Exploring the Language of Drama: From Text to Context

by Michael H. Short (Editor)

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

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

191 pages, Kindle Edition

First published May 28, 1998

Reviews

[pəˈteɪtəʊ · Rating 1 out of 5]

Chapter 3 and chapter 10

[Gabrijela · Rating 4 out of 5]

This turned out to be really great book, not only for literature and language students but also for their theachers.
Althouhg I am, as a linguist, familiar with Grice's and Austin's work about speech acts and pragmatics, the book helped me to combine it with drama plays and theater.
It was actually refreshing to read about drama plays and theater through sppech act's analysis.
I would recommend this book to my students (because it can serve as a workbook) but also to anyone who is interested in broadening up their knowledge about drama and pragmalinguistics.