ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that social hierarchy infuses all symbolic expression and that the kind of symbols available to determine social hierarchy. The symbolic expression of social sentiments and attitudes keeps them alive in the mind and spirit of the individual actor. The social function of symbolism in great community dramas is to maintain and transmit social bonds from one generation to another, and to create and sustain the emotional dispositions on which society depends for its existence. The chapter also argues that analysis of structure of social action as a symbolic act involves definition of structure in terms of dramatic action. There are five elements, namely: scene, agent, act, agency, and purpose in the structure of a social act. The sociology of art, and especially a sociology of comic art, is a general, as well as a specialized, study of society, in so far as society is determined by the communication of significant symbols.
