Dramatism in the context of AKB48’s ace, Atsuko Maeda’s Speech

Dramatism in the context of AKB48’s ace, Atsuko Maeda’s Speech By Liza Zabar Kenneth Burke’s theory of dramatism had made its way into the fields of communications as early as the 1950s (Brock et al. p.17, 1985). According to Griffin (p.289, 2009), dramatism is the belief that language is a strategic, motivated response to a specific situation. In this context, Burke (1978) views language “as a mode of action rather than a mode of knowledge” (p.330). His view was that not life is like a drama, but life is a drama itself, where human by nature see and interpret situations as drama. The basic idea of this theory is that everything in life can be viewed as drama, complete with a plot, actors and a setting. Dramatism comprises of three perspectives which also describes the three lenses with which we can view life: ‘Identification’, ‘Dramatistic Pentad’ and ‘Guild- Redemption Cycle’. These three components will be elaborated and discussed based on the following example. For the purpose of illustrating how Burke’s dramatism theory can be utilised, the speech by AKB48’s ace, Atsuko Maeda’s short speech in 2011 during the 3rd general election will be used. AKB48 is currently Japan’s most popular girl band and since 2009, a ‘general election’ is held to determine the top ranking members within the more than 100 member girl band. In June 2011, the 3rd general election was held and fans voted for their favourite member among the pool of members via ‘tickets’ that were bought from AKB48’s recent physical CD release, as well as through online voting. Atsuko Maeda, dominantly known as the ‘ace’ of AKB48, topped the 3rd general elections, ranking number 1 among all members. This does not come as a surprise as she is the most recognisable and popular member, as what other would say, the ‘poster girl’. As part of the event which happened on 9th June 2011 at the Nippon Budokan, Maeda gave a quick and mini speech (Melos no Michi, 2011; akb48family1, 2012): “Everyone, truly thank you very much! Being able to receive everyone’s approval and having so many people support me; I deeply feel and appreciate it. But of course, there 1  are people who hate me. I have only one request; even if you hate me, please don’t hate AKB48!” Burke (1950) suggests that whenever someone attempts to persuade someone else, identification occurs, because for persuasion to occur, one party must ‘identify’ with another (p.46). This is to say that the one who becomes persuaded sees that one party is like another in some way. The idea behind identification is that if there is no identification, there will be no persuasion. Simply, if the audience does not connect with the speaker, the speaker is considered unsuccessful in persuading the audience. From the speech above, identification already existed where Maeda (speaker) thanked her fans (audience) for supporting her from long before. The identification here refers to the relationship she has between her and her fans. The reason for her being able to rank on top is because her loyal fans have been supporting her since her debut as a member in AKB48. When the fans voted for her, this can be seen as a form of ‘persuasion’ since to be ranked top, Maeda will need to gather the most votes, which is a way to persuade her fans to vote for her, among other competing members. And to do this, Maeda appeared in various commercials and magazines to boost up her popularity among existing and new fans. When fans see her domination within the mass media, they will unanimously vote for her. Her fans already long ‘identify’ Maeda as a superstar. The relationship between Maeda and her fans already formed one of the integral parts of Burke’s dramatism whereby identification is true for this case. Burke’s (1945) dramatistic pentad is a theory and tool to analyze motivation in symbolic action (p.67). To Burke, both verbal and non-verbal elements in a language are persuasive in nature and important in exercising social functions and processes. A language in which rhetorical meaning is implemented within the dramatism context allows critics to be able to analyze messages to determine human motivation behind them (Dickinson, 2009, p.126). Based on this notion of dramatism, language is a form of action that literally creates the reality in which humans act. The dramatistic pentad is an analytical tool to analyze how a speaker attempts to get an audience to accept his or her view of reality as true by using five crucial elements of the human drama: act, scene, agent, agency and purpose. These elements help to discover the motivation behind the speaker. An ‘act’ explores what had taken place or what someone consciously did. A ‘scene’ 2 examines where and when the act occurred, whether at a physical locale, a literal or figurative time, era, period or phase. An ‘agent’ is who or what kind of person or group carried out the particular act. An ‘agency’ involves the means by which the agent performed the act or how the agent accomplished what took place. Lastly, the ‘purpose’ implied or stated goal of the act. These five elements of the dramatistic pentad go beyond naming who, what, when, where and why. Critics explore the relationships between these elements and examine ratios of any sets of two elements in order to understand which of the elements are emphasized and how they function together. A critic views these messages that were broken down to its basic forms from the pentad as a question to further understand the message. Based on the given speech example, the elements can be used to describe Atsuko Maeda (agent) had given her victory speech (act) in a sobbing manner (agency) at the Nippon Budokan on 9th June 2011 in conjunction to the AKB48’s 3rd general election (scene) as she had ranked top place (purpose). Critics may begin to analyse the importance of these elements via the process of applying the pentad to a particular text. They then explore the possible relationships and ratios among the elements to decide the speaker’s motive. The ratio of importance between individual pairs of terms in the dramatistic pentad indicates which element provides the best clue to the speaker’s motivation. For example, an emphasis on act demonstrates a commitment to realism whereas an emphasis on agent is consistent with idealism. If the critic takes the act-agent ratio into account, the victory speech given by Maeda will be the focus of the critic in determining on the impact of her speech towards others, if the other members will feel intimidated or challenged by her popularity. If we are to focus on the agency-act ratio, then how is it that despite Maeda’s sobbing, she manages to give a speech like that? Could it be because she was happy and overwhelmed? Or is it because she feels guilty for being number 1? Usually, it is the first element ratio that ‘determines’ the second element to function. However, according to Burke (1945), he argued that rhetors choose to highlight some elements while downplaying others. In other terms, if I were to focus solely on Maeda’s ‘act’, I would have just 3 discuss the reasons of giving a speech and why is it important in the elections. It would be then assumed that speeches are a highlight in any event. The last component of dramatism, guilt-redemption cycle, is associated with public speaking. Whenever there is a public speaking, the ultimate outcome is to purge oneself of guilt. Guilt is created through symbolic interaction, which Landis (1998) described it as a process where it focuses on the process of person-to-person interaction, on how people develop viewpoints about themselves and others, and on forms of interpersonal communications. For Burke, ‘guilt’ is a term which describes “any feeling of tension within a person – anxiety, embarrassment, self-hatred, disgust, and so forth (Littlejohn & Foss, p.115, 2008).” It is caused by symbol use. Burke also claimed that all public speaking is one method to relieve a person from guilt. Since man attempts to identify with others, they are constantly trying to overcome guilt through victimage and mortification. Victimage is the process of purging guilt by blaming another while mortification is the process of purging guilt through self-blame. The focus of guilt-redemption cycle based on Maeda’s speech is on the last part of her speech. She admitted that there are haters of hers within AKB48’s fans but asked them (haters) and other fans to continue support AKB48. By doing so, she managed to shift her ‘guilt’, which is from the anti-Maeda’s points of view, to AKB48 fans in general by asking everyone to support her group, for as long as the group exists with her as a member. Through this action, her haters can be seen as part of AKB48’s general fans and Maeda managed to eliminate her haters (temporarily). Even if it is a temporary effect, she convinced many, fans and haters alike, to support AKB48. Mortification is apparent here where she self-blamed herself for being in AKB48. Reason being, she realises that there are haters of her in the whole of AKB48 fandom, hence ‘there are people who hate me’ and ‘even if you hate me’ implies that. Also, she is competing with 100 other members and in a fandom, there will be fans and haters. In this case, victimage is absent since she does not blame anyone else except for herself. Burke may be acknowledged as “the chief architect of the New Rhetoric, the inventor of dramatism […] a founding father of the current movement to reconceive the human sciences in 4 rhetorical terms (Simons, p.5, 1989)”, this does not mean his dramatism theory receives no criticism. The pentad seemed to confine the analysis of the work itself, such as within the context of a book or a movie. However, Kimberling (1982, as cited in Regis, 1986) described the strength of dramatism within the context of popular culture and how it works efficiently only when the speaker presents his work and how the audience receives the intended message. Therefore a ‘scene’ may not be entirely fictitious but might have been included the elements of the speaker’s experience in real life. For example, if a person were to publish a biography of Maeda and assuming the biography will include Maeda’s victory speech above, then the ‘scene’ is created based on Maeda’s experience and not part of a fictive setting. Dramatism theory itself is very ambiguous and too general to be considered as a theory. Sidney Hook, one of Burke’s arch enemies, wrote, “[t]he greatest difficulty that confronts the reader of Burke is finding out what he means. His individual sentences seem to be clear, but when put together they are obscure, sometimes opaque (pp. 89-90, 1969).” This is also backed by an article written by Marie Hochmuth Nichols, who introduced Burke to communication studies discipline: “Burke is difficult and often confusing. He cannot be understood by casual reading of his various volumes. In part the difficulty arises from the numerous vocabularies he employs. His words in isolation are usually simple enough, but he often uses them in new contexts. To read one of his volumes independently, without regard to the chronology of publication, makes the problem of comprehension even more difficult because of the specialized meanings attaching to various words and phrases. (Nichols, 1952, p. 144)” The ultimate goal of Burke was to convince us that our experiences are based on symbolic interactionism. Comparing this theory with Uncertainty Reduction Theory (URT) advocated by Berger and Calabrese (1975), the way on how we decode messages are different. For URT, it seeks to explain to us how we try to reduce uncertainty upon meeting a stranger for the first time (Guerrero, Anderson & Afifi, p.78, 2010) and in this context, uncertainty meaning being unsure of how to behave or how the other person will behave. The dramatistic pentad approach discovers the speakers’ motive. As mentioned by Bell (2008, p.95), “[a] dramatistic approach to 5 human interaction mandates an awareness of ourselves as actors speaking in specific situations with specific purposes." The common tie between these 2 theories is the outcome of a message based on the way human interaction comes about. The URT evaluates a message based on the initial encounter whereas dramatism with the use of the pentad evaluates the overall message. To conclude, Burke’s dramatism theory is considered to be part of the ‘new rhetoric’ in the field of communications. He not only invented a new theory but had written many accounts in addition to the new theory. The theory may seem to be a jargon for the uninterested but it is an appeal of Burke for his followers. 2103 words 6 References: akb48family1. (2012). AKB48 2011 Senbatsu election #1-2 eng sub [video]. Retrieved March 3, 2012 from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-pL_78r-P8 Bell, E. (2008). Theories of Performance. Los Angeles: Sage Publications, Inc. Berger, C. R. & Calabrese, R. J. (1975). Some Exploration in Initial Interaction and Beyond: Toward a Developmental Theory of Communication. Human Communication Research, 1, 99–112. Brock, B.L., Burke, K., Burgess, P.G., Simons, H.W. (1985). Dramatism as Ontology or Epistemology: A Symposium. Communication Quarterly, 33, 17-33. Burke, K. (1945). A Grammar of Motives. New York: Prentice-Hall. Burke, K. (1950). A Rhetoric of Motives. New York: Prentice-Hall. Burke, K. (1978). Questions and Answers about the Pentad. College Composition and Communication, 29 (4), 330-335. Dickinson, E.A. (2009). The Montana Meth Project: Applying Burke's Dramatistic Pentad to a Persuasive Anti-drug Media Campaign. Communication Teacher, 23 (3), 126-131. Griffin, E. (2009). A First Look at Communication Theory. New York: McGraw-Hill. Guerrero, L. K., Anderson, P.A. & Afifi, W. A. (2011). Close Encounters: Communication in Relationships. Los Angeles: Sage Publications, Inc. Kimberling, C. R. (1982). Kenneth Burke’s Dramatism and Popular Arts. Ohio: Bowling Green State University Popular Press. Quoted in P. Regis (1986). C. Ronald Kimberling’s Kenneth Burke’s Dramatism and Popular Arts. Reason Papers, 11, 93–96. Landis, J. R. (1998). Sociology: Concepts and Characteristics. California: Wadsworth Publishing Company. 7 Littlejohn, S. W. & Foss, K. A. (2008). Theories of Human Communication. Belmont: Thomson Wadsworth. Melos no Michi. (2011, June 10). AKB48 3rd Senbatsu General Election – Commentary. Retrieved March 3, 2012 from http://melosnomichi.blogspot.com/2011/06/akb48-3rd- senbatsu-general-election_6778.html Nichols, M. H. (1952). Kenneth Burke and the "new rhetoric." Quarterly Journal of Speech, 38, 133-145. Simons, H. W. (1989). Introduction: Kenneth Burke and the Rhetoric of the Human Sciences. In H.W. Simons & T. Melia (Eds.)., The Legacy of Kenneth Burke (pp. 3 – 27). Madison: The University of Winconsin Press. 8  Conclusion This essay was written for one of my assignments during my first year in university. Looking back, I wondered why I picked such fandom to begin with. Perhaps it is the lack of academic articles to this fandom that I would like to dedicate my assignment to, as well as producing more of popular culture articles in the future, if God willing. As this paper was written in 2011, the actor had indeed changed. Maeda Atsuko had already graduated from AKB48 in August 2012 but continues to shine in the Japanese entertainment industry. AKB48 on the other hand has potential aces but I think none of them can compete up to Maeda’s level. Thank you for reading this essay. - Liza 9