Jonathan Culpeper

Mick Short

Peter Verdonk

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

From Text to Context

Exploring the Language of Drama

Roger D. Sell

In recent years there has been an increasing realization that language and literature are, so to speak, socioculturally consubstantial. Accordingly literary scholars and linguists now often define their interests in sociohistorical terms, and the 'lang.-lit.' divide is giving way to shared concerns which are interdisciplinary between the three poles: poetics, linguistics, society. To illustrate and consolidate this new interdisciplinarity, the editors of this volume have collected a number of articles specially written by an international team of scholars, including figures of the highest international distinction. Key interdisciplinary terms such as contextualization, addressivity, and convention are subjected to critical scrutiny and applied to particular texts. Some of the most widely canvassed theories of communication and literature, particularly Sperber and Wilson's relevance theory and Bakhtin's sociolinguistic poetics, are carefully assessed and extended to new areas. And there are contextualizing approaches to phenomena such as genre, historical genre modulation, irony, metaphor, Modernist impersonality, unreliable narration, informal style, and literary gossip. The book's argument is carefully structured. An extensive introduction outlines the general background of ideas and the thirteen articles are grouped into four main sections, linked together by a clear line of questioning and discussion which is made explicit in sectional introductions. The book is addressed to established scholars, postgraduate students, and advanced undergraduates who are interested in linguistics, literary theory, literary criticism, and sociocultural history and searching for ways of bringing these branches of learning into synergetic relation with each other.

Poetics, Linguistics, History

Literature and the New Interdisciplinarity

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.

Mike Short

This collection introduces students to the stylistic analysis of drama. Written in an engaging and accessible style, the contributors employ a variety of language analysis techniques.

Peter Verdonk

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