Abstract:
This paper presents an ontological approach to the domain of drama. After a description of the drama
domain in a cross-cultural and media setting, we introduce the ontology Drammar. Drammar consists of two
components, encoding respectively the conceptual model and the SWRL rules. The conceptual model, mainly
grounding in AI theories, represents the major concepts of drama, such as agents, actions, plans, units, emotions
and values. Then, the paper focuses on the rule component, that augments the representation by mapping the
intentions of the characters onto the actions actually performed and by appraising the emotion felt by the characters
in the drama. To illustrate the functioning of the ontology we introduce a running example from an excerpt of
the drama Hamlet. Finally, we carry out an evaluation of the approach on an annotation task that is relevant for
drama studies research and teaching. In particular, the emotion appraisal is tested on the main characters of four
dramas of dierent nature, by computing precision and recall results with respect to a human annotator.