Dramatism, A Brief Summary, from On Symbols and Society Ch. 1

“Dramatism,” from International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, Ed. David L. Sills, Vol. 7, p. 447-448. 1968.

There is action and there is motion. That is the basic pair. Symbol-using animals act, and non-symbolic operations move. There is a basic difference between things and the words for those things, res and verba. The distinction between these 2 realms can be summed up in 3 propositions:

1. There can be no action without motion.
2. There can be motion without action. 
3. Action is not reducible to terms of motion.