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In a theatre, the world is framed in two ways: literally by the stage, and metaphorically by presenting a narrative and point of view
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In a theatre, the world is framed in two ways: literally by the stage, and metaphorically by presenting a narrative and point of view
The metaphor of discourse as drama crops up across disciplines.
Genre: we want to know if we’re going to a tragedy or a comedy. And we want to know if we’re clicking on a sales brochure or a user guide.
Script: we understand the world through scripts,1 which we come to rely on. Ordering at a restaurant; a taxi ride; a wedding. When the script changes (for example, Uber) we have to relearn it.
Staging: the linguist Joseph Grimes2 used the metaphor of theatrical staging to describe how narrators establish the cast of characters, and place them in conceptual space (focussed, backgrounded, overlaid, for example). Different cultures and languages have different staging conventions.
Costume: the typographer Bruce Rogers3 saw typefaces as costume, which needs to be true to the historical or cultural context of the text.
The proscenium arch of the theatre stage, or the edge of the page, frames the world and focuses you on a narrative that unfolds as you watch or read.
1. Roger C. Schank and Robert P. Abelson (1977). Scripts, Plans, Goals and Understanding: an Inquiry into Human Knowledge Structures , Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum
2. Joseph Grimes (1975) The Thread of Discourse, Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter Mouton
3. Bruce Rogers (1943) Paragraphs on printing, New York: William E Rudge’s Sons