Venetska G. English Drama of Absurd: Stylistics of Decoding

This thesis presents the complex analysis of the English drama of absurd as a genre variety of a dramatic text. The investigation singles out the philosophical background of the genre and decodes dominant linguistic and stylistic features of the dialogue and stage directions in the plays written by Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter and Tom Stoppard at different levels of the text. It has been stated that stage directions with their peculiar linguistic and stylistic dominant features are the variety of the author's narration while the dialogue is the reproduction of oral communication with its typical spontaneity, dependence on the situation and correlation between the subject matter of speech and the individuality of the speaker. The working terms "thematically connected communicative structure" (TCCS) and "polythematic dialogic unity" (PTDU) have been introduced to show types of dialogues characteristic of the English drama of absurd. It has been concluded that dialogue in the drama of absurd is phatic, i.e. devoid of conversational balance. It means that the character is concentrated on the speech and ignores his interlocutor, hence the content of the answers does not match the essence of the questions. Such type of dialogue is considered one-sided. The analysis of the thematic and rhematic structure of the dialogue in the drama of absurd has proved to be illogical and chaotic. The rheme is the prevailing component in the characters' cues which causes unequal proportion between the given and the new. It is difficult to conceive what is meant because the changes in the theme and the rheme are abrupt. The analysis of the semantic categories of the dialogue in the plays under investigation has proved that the communication within TCCS is broken while its topic has not been exhausted. The characters either switch from one topic of the conversation to another or leave the subject matter of the discussion open. The investigation of the English drama of absurd as a genre variety and a type of text has revealed that the genre, the style and the literary trend of an artistic work are interconnected. The intention of Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter and Tom Stoppard is to form up the intellectual reader who is supposed to be a specific socially oriented type of personality in terms of historical, cultural and psychological background. This informed addressee is to interpret literary genre created under the influence of existentialism adequately. The communication within the genre of drama of absurd is trilateral: a character vs a character, characters vs a reader and an author vs a reader. The phenomenon of silent communication finds its actualization in the plays under analysis, too. It is traced in the "pause"-and-"silence" types of stage directions and marked either by the punctuation or paragraphemic means. Silent effect in the plays of the English drama of absurd functions to emphasize the state of alienation which arises because of the lack of the stimuli for the active position of the individual in modern society. Key words: drama of absurd, stylistics of decoding, text, dialogue, stage directions, communication, dominant features.