'The linguistic characterisation of the major dramatic genres' (original) (raw)

13-17 Stylistics in language and literature.pdf

VEDA PUBLICATIONS, 2018

Language as we all know is an important or should I say an indispensable tool for human communication as it is through language that knowledge is transferred, meaning is created and understood ensuring social as well as scientific development of human society. It’s true not only for speech but also in writing, both being two of the most potential uses of language. After becoming a university subject in 1960s English language has being the target of literary critics. They have accused the linguists for being too dry when it comes to analysis of a piece of writing. And the linguists have accused the literary scholars for being to subjective, imaginative unambiguous for the same task. To bridge the differences or the gap between the two, stylistics a branch of applied linguistics functions to analyse the use of language literary texts. However it's not limited to the study of literature alone but is also stretched to varieties of writings like texts related to media and journalism, the advertisements etc. This paper is an attempt to explore the link between language and its most creative use that is Literature. Through this paper I aim to show the features of language and creative uses under which these forms are put to appeal to human senses and make a piece of literature alive whether it's romance, tragedy or comedy.

Tradaptation of Dramatic Texts

This article deals with the feasibility of applying cultural translation studies approaches to intra-lingual adaptation of dramatic texts through the discussion of adaptation terminology, the interchangeability of adaptation and translation, and the relevance of combining both into " tradaptation ". The purpose is to study loose adaptations of dramatic texts, especially those of Shakespeare, following cultural translation studies principles. The study has shown that it is satisfactorily feasible to use inter-lingual translation principles, across the spectrum from strictly literal to loose free, and apply them to the intra-lingual adaptation of dramatic texts, with the example of The Al-Hamlet Summit as a main reference. Further studies can help attain substantial progress in the analysis of the concept of adaptation.

Language and Verbal Art Revisited: linguistic approaches to the study of literature

2007

The book will appeal to the growing number of scholars working in, and students needing to investigate, the field of literary linguistics, or stylistics. Thus it is meant for both specialists and non-specialists. The intended readership more particularly includes: our students of English linguistic stylistics at the University of Bologna’s Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literature (in all 3 of our MA programs), for whom it would be required reading with strongly recommended purchase (approximate numbers yearly: 60). Many of the authors also assure me that the volume will be adopted in stylistics courses they periodically teach. The papers in the volume are on a wide variety of aspects of the language-literature connection, and approach it from a variety of perspectives. All include theoretical considerations and practical applications. Indeed, one of the book’s principle aims is to provide a wide range of theoretical and methodological approaches to the linguistic study of literature, all of them firmly rooted in specific contexts of culture. This it does by hosting papers from scholars working within various grammatical and discursive frameworks, including SFL, pragmatics, corpus linguistics, ethnolinguistics, cultural and translation studies. It also aims at providing illustrative instances of the kind of work currently being done by researchers working in various parts of the academic world, (Europe, Australia, and Africa). Inclusion of a wide range of literary genres and world literatures is a further goal. To this end, the papers deal with, for example: Shakespeare’s plays; modern Austrian authors writing in German, such as Thomas Bernhard, Elfriede Jelinek, Marlene Streeruwitz; Perrault’s Histoires et contes du temps passé and their translations by Angela Carter; the Spanish poets of the Generación del ‘50; Malaysian-Singaporean poets in English; Anglo-American Modernist poets (Frost, Stevens, Pound and D.H. Lawrence) and novelists (Woolf and Conrad); contemporary short stories by Marina Warner and Turkish-German narrative by Feridun Zamoğlu; The Gospel of St. John and Harry Potter. The main message of the volume is that, as Hasan has so succinctly put it, […] in verbal art the role of language is central. Here language is not as clothing to the body; it IS the body.” (1985/1989: 91), and that, as a result, any true ‘appraisal’ of the meanings of the literature text must address that language, with reference to the text’s specific ‘context of creation’. A further message is that, though all the contributors to the volume acknowledge this basic premise, there are a variety of linguistic theories and practices at our disposal for probing the language of verbal art. Separate introductions to each of the contributions will seek to guide above all the non-specialist reader by describing, contrasting and comparing the diverse frameworks that the volume comprises. For a similar purpose, a general introduction diachronically traces key moments in the development of the study of the language of literature seen as socio-cultural practice.

Corpus Stylistics in Contemporary English Dramas: Keywords and Semantic Fields of Delusions

GEMA Online® Journal of Language Studies, 2022

As reflected through contemporary Anglo-American dramas, delusion is considered a repertoire afflicted by the societal depression after World War II. Since post-war depression can be vocally expressed, it poses a question of how the theme of delusion could be portrayed through emotive phrases and how they are interconnected with the literary themes in dramas. This study investigates semantic fields demonstrated through corpus-based methodologies on a collection of contemporary dramas via Lancsbox and Wmatrix. Ten contemporary British and American dramas are constructed as a specialized corpus to compare with the reference corpus, built upon BNC and COCA imaginative texts. The comparison can generate keywords, lexical bundles, shared collocates, and extract the words indicating what the specialized corpus is about, or “aboutness.” The meta-tiered results show that “Negative,” “Wanted,” “Getting and possession,” and “Diseases” are the fields that relate to the aboutness of the contemporary dramas. The top 20 keywords can refer to the specialized corpus’s dialogic structure and highlight four characters with dilemmas regarding the delusional disorder. The collocation network, measured by GraphColl, can raise stylistic awareness where these keywords and semantic fields are interconnected and substantiate the theme of delusion. Though literary texts are interpreted through close reading, this study argues that quantitative and qualitative aspects can be integrated to undermine the absence of positivism.

Stylistics and Linguistic Analyses of Literary Works

2019

A linguistic analysis of literature has caused debates among linguists and between linguists and literary critics. The debate among linguists occurs because they have different opinions regarding the nature of literary language, while the debate between linguists and literary scholars arises as literary scholars question the authority of linguistics to study literary writings. Therefore, in this paper I argue that the language of literature is similar to that of non-literary texts, and I also believe that because the centrality of language in literary writings, linguistics, as the study of language, has the authority to study literature. One linguistic approach to literature is stylistics, which studies the forms, functions, and meanings of literary language in a detailed and systematic way.

The Interface between Translation and Drama

2017

Translating a dramatic text is a daunting task. The challenge is rooted in the fact that the text is specifically written to be acted or performed on the stage. A dramatic text is written in acts, scenes, and contains dialogues spoken by the characters. Apart from this, translating a dramatic text from one language with a different cultural setting into another language requires high creativity to guarantee faithfulness in the target language and culture. This article analyzes the interface between translation and drama as well as the woes and possibilities of translating Wole Soyinka's The Lion and the Jewel into French. The result of this research indicates that linguistic and cultural issues which are based on the shared knowledge of the original author and the readers are mostly problematic in translation and usually require the translator to do serious research to acquire the necessary background knowledge, and find out whether this background knowledge is at the target language readers' disposal; if not, to make it available to them through translations, expansions, explanations, and footnotes.

For a Re-evaluation of Genre Theory in Contemporary Drama

STUDIA UBB DRAMATICA, LXIV, 2, 2019, p. 181 - 190 , 2019

Despite their singularities and divergences, the major dramatic theories of the twentieth century keep the classical tripartition of genres untouched. Our recent research on rhapsodic criticism has evidenced the increasingly appropriation by playwrights of elements traditionally reserved for a fourth genre, as important as epic, lyric and dramatic genres, but left aside by critical reflection because of its traditional association with “non-artistic” practices: the essayistic genre. A new theory of genres that incorporates this fourth genre into the classical triad may not only illuminate some of the main features of modern and contemporary drama, but it also allows a more accurate understanding of some of the fundamental works of Western drama.