Dramatism

Dramatism, a rhetorical theory, was developed by Kenneth Burke as a tool for analyzing human relationships through the use of language. Burke viewed dramatism from the lens of logology, which studies how people's ways of speaking shape their attitudes towards the world. According to this theory, the world is a stage where all the people present are actors and their actions parallel a drama. Burke then correlates dramatism with motivation, saying that people are "motivated" to behave in response to certain situations, similar to how actors in a play are motivated to behave or function. Burke discusses two important ideas – that life is drama, and the ultimate motive of rhetoric is the purging of guilt. Burke recognized guilt as the base of human emotions and motivations for action. As cited in "A Note on Burke on "Motive"", the author recognized the importance of "motive" in Burke's work. In "Kenneth Burke's concept of motives in rhetorical theory", the authors mentioned that Burke believes that guilt, "combined with other constructs, describes the totality of the compelling force within an event which explains why the event took place."

Dramatism consists of three broad concepts —the pentad, identification, and the guilt-purification-redemption cycle. The entry then considers five major areas in which scholars in a variety of fields apply dramatism: the dramaturgical self, motivation and drama, social relationships as dramas, organizational dramas, and political dramas.

To understand people's movement and intentions, the theorist sets up the Dramatistic Pentad strategy for viewing life, not as life itself, by comparing each social unit involved in human activities as five elements of drama – act, scene, agent, agency, and purpose, to answer the empirical question of how persons explain their actions, and to find the ultimate motivations of human activities.

"Dramatism is treated as a technique for analyzing language as a mode of action in which specialized nomenclatures are recognized, each with particular ends and insights."

Kenneth Burke was an established literary critic who has contributed immensely to rhetoric theory. Originally influenced by Shakespeare and Aristotle's rhetoric, he developed his theory of Dramatism, separating himself from the two by adding the importance of motive. Dramatism went on to be immensely important to communication studies and in understanding how language shapes perception. Some argue that he was slightly ahead of his time when it came to his intense interdisciplinary approach to his theory. Using his classical education of literature and rhetoric as a foundation, Dramatism was largely influenced by the philosophies of Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Sigmund Freud. Burke was said to refer to the work of Parsons, as well as of social thinkers such as Max Weber, Georg Simmel, Alfred Schütz and G.H. Mead, all of whom wrote extensively regarding social action. The joining of these ideologies pushed Burke's work from literary to cultural criticism.

In the years that Burke was working on crafting Dramatism, the second World War waged on, providing great context to his Grammar of Motives by explaining the implications of motive on action and human communication. Burke called this war the "mightiest war the human race will ever experience". This war played a major role in "rhetorizing" Dramatism. He wrote extensively about the war and its social, political and literary aspects which led him to create this theory. Dramatism emerged as the antithesis to war - it encouraged a poetic dialectic and variations in perspectives in order to come to a joint conclusion to appease all. This came as an opposition to how wars functioned, with "monolithic certainty in the rule of the strongman" and with the need for complete obedience.

The use of drama as a metaphor in order to understand human behavior and motivation forms the basis for this theory. According to West, there are three basic reasons that drama is a useful metaphor to the idea of Dramatism.

It is possible because Burke believes that Drama has recognizable genres. Humans use language in patterned discourses, and texts move us with recurring patterns underlying those texts. And drama has certain audiences, which means rhetoric plays a crucial role when humans deal with experiences. Language strategies are central to Burke's dramatistic approach.