The shared communicative act of theatrical texts in performance: a relevance theoretic approach

  • This article adopts a relevance theoretic approach to meaning making in theatrical texts and performances. Theatrical texts communicate immediately to multiple audiences: readers, actors, directors, producers, and designers. They communicate less directly to the writer’s ultimate audience – the playgoer or spectator – through the medium of performance. But playgoers are not passive receptacles for interpretations distilled in rehearsal, enacted through performance, or developed in study and reflection. Rather, in the framework of communication postulated by relevance theory, the audience is an active participant in making meaning. I will briefly review a range of approaches to meaning making in theatre, and then outline my view of a relevance theoretic account of the vital contributions of the audience in constructing the interpretation of performance, treating it as a communicative act.

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Metadaten
Author:Anne Furlong
URN:urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-554765
DOI:https://doi.org/10.15462/ijll.v9i3.121
ISSN:2194-5594
Parent Title (English):International journal of literary linguistics : IJLL
Publisher:Johannes Gutenberg-Universität
Place of publication:Mainz
Document Type:Article
Language:English
Date of Publication (online):2020/07/12
Date of first Publication:2020/07/12
Publishing Institution:Universitätsbibliothek Johann Christian Senckenberg
Release Date:2020/08/28
Tag:interpretation; performance; relevance theory; spectatorship; theatre
Volume:9
Issue:3
Page Number:23
First Page:1
Last Page:23
HeBIS-PPN:469733020
Dewey Decimal Classification:4 Sprache / 40 Sprache / 400 Sprache
4 Sprache / 41 Linguistik / 410 Linguistik
Sammlungen:Linguistik
Linguistik-Klassifikation:Linguistik-Klassifikation: Textlinguistik/Schriftsprache / Text linguistics
Zeitschriften / Jahresberichte:International journal of literary linguistics
:urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-483647
Licence (German):License LogoCreative Commons - Namensnennung 3.0