Emotional Life, Rhetoric, and Roles

Abstract

From a narrative perspective, I suggest restructuring our understanding of the phenomena of emotions by broadening the conception of emotions to emotional life. I make the claim that emotional life is storied; further, that metaphors drawn from the discipline of rhetoric are indispensable to an understanding of emotional life. I make use of the distinction between dramaturgical rhetoric and dramatistic rhetoric to identify the rhetorical acts in which the actor is the author of a concurrent script (dramaturgical) from those for which the author-ship is located in cultural narratives (dramatistic). In conceptualizing emotional life as arising from patterned efforts to resolve moral issues, I turn to role theory to fashion a construction-moral identity roles-as parallel to, but not the same as, social-identity roles. (Social Psychology)