Radio drama as language - based = 'logocentric' (research)
| Character is constructed by language (BELOW) |
| Spectrum of language: Stoppard to Beckett (BELOW) |
| Extra-linguistic / pre-linguistic (BELOW) |
| Failure of language (BELOW) |
| Radio = verbal primacy (BELOW) |
Character is constructed by language
| Character is language |
| What effect does this have on writing for radio and on acting/directing? |
| The depths revealed in a character are further language, further discourse. |
| Language relies on rules, on causality and consistency. |
| What language struggles are there in radio plays? |
| Can a radio character abandon language? Have a failure of language? |
| Doubt the meaning of words, stammer, misuse language? |
| Use language which reveals disconnectedness? Incomprehensible? |
| Logocentric = centered on language |
| Logorrhea = uncontrollable talkativeness |
Spectrum of language: Stoppard to Beckett
| Language can be highly problematic - in the novel. But on radio? Is radio 'essentially' bound to language? How much questioning of language is observable in radio plays, particularly in 'art' radio plays? |
| Modernism on radio in the Fifties: Breakdown and build-up of language = Beckett and Dylan Thomas |
| (1) Dylan Thomas, Stoppard are one tendency - Inventing language anew, make the universe in parts of speech. Puns, exuberance, language games, prose poetry. Expanding universe of language. Creative and playful possibilities of language. |
| (2) Beckett pushes towards silence |
| An escape from explanation and expansion. Repetition, rhythms, strict structures. |
| Extraordinary that Beckett moves into radio, the language medium. His swerve from 'All That Fall', which is so language-based, but questions it, through to the last monologues. |
| To the edge of the sayable, the unnamable. Last Modernist, lack of playfulness. |
| Minimal verbal consciousness. |
| (3) Postmodernism = character is unknowable and cannot be penetrated by language |
| How much of this on radio, especially in the 'art' slot, Radio 3, and monologues on radio? |
Extra-linguistic / pre-linguistic
| Live in the world with the contradiction that language is omnipresent and inadequate: language articulates the world and language cannot reach the world. |
| Postmodernism: American school of Surfictionists who have abandoned representation altogether, and present an artificial discontinuity and absence of causality. |
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Example from Handke's novel, The Goalkeeper's Fear of the
Penalty Kick:
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Savage Night, character Charlie Bigger: 'After a while everything was said that we could say and it would have been like talking to yourself. So we talked less and less, and pretty soon we were hardly talking at all. And then we weren't talking at all. Just grunting and gesturing and pointing at things. It was like we'd never known how to talk.' Jim Thompson p 144, noir novelist margins of narration language itself become empty and meaningless |
| radio drama always through human signifier, conveyance of human voice |
| word-based: radio drama is a linguistic event, levels of the self where words interact, and achieve formulation in words, linguistic formulation, but above the level where they rise and aspire to words, but do not achieve utterance |
| level of conceptualization, formulating, where we disguise evidence of inner turmoil, it has to still other 'voices' of the mind, except for 'interiorizing, dreaming, preformed speech |
| question of the voice is not the question of the mind, but question of meaning is limited to the question of the voice |
| privileging the personal voice, individuality |
