apprehend our worlds have larger implications as well; they bristle with embedded values that, in turn, form belief systems or ideologies. These ideologies filter our understanding of others, our communication to them, as well as our choices of action.

...