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 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.

The dramatistic pentad is the key model used by critics to analyze human use of symbols in communication. The pentad is made up of five elements or terms (hence the name pentad): act, or what was or will be done; scene, or the context of the act that answers the questions of where and when the act occurred; agent, or who performed the act; agency, or the way the act was performed; and purpose, or the goal of the act. These five terms answer the what, where, who, how, and why of human communication. The act serves a pivotal place in the pentad because human society is fundamentally dramatic or driven by action. Later, Burke suggested that incipient act, or the first steps toward the act, can substitute for the act in pentadic analysis. The incipient act recognizes the vital connection between thought and behavior. He also
later added a sixth term, attitude, to further clarify the manner in which the agent approached the doing of the act.

While all human use of symbols in communication shares the same elements or terms, the proportion of those terms varies. Often, pairs of terms, or ratios, surface to dominate communication. For example, when communication focuses on what occurred and who performed the action, a ratio of agent–act dominates, or surfaces. For example, in a courtroom, a prosecuting attorney might argue that the accused did indeed unlawfully enter a house—an agent–act ratio. The defense attorney might prefer to make use of a scene–agent ratio instead, arguing that the accused came on a house with the door broken in and entered to see if there was a problem; in this case, scene dominates the act.

Application of the dramatistic pentad also helps to identify the ideology or worldview from which the communicator constructs the message. Generally, one term of the pentad dominates the communication, providing an ideology that accompanies it. If the act is the central term of the communication, then the form of the communication is realism. In such communication, active language such as verbs would dominate. On the other hand, if the central term is the scene or the setting for the action, we are urged to view the drama as dominated by the material situation, or materialism. If the agent, or the actor in the drama, is featured, then idealism is the corresponding orientation. Agency and purpose both locate the importance of the drama in how action is accomplished. Agency, or the way the act is performed, suggests pragmatism, while purpose, or goal, makes mysticism its compulsive force because the individual is less important than the final objective. For each of these central terms, a corresponding philosophical orientation arises, and when the term dominates the communication, its philosophical orientation forms the point of embarkation.

Burke used the illustration of the human hand to explain the working of the pentad. Each finger becomes a separate term of the pentad, distinct in its form. However, the palm of the hand unifies the fingers so that even though the fingers are separate, they are also united. Through the pentad, human actions are viewed from five interrelated points of motivation that are overlapping. By identifying the separate terms of the pentad, the critic can ultimately understand their common connection.