The Pentad Analysis : Everything Isn 't Black And White. Kenneth Burke 's Pentad Criticism

In his book, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, Goffman (1959) focuses on the self as a staged production in which people actively present themselves to different audiences one encounters. To bolster his conceptualization, Goffman used an interesting metaphor of “all the world’s a stage” (1959, 254). This, he terms as a “dramaturgical approach” (Goffman 1959, 240) in which an actor puts on a show for others; drawing analogies between human behaviors and the theater. Goffman (1959) likens the individual to an actor on stage performing for and with other individuals involved in the situation. Three types of space exist for the actor to perform on, to enact the self, and to interact with others: the front stage, the backstage, the outer region. Goffman (1959) utilizes specific dramaturgical terms such as performance, teams, front and back regions, sign-vehicles, and highlights the process of dramatic realization. These terms will be discussed in the following sections.

Compare or contrast the role that reason (logic or logos) and passion (emotion or pathos) play within the novel.

In “Presentations of Self in Everyday Life,” Goffman is constantly explaining how everyday life is a dramaturgy. A dramaturgy is the art of dramatic composition and essentially the production of a theatrical play. A social situation is much like a play. Every play has a stage, actors, a script, a set, rehearsals, and practices. In a social situation, the stage is where the encounter takes place, the actors are the people involved in the encounter, the script is the social norms of the social encounter, and the set is the environment where the encounter takes place. It takes practices and

“All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.” William Shakespeare may have written these words in As You Like It in 1600, but Erving Goffman truly defined the phrase with his dramaturgical theory. Dramaturgical analysis is the study of social interaction in terms of theatrical performance. Unlike actors though, who use a script telling them how to behave in every scene, real life human interactions change depending upon the social situation they are in. We may have an idea of how we want to be perceived, and may have the foundation to make that happen. But we cannot be sure of every interaction we will have throughout the day, having to ebb and flow with the conversations and situations as they happen.

The beginning of any thought provoking essay will hook its audience using a form of pathos. “Two of his sons returned home from the battlefield whole and healthy. The third, however, came home suffering multiple seizures a day”-(Rorabacher). The quote generates sympathy within us making us yearn to see a welcoming outcome and leaving the audience hooked. Eli Hager’s article follows a similar route informing us that “The state of Missouri sent Harris to the penitentiary in Boonvilee, 250 miles from his home and baby daughter”-(Hager). Again we sympathize with the loss of a family, but not all of the articles used grievance to hook us. In the “Quiet Alarm” the audience is informed of a vaudeville performer who performed deadly stunts involving hatchets, pins, and guns on himself to generate shockwaves in the audience. From these examples we identify how our emotions lure us into these texts.

There is one human emotion that can paralyse us, lead us to lie both to ourselves and others, to commit actions that we don’t endure, and to cripple any rational thought processes. It is self perpetuating if allowed to get out of control. Its side effects are anger, aggressiveness, fear or reclusiveness. Its symptoms are irrational behaviour, lying, anguish, and lack of self-esteem. It is the strong emotion that can affect our conscience, like an acid drop it corrodes the soul within and in extreme conditions it demolishes one’s life, it is better known as guilt. Guilt is a reoccurring theme in Robertson Davies’ Fifth Business, and William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, that is demonstrated by various characters including, Dunstable Ramsay, Paul

Functionalist Erving Goffman studies the sociological approach of Dramaturgy in his book ‘The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life’ (Goffman, 1959), he built his theory based on earlier work completed by Kenneth Burke. However there are distinct differences in features of the theory between Burke and Goffman as Burke believed that life was in fact a literal

Pretend you are playing the role of a character named Jordan, while discussing Erving Goffman’s theory of dramaturgy. Jordan finally made it. Jordan finally graduated university and has been lucky enough to receive an offer for an interview at the institution that he had been working towards his entire university career, an interview at the top law firm in all of Toronto. Now it is time to prepare. It is time for Jordan to show the firm that he is meant to be there. To show the firm that this position was meant for him, he must be the best version of himself. Jordan is competing against hundreds of other university graduates, but he must show them that he is the one. Jordan’s first impression matters, he must show them the qualities that they want to see to ensure that he receives the position at the law firm.

Finally the last element which Burke discusses is agency which is the theoretical points, he claims that the whole lot is realised through language. From these elements Goffman then went on to develop his own ‘dramaturgical’ investigations based on six themes: the performance, the team, the region, discrepant roles, communication out of the character and impression management. Nothing of Goffman’s dramaturgical world is quite what it seems. Rather, people are all portrayed as performers enacting rehearsed lines and roles in places that are carefully constructed in order to maximise the potential of deception. He then goes on to suggest that as performers people both ‘give’ and ‘give off’ impressions. It has been suggested that Goffman’s dramaturgical world is thus one of misdirection in which general suspicion is necessary; he developed an interest in espionage practices mainly because he recognised these as extensions of everyday behaviour. Goffman then went on to identify five moves in social interaction which are the ‘unwitting’, the ‘naïve’, the ‘covering’, the ‘uncovering’ and finally the ‘counter uncovering’ move (1959: 11-27). Each of these moves is designed either to achieve some advantage directly, or to reveal the strategies of other players. These moves are used in social worlds, or as Goffman called them, ‘situated activity systems’. Each is regulated by adopted norms known by system’s members. Rather than concentrating on the production of meanings, the

Burke's Pentad includes five categories, which help classifying arguments as dramatic actions. The first part is the "act"; What is done by the unit? The second part of his evaluation is the "scene"; What is the history behind the "act"? The third category of Burke's Pentad is the "agent"; Who is the source of the message? How the "agent" accomplishes its "act" is defined as the "agency" in the fourth term of the Pentad. The final piece to Burke's analysis is to the define the "purpose" of the action.

Nearly every character in the play at some point has to make inferences from what he or she sees, has been told or overhears. Likewise, nearly every character in the play at some point plays a part of consciously pretending to be what they are not. The idea of acting and the illusion it creates is rarely far from the surface -

There are five elements to the pentad: agent, act, scene, agency and purpose. The pentad is necessary when trying to develop an argument, as it can produce several possibilities that can have relation to each other.

Kenneth Burke is known for the knowledge of human symbolic behavior. He was associated with many narrative theories. He focused on language as it is used to persuade people to an action, and defined persuasion as “the use of language as a symbolic means of inducing cooperation beings that by nature respond to symbols.” (Burke, 1970, Grammar, p. 43) This active cooperation is induced by what he called identification which is very similar to Aristotle’s “common ground” and our use of “co-creation” (Larson, 2007, p. 127) According to Burke, identification develops through the linguistic of sharing what he called sub-stances. He had divided the word into its prefix, sub meaning beneath and stances meaning places. Burke noted that these sub-stances or places emerge in the words we use to define things, persons and issues. Kenneth Burke uses common ground by physical things like for example branded clothing. According to Larson, Burke indicates that, “all words have emotional shading and reveal the feelings, attitudes, values, and judgment of the user. For example, he uses the word manipulate which can potentially carry a negative meaning by changing people’s minds.”

In the short film “Method Actor” by Justin Stokes, a seasoned actor is discussing his career in what appears to be an interview; the discussion goes along and we discover that he prefers the process of method acting, a technique in which you become the character which you’re playing. A technique Lee Strasberg referred to as “what all actors have always done whenever they acted well.” Yet, as the actor clearly showcases, this method can push some minds over the brink. The old man has played many roles “... the clown,the hero, the lover, the philosopher,...”(Stokes.) He hesitates on his latest role, which was the murderer, which raises the question, how could he tap into that role? How can one remain rational after adopting such a drastic, hazardous mindset? Just as these questions arise into the minds of the viewer, the camera loses focus behind a barred window and the scene concludes. The film is riddled with pieces of evidence to help the viewer better understand exactly how he did it.

The second oldest form of literature after poetry is drama. Dramas have changed a lot over the years. They use to plays that were wrote to be performed in the theater, and now they are mostly written to be performed in a movie or a television show. There are many dramas today that most people would not considered to be drama. Before reading the information in our text book, I thought drama was basically just a story or movie between people who had problems with each other; but that’s not completely true. Dramas can basically be anything that has a hero or dialogue to a certain extent. For this paper, I choose to write about the drama in the movie The Hunger Games. This movie is not just only drama, it is also adventure and sci-fi movie.