Exploring The Language Of Drama: From Text To Context (interface)

Exploring the Language of Drama This edited collection 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, pragmatics and cognitive linguistics, to explore the language of plays. Exploring the Language of Drama: • has chapter summaries and follow-up exercises; • offers practical advice on how to analyse a play extract and write up an assignment; • includes contributions from some of the world’s leading scholars in the field, and the plays analysed range from the works of Shakespeare to those of Arthur Miller and Tom Stoppard. The contributors demonstrate the validity of analysing the text of a play, as opposed to focusing on performance. Divided into four broad yet inter-connecting 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. Contributions from Mick Short, Vimala Herman, Paul Simpson, Marilyn M. Cooper, Neil Bennison, Jonathan Culpeper, Donald C. Freeman, Jean Jacques Weber, Valerie Lowe, Michael Toolan and Peter K.W. Tan. Based at the Department of Linguistics and Modern English Language, Lancaster University, Jonathan Culpeper is Lecturer and Mick Short is Professor of English Language and Literature. Peter Verdonk is Professor in the Department of English Language and Literature at the University of Amsterdam. The INTERFACE Series A linguistic deaf to the poetic function of language and a literary scholar indifferent to linguistic problems and unconversant with linguistic methods, are equally flagrant anachronisms—Roman Jakobson. This statement, made over twenty-five years ago, is no less relevant today, and ‘flagrant anachronisms’ still abound. The aim of the INTERFACE series is to examine topics at the ‘interface’ of language studies and literary criticism and in doing so to build bridges between these traditionally ‘divided’ disciplines. Already published in the series: Narrative A critical linguistic introduction Michael J. Toolan Literature about Language Valerie Shepherd The Discourse of Advertising Guy Cook Twentieth-century Poetry From text to context Edited by Peter Verdonk Language, Literature and Critical Practice Ways of analysing text David Birch Literature, Language and Change Ruth Waterhouse and John Stephens Literary Studies in Action Alan Durant and Nigel Fabb Language in Popular Fiction Walter Nash Language, Text and Context Essays in stylistics Edited by Michael J. Toolan The Language of Jokes Analysing verbal play Delia Chiaro Language, Ideology and Point of View Paul Simpson A Linguistic History of English