Discourse in ContextThe Monologue

Resumen

The term "discourse" may be used to refer to both written texts and spoken language. For Crystal discourse is "a continuous stretch of (especially spoken) language larger than a sentence, often constituting a coherent unit such as a sermon, argument,joke, or narrative" (1992,25). For Cook (1989, 156) discourse consists of stretches of language perceived to be meaningful, unified and purposive. It follows that a monologue may be considered a specific type of discourse, in that it is a piece of what can be called ''performed writing ", as it often takes the form of a (written) prepared sermon, speech, argument, anecdote, or narrative delivered orally in a public context. Occasionally, the prepared version differs slightly from the performed version due to last-minute innovations, minor slips and recoveries, abbreviation of the whole due to lack of time, or other modifications which the speaker considers appropriate for a particular audience. A monologue should not be confosed with a soliloquy, which is when a character reflects out loud for the benefit of the audience, who, accordingly, assume that they are listening to private thoughts and not actual speech. In the case of the soliloquy, thoughts, feelings, and ideas are shared with the audience, but other characters in the drama do not know what is being expressed by the character at that moment. A monologue, on the other hand, is a form of narrative with a structure consisting of several stages-exposition, complication, climax and resolution. It is essentially a first-person narrative of the speaker's viewpoint or experience, and there is an implied audience or interlocutor. The speaker may adopt a fictional persona, and since no other characters intervene directly, it is left to the audience to interpret what is being said, to whom, and, very often more importantly, what is not being said. Within the category of monologues we can find humorous examples which are exploited for entertainment. It is a performance genre in which the actor displays his/her ability to enact a comic role, using a sense of timing, and incorporating appropriate diction, and also facial expressions and movements if the piece is enacted live. The performer does not interact directly with other characters, but there is an intense relationship with the audience. The genre differs from stand-up comedy in that it is a structured narrative and does not, therefore, depend on a series of jokes loosely and often artificially strung together around a theme. Comic monologues often consist of one-sided telephone conversations in which the audience has to deduce what is being said at the other end of the line, and guess the outcome, according to the clues given, which are often deliberately ambiguous, and violate Grice's maxims in varying degrees (Attardo 2001). Monologues provide the opportunity to analyse a special kind of spoken discourse which is constructed to produce a particular effect. This chapter will take classic comic monologues by Rowan Atkinson, Joyce Grenfell and Bob Newhart, three recognised exponents of this genre, and examine them in order to determine common characteristics and differentiating features according to subject matter, format and medium. The written scripts will be analysed together with the paralinguistic features of the delivery, adopting a contrastive approach to different subtypes of discourse within this variety. For this purpose, audio-visual recordings obtained in the public domain of Internet are essential material; sources for these recordings and other similar ones will be indicated and the corresponding transcripts will be provided in the appendix.