Discourse As Performance
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Discourse as Performance
Author: Michael Issacharoff
language: en
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Release Date: 1989
One of the first books to apply contemporary linguistic and semiotic research to drama, Discourse as Performance is an investigation into theatrical discourse - the specifically theatrical use of language in the broadest sense, from verbal utterance to non verbal uses comprising the visual elements of gesture, facial expression, movement, costume, players' bodies, properties, and decor. The book is in three parts. In the first part, the author deals with theatrical discourse proper and distinguishes between its two main modes: dialogue and stage directions. Both modes address the problem of the specificity of theatrical discourse in contrast to other types of discourse, both literary and non-literary. The dialogue raises the questions of who speaks in a play (author, characters, actors) and to whom; the stage directions raise the question of reading a play, as opposed to seeing it performed onstage. The author links these issues to speech act theory and intertextuality.
The Power of Discourse in Ritual Performance
This volume focuses on the ways discourse is used in ritual performances as an important medium of power, enabling speakers/actors to construct, redefine and transform interpersonal relationships, cultural concepts and worldviews. The various case studies gathered here, from South Asia, South East Asia, Africa and South America, show that recent developments in linguistic anthropology, ritual theory and performance studies provide new conceptual tools to take a fresh look at these issues. Foregrounding pragmatic approaches to language and discourse, they explore the social dynamics of rhetorical discourse, text and context, normativity and creativity, the poetics of dialogue and speech, as well as the manifold interactions of speakers, addressees and audience. The volume thus embraces both the micro-level of speech activities as well as the macro-level of social and political relationships and brings out the subtle workings of control, authority, and power in situations marked as ritual. The contributions, all based on extensive fieldwork, include many concrete samples of speech and discourse which give an authentic impression of the different voices and make for vivid reading.
Circus as Multimodal Discourse
Now available in paperback, this volume presents a theory of the circus as a secular ritual and introduces a method to analyze its performances as multimodal discourse. The book's fifteen chapters cover the range of circus specialties (magic, domestic and wild animal training, acrobatics, and clowning) and provide examples to show how cultural meaning is produced, extended and amplified by circus performances. Bouissac is one of the world's leading authorities on circus ethnography and semiotics and this work is grounded on research conducted over a 50 year span in Europe, Asia, Australia and the Americas. It concludes with a reflection on the potentially subversive power of this discourse and its contemporary use by activists. Throughout, it endeavours to develop an analytical approach that is mindful of the epistemological traps of both positivism and postmodernist license. It brings semiotics and ethnography to bear on the realm of the circus.