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.
Exploring the Language of Drama:
* each chapter is summarized and has the follow-up exercises
* offers practical advice on how to analyse a play extract and write it up as an assignment
* includes contributions from some of the world's leading scholars in the field
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.