The Narrative and Dramatist Perspectives

The Narrative perspective and Dramatist perspective seem to  share many ideas that deal with the relationship between the rhetor and audience, and the context of the given rhetorical situation. These are some of the ideas I tend to gravitate towards; especially after reading more on Kenneth Burke and his ideas of language as symbolic. Not only do they further enhance my awareness of how humans interact and how behaviors and language are attached to social norms (or non-norms), but the juxtaposition of language and how it is used as a tool for this awareness is what catches my attention. This may be my instinct because of my interest in creative writing. The process in which we analyze a text through the narrative or dramatist perspective can almost be compared to the way writers build stories based on setting, character, and situations. 

As I’ve mentioned before, I am still appalled that I have not come across rhetoric more often throughout my high school and college education. I honestly don’t even recall being taught anything about rhetoric in the English courses I took for my BA. Although any literary analysis was more a narrative or dramatist perspective (more narrative though), I find that my new knowledge of rhetoric has allowed me to understand the use of language in a deeper level; like viewing a underground layer I didn’t know existed. In dealing with the narrative and dramatist perspective, we explore the moral reasons behind actions within a situation, and the motives behind these morals. 

I do feel I have hit a wall in terms of material for the final project. Maybe I have exhausted the subjects that have come up in my life throughout the semester. One of my goals is to come up with an idea I have not explored yet. Because I like the narrative and dramatist perspective so much, I hope to find material that I am genuinely interested in learning more about. What it is, I don’t know.

Since both perspectives allow for analysis of stories, I know there is much material to choose from: movies, novels, short stories, etc. Although I have analyzed many novels in the past for other classes, by adding a rhetorical perspective of how to analyze a text in general will widen my understanding of a text. Where I feel it may be a scape goat for me to analyze something I already know how to analyze, I also think it would benefit me in both my academic and professional English life to be able to broaden my analytical skills, now that I have learned so much about rhetoric. It may be interesting to return to something I have read before, and use one of the rhetorical perspectives to analyze it.