existed without the aid of man’s differentia (his capacity for symbolic action). And in this sense, though we would warn against the temptation to forget the genus in our concern with the differentia, we would hold that the proper approach to the genus is through the study of symbolic action, as such action takes form in the drama of human relations. Otherwise, for reasons that we shall consider as we proceed, the failure to detect the full scope of the “linguistic dimension” in human affairs and human attitudes obscures our undemanding of both the linguistic and the extralinguistic. According to the position here advocated, there is a “pageantry” in objects, a “socioanagogic” element imposed upon them, so far as man is concerned, because man necessarily approaches them in accordance with the genius of his nature as a symbol-human species. Since language is social in the political, administrative sense, the purely physical sociality of nonlinguistic things thus subtly partakes of this purely symbolic spirit, so far as human dealings with “nature” are concerned.
Here is the problem at the bottom of our search, as at the bottom of a well. Our motto might be: By and through language, beyond language. Per linguam, praeter linguam.
The “dramatistic” is to be distinguished from the “dramatic,” in that drama proper is the symbolizing or imitating of action, whereas the “dramatistic” is a critical or essayistic analysis of language, and thence of human relations generally, by the use of terms derived from the contemplation of drama.
But the dramatistic can take great dramas as its point of departure. They provide the set forms in conformity with which we would construct our terminology. Since the real world of action is so confused and complicated as to seem almost formless, and too extended and unstable for orderly observation, we need a more limited material that might be representative of human ways while yet having fixity enough to allow for systematic examination.
In this respect, great dramas would be our equivalents of the laboratory experimenter’s “test cases.” But this kind of “controlled conditions” would differ from the arbitrary controls of a typical laboratory experiment. The losses are obvious, the gains less so, unless one stops to realize how hard it is to set up laboratory conditions for establishing instances of symbolic action that, while having a form sufficiently stable to be methodically observable, are also sufficiently complex and mature to be representative of human motives.2
But we may be on less cogent ground when laying primary emphasis upon the examining of written texts. Professor Benne has tellingly raised this objection in correspondence, pointing to the many elements besides the literary text that figure in a dramatic performance, and suggesting that the present writer’s occupational psychosis as a specialist in literature may be partly responsible for this textual emphasis. To be sure, though we can at least point to the example of Aristotle, who rated the text of a drama higher than its performance, we must never forget that many fresh exegetical insights come of witnessing actual performances (as when we compare different actors’ readings of the same lines); and a sympathetic auditor may be mysteriously moved by a performance given in a language he doesn’t even know). Yet, although histrionic and choreographic elements (tonal, plastic, and scenic) contribute critically to the enjoyment and understanding of drama, don’t all such modes of expression regularly build their logic about the interpretation of the text itself?
Professor Benne has further objected that we tend to neglect the fertile field of drama-like situations in real life (situations that may arise spontaneously, or may be set up partly by the deliberate cunning of an impresario; as with some “candid” radio and television programs). This is a particularly important objection, since education is so largely in the realm of public relations generally. Our point here is simply that one should not begin a “dramatistic” analysis with such cases. But co-ordinates developed from the analysis of formal drama should certainly be applied to fluctuant material of this sort. Further, such applications, made by a different class of specialists, should reveal notable respects in which the drama-like situations of real life differ from drama proper (a difference probably centering in the fact that situations in real life lack finality, except in so far as life happens to “imitate art”). Professor Benne’s desire to place more weight upon drama-like situations in life (“a playground fight, for example”) led us to realize that, given the new recording devices for motion and sound, such new-style documents do resemble the text of a formal drama, in allowing for repeated analysis of a single unchanging development (an “action” that, in its totality, remains always the same). Here, in effect, the new means of recording, or “writing,” have extended the realm of the “text” into areas that once lay beyond it. Such material comes close to the “textual” ideal we have in mind; since an observer can repeatedly observe the identical object, thus having the best opportunity to mature his observations.
Still (in an “occupationally psychotic” way) we feel that the written word comes nearest (so far as “records” go) to a merging of “linguistic anatomy” with “linguistic physiology.” For single words (many of which are recurrent in the given text) are in their singularity quite “dead”; yet they are very much “alive,” as regards their ways of taking part contextually with one another. And in the beginning of our culture was the assurance that in the beginning was the word.
On the other hand, we do not by any means equate “symbol-using” with “word-using.” All the arts, such as music, painting, sculpture, the dance, even architecture, are in various ways and to varying degrees symbolic activities. Verbal symbol-using (like its variant, mathematics) enjoys a special place among the lot because the individual word has a kind of conceptual clarity not found in individual notes, colors, lines, motions, and the like (except in so far as these are in effect words, as with the conventionalized doctrinal representations in some traditional ritual dance).
In this connection, Professor Benne has suggested that the justification for featuring language among symbolic media may “lie in the fitness of word-symbols for the criticism and analysis of the others, including word-symbols themselves.” This observation suggested to us another step in the same direction, thus: Inasmuch as education merges into the philosophy of education, we may note that verbal symbols are the best medium for “philosophizing” about anything.
Professor Benne adds:
Mr. Burke seems not quite to have met my point about the selection of cases to be used educationally for dramatistic analysis. True enough, “great dramas would be our equivalents of the laboratory experimenter’s, ‘test cases.’” And teachers, under the influence of dramatistic philosophizing, would in their education have analyzed these “test cases” and would have acquired an appreciation of the folly and grandeur of man’s differentia, symbol using, as well as skills in analyzing the complexities of language within the far-flung drama of human relations. But would children under the tutelage of such teachers delay their educational experience with dramatistic analysis of human action until they had gained the maturity to deal with these “test cases”? I would hope not. I do not pretend to know at what age students might profitably analyze the great dramas dramatistically. Let’s guess arbitrarily they might begin at fifteen or sixteen. Long before that time, of course, they are acquiring orientations and habits toward using and being used by language, toward enacting the follies and grandeurs of human (symbolic) action. Shouldn’t their education incorporate elements of dramatistic analysis before they are ready for the “complete texts”? I think it should. And some of the materials for such analysis might well come from the dramas of human relations in everyday life in which they take part, using whatever devices of mechanical recording, spontaneous dramatization, participant observation, etc., which might advance the learning. Perhaps students so brought up would be more ready to profit from analysis of the “testcases” par excellence when they were mature enough to deal with them directly than students who had had no previous orientation to dramatism and its methods.
Language and Problems of Human Relations
But for our over-all principles, we necessarily select terms so highly generalized that they apply to work greatly varying
