"This study looks at how stylistic methods apply to drama texts, and focuses its attention on Stoppard's Traversties, which, by its parodic nature, compels an investigation of literary parody as an intertextual mode." "The author first seeks to place stylistics within a historical and procedural framework and considers ideological and procedural impasses that have bedevilled stylistic analyses. Detailed analyses of passages from Travesties in the light of what has been discussed then follows."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Satire on politics, literature and art. James Joyce, Lenin, and Dadaist Tristan Tzara come together in the memories of an obscure English diplomat (Henry Wilfred Carr) in Zürich. (Song and dance routines. Prologue, 2 acts, 5 men, 3 women, 2 interiors).

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

A semiotic analysis is made of the six major plays by Eugene O'Neill and an attempt is made to yield a systematic analysis towards humanistic interpretations of texts. Theoretical interpretations are enriched with discussions of the plays. Technical matters such as the segmentation of the text are specified in appendices. Six semiotic dimensions have been studied: motifs, theatrical semiotic systems, their use in communicational functions, role function of the dramatis personae, their levels of awareness, and aristotelian divisions.

How do characters tell stories in plays and for what dramatic purpose? This volume provides the first systematic analysis of narrative episodes in drama from an interactional perspective, applying sociolinguistic theories of narrative and insights from conversation analysis to literary dialogue. The aim of the book is to show how narration can become drama and how analysis of the way a character tells a story can be the key to understanding its role in the unfolding action. The book s interactional approach, which analyses the way in which the characteristic features of everyday conversational stories are used by dramatists to create literary effects, offers an additional tool for dramatic criticism. The book should be of interest to scholars and students of narrative research, conversation and discourse analysis, stylistics, dramatic discourse and theatre studies. Winner of 2012 Esse Book Award for Language and Linguistics"

Whilst poetry and fiction have been subjected to extensive linguistic analysis, drama has long remained a neglected field for detailed study. Vimala Herman argues that drama should be of particular interest to linguists because of its form, dialogue and subsequent translation into performance. The subsequent interaction that occurs on stage is a rich and fruitful source of analysis and can be studied by using discourse methods that linguists employ for real-life interaction. Shakespeare, Pinter, Osborne, Beckett, Chekhov, and Shaw are just some of the dramatists whose material is drawn upon. Each chapter contains a theoretical section in which major concepts of each framework are explained before the relevance of the framework to dramatic discourse is analyzed and explored using textual examples. This book will be of interest to undergraduates and postgraduates studying in the areas of literary linguistics and stylistics, or anyone specialising in the relationship between the text and performance.

Textual Explorations General Editors- Mick Short, Lancaster University Elena Semino, Lancaster University The focus of this series is on the stylistic analysis of literary and non-literary texts, and the theoretical issues which such work raises. Textual Explorations will include books that cover studies of literary authors, genres and other groupings, stylistic studies of non-literary texts, translation study, the teaching of language and literature, the empirical study of literature, and corpus approaches to stylistics and literature study. Books in the series will centre on texts written in English. Readership of the series is mainly undergraduate and postgraduate students, although advanced sixth formers will also find the books accessible. The series will be of particular interest to those who study English language, English literature, text linguistics, discourse analysis and communication studies. Language & Characterisation- People in Plays & Other Texts explores how the words of a text create a particular impression of a character in the reader's mind. Drawing together theories from linguistics, social cognition and literary stylistics, it is the first book-length study to focus on: the role of language and characterisation characterisation in the dialogue of play texts Containing numerous examples from Shakespeare's plays, the book also considers a wide range of other genres, including, prose fiction, verse, films, advertisements, jokes and newspapers. Language and Characterisation is as practical as it is theoretical and equips readers with analytical frameworks to reveal and explain both the cognitive and the linguistic sides of characterisation. Clear and detailed introductions are given to the theories, and useful suggestions for further analysis are also made at the end of each part of the book. The book will be essential reading for students and researchers of language, literature and communication.

This book is based on a close study of modern drama texts. In the first section – Dialogue – it studies specific drama texts. Drama has been neglected by linguistic studies of literature, and this book develops a new area of literary-linguistic stylistics. It demonstrates how recent advances in the sociolinguistic analysis of conversation (discourse analysis) can account for readers' and audiences' intuitions about dramatic dialogue. The second section – Discourse – uses these studies to develop a powerful and general model of spoken discourse. As well as accounting for the utterance-by-utterance organization of dramatic texts, it provides a descriptive model for the analysis of naturally occurring conversation. Literary texts and natural conversation are used to illustrate each other.

This is the first book-length study of how point of view is manifested linguistically in dramatic texts. It examines such issues as how readers process the shifts in viewpoint that can occur within such texts. Using insights from cognitive linguistics, the book aims to explain how the analysis of point of view in drama can be undertaken, and how this is fruitful for understanding textual and discoursal effects in this genre. Following on from a consideration of existing frameworks for the analysis of point of view, a cognitive approach to deixis is suggested as being particularly profitable for explaining the viewpoint effects that can arise in dramatic texts. To expand on the large number of examples discussed throughout the book, the penultimate chapter consists of an extended analysis of a single play. This book is relevant to scholars in a range of areas, including linguistics, literary studies and cognitive science.

Exploring the Language of Poems, Plays and Prose examines how readers interact with literary works, how they understand and are moved by them. Mick Short considers how meanings and effects are generated in the three major literary genres, carying out stylistic analysis of poetry, drama and prose fiction in turn. He analyses a wide range of extracts from English literature, adopting an accessible approach to the analysis of literary texts which can be applied easily to other texts in English and in other languages.