Exploring the Language of Drama introduces students to the stylistic analysis of drama. Written in an engaging and accessible style, the contributors use techniques of language analysis, particularly from discourse analysis, cognitive linguistics and pragmatics, to explore the language of plays.
The contributors demonstrate the validity of analysing the text of a play, as opposed to focusing on performance. Divided into four broad, yet interconnecting groups, the chapters:
open up some of the basic mechanisms of conversation and show how they are used in dramatic dialogue
look at how discourse analysis and pragmatic theories can be used to help us understand characterization in dialogue
consider some of the cognitive patterns underlying dramatic discourse
focus on the notion of speech as action
there is also a chapter on how to analyse an extract from a play and write up an assignment
Notes on contributors, Acknowledgements, 1. Introduction, 2. From dramatic text to dramatic performance, 3. Turn management in drama, 4. Odd talk: studying discourses of incongruity, 5. Implicature, convention and The Taming of the Shrew, 6. Accessing character through conversation: Tom Stoppard's Professional Foul, 7. (Im)politeness in dramatic dialogue, 8. 'Catch[ing] the nearest way': Macbeth and cognitive metaphor, 9. Three models of power in David Mamet's Oleanna, 10. 'Unhappy' confessions in The Crucible: a pragmatic explanation, 11. The give and take of talk, and Caryl Churchill's Cloud Nine, 12. Advice on doing your stylistics essay on a dramatic text: an example from Alan Ayckbourn's The Revengers' Comedies, Bibliography, Index
