Topic 13 - Shared knowledge and absurdist drama (Session A) > More about shared schematic knowledge > Task D > Part 4 > Our answers

More about shared schematic knowledge

Task D – Knowledge about language and of communicative conventions

Part 4 - Our Answers

Part (a)

1. In a knitting pattern

2. In a TV guide.

3. In a chemistry text book.

Part (b)

We looked at our knowledge of language styles and style variation in Topic 6, when we were beginning to explore the stylistic analysis of prose fiction. Knowledge of language styles (often called registers) can be helpful in drama in a number of ways. For example, at the beginning of a play, or scene, if the actors speak in a well-known style it will help us to place them in the fictional world. For example, imagine a radio play which begins with the words ‘. . . and you will be hanged by the neck until dead’. You will immediately imagine a court room in Britain before 1965 (in the UK the death penalty was suspended in 1965 and permanently removed in 1970), with a judge sentencing a murderer to death. So you have ‘placed’ the talk both situationally and temporally through knowledge about register.

In comedies or absurdist plays sometimes the humour or absurdity is sometimes generated by the use of a dramatically inappropriate language style (e.g. a man talking to a small child in a very formal style will suggest, perhaps comically, that he does not know how to talk to children).

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