Stylistics routledge English Language Introductions

structured
; on how it is organised in a linear fashion and
how its various components are bolted together. A structural analysis of discourse
thus seeks to explore the connection (or sometimes, lack of connection) in dialogue
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between questions and answers, statements and acknowledgements, requests and
reactions, and so on. The second orientation involves the study of discourse in terms
of 
strategy
. Here attention is focussed on the way speakers use different interactive
tactics at specific points during a sequence of talk. As observed in A9, the axis of
selection forms a strategic continuum ranging from ‘direct’ to ‘indirect’, along 
which different types of utterances can be plotted in terms of their varying degrees
of politeness.
If not always signalled in precisely these terms, most stylistic research on drama
dialogue over the years has focussed on one or the other planes of organisation. The
main thrust of this work, again not always flagged up explicitly, has been both to
explain how characterisation is created through patterns of language and to highlight
the points of departure and/or intersection between the discourse world of the play
and the discourse situation of the world outside the play. This short unit surveys
some of the issues and developments arising from this research in discourse stylistics.
The strategies of dialogue
Analysing play dialogue in terms of discourse 
strategy
often involves cross-reference
between the character level and the higher-order interactive level of playwright and
audience/reader (see A9). Not surprisingly, many interesting insights have come from
studies of the ‘Theatre of the Absurd’ where particularly rich comparisons can be
drawn between the discourse worlds inside and outside the play. The tradition of
absurd writing is characterised by a preoccupation with the apparent futility of human
existence, and this often manifests in play talk that, when compared to the socio-
linguistic routines of everyday verbal interaction, stands out as deviant, anti-realist
or just plain daft.
Here is a brief and relatively straightforward example of how our expectations
about discourse routines can act as a context-framing device for interpreting play
dialogue. In the following scene from N. F. Simpson’s absurdist play 
One Way
Pendulum
, a courtroom has been hastily assembled inside a domestic living room to
facilitate Mr. Groomkirby’s ‘swearing in’ ceremony:
The Usher enters followed by Mr. Groomkirby, whom he directs into the witness box.
Mr. Groomkirby takes the oath
.
Mr. Groomkirby:
(
holding up a copy of ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’
)
I swear, by Harriet Beecher Stowe, that the evidence I shall give
shall be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
Judge:
You understand, do you, that you are now on oath?
Mr. Groomkirby:
I do, m’lord.
(N. F. Simpson 1960: 60)
A courtroom is institutionally sanctioned to deal exclusively with legal proceedings,
and is manifestly not the sort of thing that can be set up by anybody in, for example,
a domestic living room. Furthermore, there are established procedures for ritu-
alised activities such as the swearing-in of witnesses, and shared assumptions 
between participants about the way these routines are conducted thus form part of
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the cognitive context of the courtroom. Although Mr. Groomkirby’s ‘swearing-in’
contains many instantly recognisable formulaic structures such as ‘ . . . the truth, the
whole truth and nothing but the truth . . .’, the use of