Exploring the Language of Drama

Based at the Department of Linguistics and Modern English Language, Lancaster University, Jonathan Culpeper is Lecturer and Mick Short is Professor of English Language and Literature. Peter Verdonk is Professor in the Department of English Language and Literature at the University of Amsterdam.

• Notes on contributors, Acknowledgements, 1. Introduction, 2. From dramatic text to dramatic performance, 3. Turn management in drama, 4. Odd talk: studying discourses of incongruity, 5. Implicature, convention and The Taming of the Shrew, 6. Accessing character through conversation: Tom Stoppard’s Professional Foul, 7. (Im)politeness in dramatic dialogue, 8. ‘Catch[ing] the nearest way’: Macbeth and cognitive metaphor, 9. Three models of power in David Mamet’s Oleanna, 10. ‘Unhappy’ confessions in The Crucible: a pragmatic explanation, 11. The give and take of talk, and Caryl Churchill’s Cloud Nine, 12. Advice on doing your stylistics essay on a dramatic text: an example from Alan Ayckbourn’s The Revengers’ Comedies, Bibliography, Index