How to Analyse Dramatic Dialogue

Heres what to look out for if you need to analyse dramatic dialogue.

I Text Comprehension
Introductory sentence: genre, title, playwright, (year if given)
Dialogue situation: place, time, atmosphere
Contextualization of the excerpt: position in the context of the whole play,
importance of the excerpt for the drama

IIa Analysis of Contents

Characters/Figures: Motifs, personal situation, behaviour, properties like outward
appearance, ideology a character adheres to
Character constellation: relationships between characters, often best presented in
a diagram
Subject of the dialogue: Contents, positions, arguments
Course of the dialogue: Positions at beginning and end, development of possible
conflict, turning point(s)
Sort of dialogue: Discussion, questioning, quarrel, decision taking, chat
Behaviour in the dialogue: rough percentages of text each figure has, changes of
speaker, initiative in dialogue
Roles in dialogue: trying to achieve or
displaying symmetrical (equal), complementary (cooperating), superior, inferior ro
les
Illocutionary or perlocutionary acts: Assertive, directive, commissive,
expressive or declarative acts (see Speech Act Theory text below)
Dialogue disturbances: Misunderstandings, deceptions, contradictions,
interruptions

Orientation: dialogue directed to the audience or to figures on stage

IIb Language Analysis

Formal structure: Outline, distribution of soliloquy and dialogue, stage directions
Register: formal or informal, technical
Style: contemporary to play, modern, typical for certain groups of the population,
dialect, accent
Rhetorical devices

Important Hints
Remember
only to use any of these when you can explain their functions: Always ask
for the reason why the playwright uses the categories/devices you have
described. Answers often come from considering Speech Act Theory categories,
describing roles in the dialogue or, in IIb, from the typical effects of rhetorical
devices.
to give your essay an argumentative structure: You want to present your
point convincingly.

Speech Act Theory

When we speak, our words do not have meaning in and of themselves. They are
very much affected by the situation, the speaker and the listener. Thus words alone
do not have a simple fixed meaning.

Basically, there are three speech acts:

Locutionary acts: how you say something (the locution), phonetically,
semantically etc. This may not constitute a speech act.

Two types of locutionary act are utterance acts, where something is said (or a
sound is made) and which may not have any meaning, and propositional acts,
where a particular reference is made. (Acts are sometimes also called utterances
thus a perlocutionary act is the same as a perlocutionary utterance).
Illocutionary acts: The intended significance; what you say. The illocutionary
force is the speakers intent, the true speech act, e.g. informing, ordering,
warning.Performativity occurs when the utterance of a word also enacts it (I
name this ship).
Perlocutionary acts: The effect on the feelings, thoughts or actions of either the
speaker or the listener, of what you say. In other words, they seek to change minds.
Unlike locutionary acts, perlocutionary acts are external to the performance, e.g.,
inspiring, persuading or deterring.

Indirect speech acts: Using implications, hidden meaning: Would you like to
meet me for lunch? Indirect speech act response: Im busy.

Searle (1969) identified five illocutionary/perlocutionary points or categories:

Assertives: statements may be judged true or false because they aim to describe a
state of affairs in the world, committing the speaker to the truth of what he says.
Directives: statements attempt to make the other persons actions fit the
propositional content, to make the listener take a certain action.
Commissives: statements which commit the speaker to a course of action in the
future as described by the propositional content (promises)
Expressives: statements that express the sincerity condition of the speech act;
the speakers attitudes and emotions.
Declaratives: statements that attempt to change the world by representing it as
having been changed, like baptisms or the acts of marrying people.

Examples
Oh! is an utterance act (communication is not intended it is just a sound caused
by surprise).

The black cat is a propositional act (something is referenced, but no

communication may be intended).
The black cat is ugly is an assertive illocutionary act (it intends to communicate).
Please find the ugly black cat is a directive perlocutionary act (it seeks to change
behaviour).

The speech act theory was originated by Austin (1962) and developed further
by Searle (1969).
Adapted from http://changingminds.org/explanations/theories/speech_act.htm

Lying in Speech Act Theory

One needs to look at it from the listeners point of view:
Theres the person who proposes marriage for fraudulent reasons: I love you so
much. The listener thinks this is a hybrid between an expressive (expressiong
emotions, sincerity condition) and an assertive (informing, committing speaker to
the truth of what he says) act, believing to be informed of a fact and that the
speaker is sincere. She will not assume that it is, in fact, an indirect directive act
aimed at opening her purse.
This intentional, parasitic misrepresentation of the speakers speech acts creates an
asymmetrical situation intended to gain an unfair advantage over the listener.
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