Linguistic layering and the play semiotics of postdramatic (and dramatic) theatre The case of Disco Pigs by Enda Walsh Allan James The article considers the linguistic essence of postdramatic theatre by submitting its play-defining and play-realisational elements to analysis from a linguistic semiotic perspective. In doing so, it is argued that a ‘stylistics’ understanding of theatre and drama must connect directly to such characterising features and establish the linguistic structures that systematically express these dramatic and theatrical elements as ‘signs’. Since the ‘postdramatic’ is understood as a late 20th/ early 21st century set of trends in theatre production which complements but also challenges existing ‘dramatic’ practice and is characterised in relation to such, linguistic analysis must equally compare and contrast the two. In the present study, this is achieved by the further refinement of a linguistic semiotic framework of analysis for postdramatic theatre which has previously been developed for dramatic theatre (James and Gömceli 2018). The play under consideration, Disco Pigs by Enda Walsh, is chosen for the exemplification of the present analysis since it can be shown to manifest particularly explicitly both the dramatic and postdramatic of theatre practice. 1. Introduction The linguistic analysis of plays in the stylistics traditions of textual or cognitive analysis has concentrated its attention almost exclusively on the language and discourse properties of dramatic theatre, i.e. on plays which manifest the central drama-constitutive elements of characterisation, plot and setting deriving from the Aristotelian ‘ethos’, ‘mythos’ and ‘opsis’, respectively, and an orientation to his dramatic unities of action, time and place, all contributing to the further drama-defining features of the linearity of narrative development, i.e. ‘telos’, and mimesis as performance (for AAA - Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik Band 45 (2020) · Heft 2 Gunter Narr Verlag Tübingen DOI 10.2357/ AAA-2020-0016 Allan James 110 representative studies, cf., e.g. the monographs of Burton 1980; Herman 1995; Mandala 2007; and the shorter studies collected in Culpeper, Short and Verdonk 1998). However, at the same time there has developed in Western theatre from the late 20 th century onward a move toward verbal performance in plays bereft of controlled dialogue between characters, of a linear plot and a stable setting or series of settings, amounting to a denial of the totality of dramatic elements and unities previously stated. Theatre which does not follow dramatic conventions in this way, in which dialogues (and stage directions) as expressing the representation of a well-ordered fictional world of drama give way to the presentation of a vocalised text to an audience which bears no immediate reference to a dramatically ordered fictional world and where actors are ‘text bearers’ has been defined as postdramatic (Lehmann 2006). Prominent examples of plays exhibiting the postdramatic in different dimensions are those of British ‘In-Yer-Face’ theatre (Sierz 2001), with representative individual plays analysed by Barnett (2008) and Izmir (2017). It must be noted, though, that such ‘In-Yer-Face’ plays still allow for elements of dramatic theatre to be prominent, such as character, plot and setting, if only to be problematised. Indeed, the postdramatic is not understood as signalling a total alternative to the dramatic in theatre practice, “but rather as a rupture and a beyond that continue to entertain relationships with drama and are in many ways an analysis and ‘anamnesis’ of drama” (Jürs-Munby 2006: 2, Introduction in Lehmann 2006). Following on from this, but from a linguistic perspective, the aim of the present paper is to reveal how one and the same vocal and verbal substance is employed differentially but in parallel to signal the semiotics of its dramatic and theatrical expression. In this sense, the present work relates to the earlier structural semiotic schema of Elam (2002), who distinguishes ‘dramatic’ and ‘theatrical’ subcodes of expression which employ equivalent verbal and vocal substance and structure, albeit only in relation to dramatic theatre. By contrast, and without reference to structural semiotic ‘codes’, the present intention is to establish the linguistic (paralinguistic and extralinguistic) features and the semiotics associated with the staging and performance of a play which realises both the dramatic and postdramatic of theatre. This is attempted via an extension of the linguistic stylistics model of textual analysis developed in James and Gömceli (2018) for the interpretation of dramatic discourse to that of postdramatic discourse, with additional reference to the postdramatic analysis of Gömceli (2017), which focusses on aspects of its language and physicality. Linguistic layering and the play semiotics in Disco Pigs by E. Walsh 111 2. The linguistic challenges of postdramatic theatre 2.1. Language in postdramatic theatre As already stated above, postdramatic theatre understands its linguistic communication as in the first place that between the stage and spectators as opposed to that between the characters on stage as in dramatic theatre. In place of mimesis as the behavioural signalling force at the forefront of the actors’ performance in drama it is the ‘non-mimetic framed as if it were the mimetic’ (Carlson 2015: 593) that is produced by the performers in postdramatic theatre, the framing of the performance constituted by the theatre location itself, i.e. by an ‘ostending’ the discourse as theatre (Eco 1977: 110). This difference in the addressivity of the verbal message produced on stage leads to an ‘autonomization of language’ (“Autonomisierung der Sprache”) away from merely constituting the speech of dramatic characters to being part of ‘an autonomous theatricality’ (“eine autonome Theatralität”) (Poschmann 1997: 177). Language then becomes part of a total theatrical soundscape where “(I)nstead of a linguistic re-presentation of facts and meanings, we find a disposition and a ‘position’ of tones, tonalities, words, sentences, sounds which are not so much controlled by the meaning but exposed as a material open to manifold possibilities of understanding” (Lehmann 2007: 50) in which the physical presence of the text is the primary theatrical reality, with the “inner rhythm, the melos, the pleasure of the text reworking the signifying structure” (Lehmann 2007: 50). Thus emerges in postdramatic theatre an ‘independent auditory semiotics’ (Lehmann 2006: 91), the speech or discourse “without telos, hierarchy and causality, without fixable meaning and unity” (Lehmann 2006: 145). As these descriptions of postdramatic theatre indicate, language is seen as an equal part of the total physical display of performance, itself as vocality with its lexical and non-lexical semantics, to say the least, ambivalent to interpretation and in any case not representational of any accompanying fictional world depicted by drama. Indeed, it exists as its own physicality, and as part of a whole ‘energetic theatre’ (Lyotard 1984, after Lehmann 2006: 78) ‘presents’ as self-referentiality (Lehmann 2006: 94), as ‘auto-deixis’ (2006: 162). As much as the voice shares semiotic space with other signifying entities, physical and material, on stage, then vocality shares space with other acoustic resources such as music and staged sounds and noise(s). And in postdramatic theatre while vocality as physicality can be “presented in the form of breathing, groaning, whispering, and screaming; vocal articulation as a whole takes on a life of its own as a spatio-temporal and rhythmical tonal structure” (Kolesch 2013: 105), it can also produce its own musicality, a ‘melos’, shared or not with co-staged music and other sound effects (Bouko 2009). Allan James 112 In a general conclusion on the relationship between dramatic and postdramatic theatre, Fensham observes that “without the dramatic text with its literary devices and discursive traces, theatre approaches either dance - minus acting techniques and stagecraft - visual or performance art minus its repertoire of images” (2012: 8). In an even more reductionist conclusion on the relationship, Carlson (2015) states baldly: “(T)ake away mimesis and a narrative text and all that is left to prevent the postdramatic theatre from dissolving into the raw material of everyday life is the fact that it is presented to the audience within a theatrical or performative framework” (2015: 588). Given this acknowledgement of theatricality/ performance on the part of the audience, it is the case that, in the first instance at least, the staged world constitutes the ‘fictional’ world itself in postdramatic theatre, whereas in dramatic theatre the two are clearly separated by the audience’s acceptance of the former representing the latter. This initial assumption of equivalence between stage world and any fictional world suggested by postdramatic theatre, however, does not preclude a subsequent separation of the two in the belief that the performance must ‘stand for something’ beyond the immediate performance semiotics itself, even if the ‘something’ must be interpreted solely via the theatrical imagination of the audience. This ‘new spectatorship’ as addressees (Fensham 2012) indeed then co-create the meaning and process of the event as performative images subject to highly variable and diverse affective interpretations (even as ‘proto-dramatic narration’? ), while the addressers as ‘text bearers’ project the script in its vocality and physicality to express in the first instance the ‘emotive’ function of language (Jakobson 1960). The fact that the addressivity of text and performance is to the audience does not, however, in the practice of postdramatic theatre necessarily imply any explicit linguistic realisation of either Jakobson’s (1960) ‘conative’ or indeed ‘metalingual’ functions of language, but the language as perceived by audiences may well be interpreted as such. 2.2. A linguistics of postdramatic theatre: a first approximation A linguistic analysis of postdramatic theatre must foremostly address how the semiotics of its text and performance are systematically realised in/ via language. In comparison, it has been suggested above with regard to dramatic theatre that much linguistic analysis in the stylistics paradigm has focussed particularly on character dialogue, and such analysis has employed variously speech act theory, conversation analysis, ethnomethodology and theories of turn-taking and politeness as frameworks of interpretation (cf., e.g. Burton 1980; Herman 1995; Mandala 2007). Other linguistic research has examined stage directions as well as dialogue from a reader’s cognitive processing perspective within text world theory (cf. Cruickshank and Lahey 2010), and specifically characterisation in plays has been subject to a comprehensive analysis in Culpeper (2001). From a Linguistic layering and the play semiotics in Disco Pigs by E. Walsh 113 more semiotic point of view, it has been noted that the ‘multimodalities’ of a filmed play have been examined in McIntyre (2008), while both Aston and Savona (1991) and the above-mentioned Elam (2002) attempt a signsystem analysis of theatre text and performance of dramatic theatre, the former offering much empirical analysis of dialogue and stage directions, the latter offering a detailed theoretical framework for The Semiotics of Theatre and Drama, including reference to linguistic systems expressed via the ‘cultural codes’ comprising linguistic rules, ‘pragmatic rules’, the ‘rhetorical’, the ‘paralinguistic’, the ‘dialectal’ and the ‘idiolectal’ (2002: 52). A social semiotic framework for the linguistic analysis of (literary) dramatic discourse has been established in previously mentioned James and Gömceli (2018) and this will be expanded upon further below. While both dramatic and postdramatic theatre expression avail themselves of the same verbal and vocal resources of language, i.e. the same linguistic structures and substance, they differ considerably in the realisation of their textual and performance semiotics, as indicated above. In the postdramatic dialogue is not shaped by dramatic conventions of character and plot development, but is projected rather as an audience-addressed polylogue by verbal performers in an ongoing discourse flow. Stage directions are often minimal in the script and serve to guide the physicality of the performance and materiality of the stage and no more. The play-constitutive elements of drama, i.e. characterisation, plot and setting give way to personification, message and stage scene. Returning once more to the linguistic wherewithal available to both modes of theatre with the question as to how the verbal and vocal is used to express the semiotics of the elements of postdramatic play-making just outlined, then first clues may be offered by the previously noted ‘inner rhythm’ or melos of the text, with ‘tones, tonalities, words, sentences, sounds’ exposed to different understandings and the word as ‘sonority and address’. From a viewpoint of linguistic structure this would suggest a general prominence of prosody in speech delivery and with it a prosodically marked lexis in a declamatory style of rhetorical delivery. Also the realisation of the characteristic ’emotive’ (function of) language of postdramatic theatre would suggest employment of prosodic (and paralinguistic) means of vocal expression. An important difference between the use of prosody for theatrical effect in postdramatic theatre and its use in dramatic theatre is that whereas in the latter, vocal expression is controlled (but not necessarily unemotive as such) in the service of ordered dialogue, characterisation and developing plot, in the former, vocal expression serves the moment of speaking of the performer and thus as theatrically ad hoc ‘emotive’ expression in ‘micro-events’ and is likely in comparison to be linearly inconsistent, eruptive and generally volatile in the course of the play. Linguistically, in the phonological system of language it is the prosodic level of structure that is mutable for grammatical, discourse, informational or affective (emotional and attitudinal) meaning. Thus a first conclusion in Allan James 114 the light of previous commentary might be that, with regard to the sound level of language, postdramatic theatre indeed favours prosodic and, by extension, paralinguistic means (cf. the ‘breath’, ‘groaning’ and ‘whisper’ noted by Kolesch above) for expressing the affective dynamics of theatrical meaning. Prosodic means include the systematic signifying variations of phonetic pitch, loudness and length in speech, with rhythm understood as a temporal regularity of prosodically marked words or syllables. Paralinguistic features signal affective meaning via variation of phonation types, such as breathiness, whisper, huskiness, etc., (i.e. Crystal’s ‘voice qualifiers’) and ‘voice qualifications’ such as laughter, tremolo, crying, etc. (Crystal 1969: 126-194; James 2017: 137-139). The semiotics expressed by the prosody and paralanguage is, via ‘auto-deixis’, that of the theatrical performance itself as executed by the ‘text bearers’, specifically as its vocality. As noted above, this vocality can be supplemented by extralinguistically produced sounds or noises to complete the ‘auditory semiotics’ of the play. 3. A checklist for postdramatic theatre: Linguistic implications in Disco Pigs (1996) A ‘palette of stylistic traits’ as a ‘phenomenology of postdramatic signs’ is offered in Lehmann (2006: 86-107), and while not primarily addressing language, nonetheless lends itself well to interpretation from a language perspective allowing an indication of the linguistic features and functions characteristic of postdramatic theatre. For this purpose, the items in the checklist will be introduced and assessed for their linguistic implications and evidence adduced from the script of the dramatic/ postdramatic play under consideration. A further linguistic analysis of play extracts focussing specifically on grammatical and lexical semantic structure follows in 4.1 and 4.2. below. The play Disco Pigs by Enda Walsh was premiered at the Triskel Arts Centre in Cork in September 1996 and signalled his breakthrough as a playwright (and later director), joining the ranks of new generation Irish playwrights such as Marina Carr and Martin McDonagh. The play appeared as a film version in 2001. The written script as analysed here appears in Walsh (1997), while the theatre performance of the play adduced in the present analysis (especially with reference to 3.5, 3.10 and 4.1. below) is that by the Bloomsberg Theatre Ensemble of Bloomsberg, Pennsylvania, in June 2013 (YouTube video reference in bibliography). The play comprises a ‘duologue’ performed by two teenage figures, ‘Pig’ (male) and ‘Runt’ (female), employing a ‘duolect’ as ‘antilanguage’ (Halliday 1978) showing an amalgam of idiosyncratic baby-talk, slang and Cork English and containing countless word-plays, syllable, word and phrase repetitions, alliterations, assonances, interjections and expletives and trun- Linguistic layering and the play semiotics in Disco Pigs by E. Walsh 115 cated syntax and morphology. In the script, the figures live and re-live experiences they share together and which re-define the love relationship between them during a two-day period before their joint 17 th birthdays, which is narrated largely through direct speech, with much imitation of the voices of other figures encountered in their ‘adventures’, complete with the appropriate reporting constructions and running commentary on the goings-on. The referred-to locations of their performed action are in ‘Pork City’ (Cork City), their ‘clown-town’, and environs. Even from this brief introduction to the play, it will be apparent that elements of both dramatic and postdramatic theatre may be discerned. There are indications of characters, plot and setting as characteristic of dramatic structure, whereas the duologue (as rendered in exclamatory style and urgent intensity, see further below) appears to be as much directly addressed to the audience as displayed language ostensibly conducted between the figures - an observation confirmed in Weaver (2015: 16). The countless word-plays, repetitions, mimicry, alliterations and assonances, interjections and expletives (with other paralinguistic and extralinguistic sounds) contribute further to a typically postdramatic soundscape. The checklist of characteristic traits of postdramatic theatre comprises: “parataxis, simultaneity, play with the density of signs, musicalization, visual dramaturgy, physicality, irruption of the real, situation/ event” (Lehmann 2006: 86). 3.1. Parataxis/ non-hierarchy With this is meant the equal status of the different modalities of theatre - for example, language as the dominant modality in dramatic theatre must share theatrical space with visual elements and other elements. “(D)ifferent genres are combined in a performance (dance, narrative theatre, performance, etc.); all means are employed with equal weighting; play, object and language point simultaneously in different directions of meaning”, where “the spectator of postdramatic theatre is not prompted to process the perceived instantaneously but to postpone the production of meaning (semiosis) and to store the sensory impressions with ‘evenly hovering attention’” (Lehmann 2006: 87). In Disco Pigs, although the language modality dominates as narrative and commentary, sounds, music and meta-performance enhance the theatricality of the play. Chanting to music, metadrama via mime and quotatives, intertextual miming, verbalised selfand other-reflection, auto-deixis in the use of the figures’ own nicknames together create a language referentially distal to the basic goings-on of the play’s action. Hence, performance and meta-performance are closely intertwined, narrative theatre combines with performance theatre, i.e. ‘doing’ is done as ‘telling’ and viceversa (cf. Herrero-Martin 2008). Allan James 116 In a literal interpretation of “parataxis” from a linguistic perspective, then sentence/ utterance succession is indeed overwhelmingly ‘paratactic’, i.e. simply adjacent and not related by any connecting means indicating structural ‘hierarchies’ such as, for example, syntactic subordination. 3.2. Simultaneity With “simultaneity” is meant that of signs in postdramatic theatre, where “the parcelling of perception here becomes an unavoidable experience” since “the performance often leaves open whether there exists any real connection in what is being presented simultaneously or whether this is just an external contemporaneity” (Lehmann 2006: 88). For instance, in Disco Pigs it is potentially unclear to spectators whether instances of verbal or physical other-mimicry are to be seen in connection to the figures’ auto-deictic performance as oral (life-) narrative, or simply indeed as an external contemporaneity. 3.3. Play with the density of signs “In postdramatic theatre it becomes a rule to violate the conventionalized rule and the more or less established norm of sign density. There is either too much or too little” (Lehmann 2006: 89). There is “an anaesthetic intention to make space for a dialectic of plethora and deprivation, plenitude and emptiness” (2006: 89). From a linguistic perspective, in Disco Pigs the language of the two figures manifests this dialectic between richness and poverty and there is also evidence of a formal reduction of signs via verbal repetition. The richness of the language of Pig and Runt is in the very structural idiosyncracy of their ‘duolect’ with its concentrated colloquiality. Also the shifting discourse functions it fulfils as verbatim mimicry, as reporting constructions of this direct speech, as ongoing commentary on figures, situations and events around them, as ‘conversation’ between them, even the figures’ own onomatopoeic ‘oinking’ as adding to the soundscape, all contribute to a linguistic richness, or, at least, versatility. The poverty is evidenced in the limited register variation and restricted syntactic and morphological patterning with frequent word-final phonological elision. Also the formal reduction of linguistic signs via repetition, alliteration, assonance and reduplication is highly evident throughout. Added to this, the unrelenting exclamatory identity of the utterances produced, whether as declaratives, imperatives or actual exclamations, is indicative of a pragmalinguistic poverty. Linguistic layering and the play semiotics in Disco Pigs by E. Walsh 117 3.4. Plethora Plethora, as abundance, can result from the abandonment of the conventional form of dramatic theatre and takes the form of “a multitude of rhizomatic connections of heterogeneous elements. The division of stage time into minimal sequences, quasi-filmic ‘takes’….multiplies the data for perception” (Lehmann 2006: 90). This is indeed very evident throughout Disco Pigs, since from the initial birth scenario through off-licence through Provo bar through seaside through disco to the final scenario by the river, there are in total fifteen “quasi-filmic ‘takes’” - all as products of the figures’ verbal imagination in the approximately seventy minutes of the play’s typical duration in performance (of the twenty-six pages of the published script). 3.5. Musicalization “The consistent tendency towards a musicalization (not only of language) is an important chapter of the sign usage in postdramatic theatre” (Lehmann 2006: 91) and this is seen as a major indication of ‘the dissolution of dramatic coherence” (2006: 91). Reference has already been made in 2.1. above to the presence of music and staged sounds/ noise beyond language and in 2.2. to the melos of language itself. In Disco Pigs, true to the play’s title, music indeed is a prominent component of its soundscape cf. the stage directions in the first extract above and the subsequent stage directions ‘The music is loud’ (1997: 11), ‘Sound of a poxy dance tune is faded up’ (1997: 12), ‘Music begins’ (1997: 13), ‘PIG and RUNT watching an episode of Baywatch which we hear under music’ (1997: 19), ‘Music’ (1997: 20), ‘Music stops’ (1997: 21), ‘…..somebody singing Danny Boy” (1997: 22), ‘Be my Baby by The Ronettes comes on’ (1997: 22), ‘Music up’ (1997: 26). Whether other staged sounds or noises, which are also prominent in Disco Pigs contribute to a ‘”musicalization” of the play may be debatable, but cf. the stage directions in the first extract above and the following ‘Silence. Then we hear the sounds of babies crying’ (1997: 5), ‘Sounds of heavy breathing’ (p. 6), ‘We hear the sounds of them eating…..’ (1997: 7), ‘Sound of pissing’ (1997: 8), ‘Sounds of a quiet bar. Television can be heard’ (1997: 10), ‘Sound of a car’ (1997: 16), ‘Car sounds stop’ (1997: 17), ‘Sounds of the sea have been faded up…” (1997: 17), ‘The sound of a car horn is heard’ (1997: 18), ‘Sounds of Provo Bar faded up’ (1997: 21), ‘Sounds of extremely busy pub…” (1997: 22). The micro-events of the figures’ adventures are indeed framed by music and sounds, with the latter in part being electronically ‘faded up’, a technical innovation which itself characterises postdramatic theatre (Lehmann 2006: 92). Concerning the figures’ own producing of music, both scream the chant ‘Seventeen’ to disco/ techno music in the disco scenario itself and at a later stage ‘RUNT whistles God Save the Queen’ (1997: 10), provocatively, on their way to ‘a sleepy ol’ provo pub’. Allan James 118 A musicalisation of the language itself in postdramatic theatre has been briefly alluded to in 2.1. and 2.2. above in connection with the language use itself in plays with or without the addition of other staged sound(s) or noises. As just noted, music is in any case thematically prominent in Disco Pigs and it has been suggested that this and other sounds/ noises serve to frame its rapidly changing ‘takes’ or events. The linguistic musicality itself in the play has been succinctly summarised in Gömceli (2017) as “its privileging of ‘musicality’ over semantic meaning, which is achieved through the Cork accent and dialect with the playwright’s choice of phrases, vocabulary, grammatical and lexical items and with the peculiar arrangement of sound patterns, rhythmic structure, repetition of sounds (e.g. mainly in the form of alliteration and assonance) and of phrases in the whole text” (2017: 271). These features can all be observed throughout the play, with the specific ‘musicality’ of Cork English deriving from “its large intonational range characterised by a noticeable dip in pitch on stressed syllables” (Hickey 2008: 77). In the light of this analysis, Gömceli concludes that “(A)s a result, meaning is suspended and the spectators are led to develop the idea of “theatre as music” rather than “the role of music in theatre”. This fits the expectation in the practice of postdramatic theatre” (2017: 271). Indeed, since the language of Disco Pigs may be not unproblematic in comprehension linguistically, it affords an audience another level of perception “musically”. 3.6. Scenography, visual dramaturgy Lehmann (2006) introduces the importance of scenography thus: “As the example of musicalization shows, within the paratactical, de-hierarchized use of signs postdramatic theatre establishes the possibility of dissolving the logocentric hierarchy and assigning the dominant role to elements other than dramatic logos and language. This applies even more to the visual than to the auditory dimension. In place of a dramaturgy regulated by the text one often finds a visual dramaturgy” (2006: 93-94). In Disco Pigs, the theatrical visuality is conveyed through the imagined scenography of the rapidly changing locations of the figures’ actions and experiences. 3.7. Warmth and coldness With this Lehmann addresses the observation that with certain forms of postdramatic theatre “For an audience brought up in the tradition of textbased theatre, the ‘dethroning’ of linguistic signs and the de-psychologization that goes with it are especially hard to accept. Through the participation of living human beings, as well as the century-old fixation with moving human fortunes, the theatre possesses a certain ‘warmth’” (2006: 95). However, this hardly applies to Disco Pigs, where the human figures, although performed as behaviourally erratic and also physically violent, nonetheless Linguistic layering and the play semiotics in Disco Pigs by E. Walsh 119 may attract a degree of human empathy through their constant struggle to define their emotional relationship with each other. 3.8. Physicality In postdramatic theatre “The body becomes the centre of the attention, not as a carrier of meaning but in its physicality and gesticulation” (Lehmann 2006: 95), presenting itself “as an auto-sufficient physicality, which is exhibited in its intensity, gestic potential, auratic ‘presence’ and internally, as well as externally, transmitted tensions” (2006: 95). This is very evidently the case in Disco Pigs, where the two figures are frequently racing, dancing and exercising physical violence and where this physicality, including the violence, is constantly present. In this ‘energetic theatre’, there is also a linguistic physicality which will be further expanded upon in 4.1. below. As Gömceli (2017) summarises, “the text of the play does not provide the spectators with any ‘linguistic input’ of any feeling or emotion, but rather it expects them to ‘see’ the feelings and emotions in their ‘manifestation’ through the presence and performance of the actors” (2017: 273). 3.9. ‘Concrete theatre’ With ‘concrete theatre’ is understood “the non-mimetic but formal structure or formalist aspects of postdramatic theatre”, where “theatre exposes itself as an art in space, in time, with human bodies” and “When theatre discovers the possibility to be ‘simply’ a concrete treatment of space, time, physicality, colour, sound and movement” (Lehmann 2006: 98). Language use in Disco Pigs has already been shown in the above to ‘embody’ concrete theatrical signification. 3.10. Irruption of the real Whereas dramatic theatre assumes a closed fictional world, a diegetic universe that is represented via mimesis “in which the ‘intentional object’ of the staging has to be distinguished from the empirically accidental performance……postdramatic theatre is the first to turn the level of real explicitly into a ‘co-player’” (Lehmann 2006: 100). “This irruption of the real becomes an object not just of reflection….but of the theatrical design itself”, resulting in an ‘aesthetics of undecidability’ (2006: 100) as to whether one is dealing with with reality or fiction. The ‘self-reflexive’ aesthetic of postdramatic theatre allows a switching between ‘real’ contiguity (connection with reality) and ‘staged’ construct, the perception of structure and of the sensorial level (2006: 103) as compared, for instance, to the dramatic switching between ‘staged worlds’ and ‘fictional worlds’ (cf. Cruickshank and Allan James 120 Lahey 2010). However, the ‘real’ in a postdramatic context is the ‘theatrical’ as performed staged discourse addressed to an audience constituted by a script vocalised by performers in a materially ‘theatrical’ setting (see also discussion above in 2.1. and 2.2.). And as Lehmann concedes, “It is not the occurrence of anything ‘real’ as such but its self-reflexive use that characterizes the aesthetic of the postdramatic theatre” (2006: 103). This, however, must include a thematisation of what constitutes a ‘real’, addressing the non-theatrical or ‘everyday’ world, the own ‘realities’ of the staged world, including metatheatrical disruption/ intrusion and indeed of dramatic theatre including metadramatic disruption/ intrusion and how these conceptualisations co-relate within a postdramatic perspective. Linguistically, in Disco Pigs the theatrical ‘real’ is signalled on occasion by explicit metadramatic audience address by the figures, as in Pig’s address “drama fans” (1997: 8) and Runt’s “ya seen da movie”, “But ya no” (1997: 15) and “An it well ovur, drama fans! ” (1997: 29). Otherwise, it has already been noted in 2.1. and 2.2. above that linguistically, prosodic and paralinguistic effects convey the auditory semiotics of postdramatic theatre and as such, theatrical meaning as ‘reality’, and this may be realised as a declamatory style of vocal delivery expressing an ‘emotive’ function, which in the case of Disco Pigs involves the frequent occurrence of short intonation units (e.g. as containing only two stressed syllables/ words - cf. e.g. “Pig da king”, “My bed da trone” “Me and Runt” (1997: 8); and “An we looka was happenin”, “Bonny and Clyde”, “ya seen da movie”, “But ya no”, “Is all differen” (1997: 15). As an analysis of the videoed play performance confirms, there is a marked predominance of wide pitch range, with high falls on the tonic syllable/ word, and increased loudness and tempo, in any case relative to the controlled prosodic patterns of dramatic discourse. With a staccato mode of rhythm, there is little prosodic cohesion in the sense of ‘key’, i.e. pitch height agreement signalling discourse links within a particular figure’s speech or across turns in a ‘dialogue’. Prominent paralinguistic features accompany the linguistic delivery such as the phonation types anterior voice, breathy voice and falsetto and the ‘voice qualifications’ scream, sob and laugh. The prosody is volatile in nature, appropriate to the lexis it accompanies, micro-situationally patterned and textually non-cohesive. 3.11. Event/ situation “(W)hen the signs can no longer be separated from their ‘pragmatic’ embeddedness in the event and the situation of theatre in general” (Lehmann 2006: 104), i.e. when ‘irruption of the real’ takes place and “the law that governs the use of signs is no longer derived from representation within the frame of this event of from its character as presented reality” (2006: 104), e.g. as in dramatic theatre, “it is a matter of the execution of acts that are Linguistic layering and the play semiotics in Disco Pigs by E. Walsh 121 real in the here and now and find their fulfilment in the very moment they happen” (2006: 104). This description of the embeddedness of theatrical signs and their simultaneous theatrical ‘reality’ rings true for Disco Pigs. The emotion-laden utterance produced by the performers as characterised above will likely provoke an equally instant momentary and situationally determined ‘sensorial’ reaction on the part of the spectators. 4. Disco Pigs and the postdramatic continued 4.1. Focus on grammatical structure Completing here and in the following sub-section a linguistic analysis of the postdramatic of Disco Pigs, the opening lines of the playscript, depicting the scene of the two figures’ births, will serve as a further illustration of the signifying features discussed above, focussing particularly on grammatical structure. Lights flick on. PIG (male) and RUNT (female). They mimic the sound of an ambulance like a child would, ‘bee baa bee baa bee baa! ! ’. They also mimic the sound a pregnant woman in labour makes. They say things like ‘is all righ miss’, ‘ya doin fine, luv’, ‘dis da furs is it? ’, ‘is a very fast bee baa, all righ. Have a class a water! ’ Sound of door slamming. Sound of heartbeats throughout. RUNT. Out of the way! ! Jesus out of the way! PIG. Scream da fat nurse wid da gloopy face! RUNT. Da two mams squealin on da trollies dat go speedin down da ward. Oud da fookin way! PIG. My mam she own a liddle ting, look, an dis da furs liddle baba! She heave an rip all insie! ! Hol on mam! ! RUNT. My mam she hol in da pain! She noel her pain too well! ! She been ta hell an bac my mam! PIG. Day trips an all! RUNT. Da stupid cow! ! PIG. Holy Jesus help me! ! RUNT. Scream da Pig mam! Her face like a Christmas pud all sweaty an steamy! Da two trollies like a big choo choo it clear all infron! Oudda da fookin way cant jaaaaa! ! PIG. Da two das dey run the fast race speedin behine. RUNT. Holy Jesus keep her safe. Holy Jesus keep her safe! PIG. Mamble my dad wid a liddle mammy tear in da eye! I’m da liddle baba cumin oud, dada. I’m yer liddle baba racer! ! ! RUNT. Da trollie dey go on (1997: 3) As scene-setting, the intense soundscape is immediately created via the figures’ mimicry of an ambulance, of the sound of a pregnant woman, of the Allan James 122 utterances of the nursing staff, of the door slamming and of heartbeats. The mimicry continues in the figures’ utterances, of the nurse screaming, Pig’s mam screaming and Pig’s dad’s exhortations to the staff, all signalled with following quotation clauses (‘Scream da fat nurse’, ‘Scream da Pig mam’ and ‘Mamble my dad’), interspersed with commentary on the trolleys speeding, the condition of both mothers, Pig’s mam’s appearance and the two dads’ running. The concentrated succession of exclamatory utterances, indicated by exclamation marks, rendered vocally via marked prosody (in the staged version via wide pitch range, high pitch falls and prominent loudness, etc. - see above) all add to a dense scene-specific ‘auditory semiotics’. The employment of both reporting and commentary structures by the figures also produces strong metanarrative effect. The emotional intensity is underlined by the ‘squealing’, ‘pain’, ‘scream’ described, further augmented by the frequency of exclamatory utterances - exhorting (e.g. ‘Out of the way’, ‘hol on mam’, ‘Holy Jesus help me’) and commentary (e.g. ‘My mam she heave an rip all insie’, ‘She been ta hell an bac my mam’, ‘Day trips an all’). The hectic action is signalled by the ‘speedin’ trolleys, ‘like a big choo choo train it clear all infron’, ‘the fast race’, ‘liddle baba racer’ intensified by the use of expletives ‘Oud da fookin way’ (both mams) and ‘oudda fookin way cant jaaaaa’ (Pig’s mam), while ‘Da stupid cow’ constitutes an insulting interjection uttered in the midst of the panic. Repetitions abound, clausal, phrasal and word- ‘out of the way’, ‘my Mam she own…My mam she hol’, ‘liddle ting…liddle baba’ ‘Her face like……Da two trollies like’, adding local lexicogrammatical intensification. From a more structural perspective, one notes morphological and syntactic truncation: cf., e.g. ‘Scream’, ‘own’, ‘heave’, ‘rip’, ‘hol’ (“holds”), ‘noel’ (“knows all? ”) ‘clear’, ‘Mamble’ (“mumble”) as 3 rd personal singular verbs, ‘trollie’ as plural noun and instances of phonological clipping in ‘insie’ (“inside”), ‘infron’ (“in front”) ‘behine’ (“behind”) and ‘das’ (“dads”). In the stage directions there are the further clippings ‘righ’ for “right”, ‘furs’ for “first”. There is absence of auxiliary verb or copula in ‘Da two mams squealin’, ‘an dis da furs liddle baba’, ‘She been ta hell an bac’, ‘Her face like a christmas pud’, ‘Da two trollies like a big choo choo’. Additionally, there is frequent occurrence of subject repetition by pronoun as in ‘My mam she own’, ‘My mam she hol’, ‘da two das dey run’, ‘Da trollies dey go on’. While the last syntactic feature as ‘fronting’ is generally typical of the spoken colloquial, and the absence of auxiliary verb and copula is also found in fast colloquial speech together with phonological final clipping at the ends of words, the absence of 3 rd person singular ‘-s’ is decidedly more marked in speech, including in Cork English. One phonological feature of general vernacular Irish English is prominently present in the extract, i.e. the dental/ alveolar stop realisation of standard British English dental fricative / δ/ as ‘da’ for “the”, ‘dat’ for “that”, ‘oudda’ for “out the”,‘dis’ for “this”, ‘dey’ for “they”, ‘wid’ for “with” and / θ/ as ‘ting’ for “thing”. Additionally the indicated pronunciations of Linguistic layering and the play semiotics in Disco Pigs by E. Walsh 123 ‘class’ (“glass”), ‘liddle’ (“little”), ‘cumin’ (“coming”) and ‘fookin’ represent Cork vernacular, while the those of ‘ya’ and ‘jaaaaa’ for “you”, ‘an’ for “and”, ‘ta’ for “to”, and ‘yer’ for “your” stand for the weak forms of the words which would likely be rendered as such in most forms of colloquial spoken English. Similarly the production of an alveolar ‘-n’ for “-ing” verb or adjective forms as in ‘doin’, ‘squealin’, ‘speedin’, and ‘fookin’ is typical of general informal speech. The language used in this extract depicts the frantic birth scene of the two figures, commented on by themselves, with direct address to their mothers and to unspecified others present, all expressed in their own antilanguage. However, the imitation by the figures of the nurse’s, one mam’s and one dad’s own commentary, i.e. of the specified other figures present, is represented as Standard English (cf. ‘Out of the way! ! ’, ‘Holy Jesus help me! ! ’ and ‘Holy Jesus keep her safe”, respectively.). This underscores the shared exclusiveness of their own (linguistic) world. With reference to postdramatic theatre, one may conclude that the grammatical structures which dominate at the most general level, i.e. successions of largely short non-finite clauses in an exclamatory mode of expression containing truncated lexis, serve to render the micro-event of a hurtling delivery scene as ‘energetic’ or actional theatre of an explicit physicality (see also 3.8. above). 4.2. Focus on (lexical) semantic structure It has been noted various times above (e.g. in 3.) that the figures’ ‘duolect’ and ‘duologue’ is characterised by idiosyncratic baby-talk, slang and Cork English, together with much word-play - all features using a manipulation of lexical semantics for their effect. It might be noted too that the periodic ‘oinking’ found in the play is actually a lexicalisation of a porcine sound. In this context the following play extract will serve the illustration of these prominent signifying structures. PIG. Ya noel wen Sonia finally become champion da wonder horse an gallop her way to success bak in ol Goddenburg, yeah? An Sonia stan on on da winny po-dium wid da whirl medal all a dangle from da pretty liddle neck as da nationalist rant-hymn blast da fuck oudda da sky an da green white an porridge all a flutter in da breeze. An all da Irish aroun da track an in da whirl, an anybody who even fuck an Irish dey all have a liddle tear a boy in der eye when dey say, ‘dis is a great day for Our-land! ’ Well Runt, dis is a bettur day! RUNT. Fuck, yes! ! PIG and RUNT go to enter the Palace RUNT. Stop! PIG stops. PIG. Ah bollix! RUNT. A gian cyclops a bricks wid bouncer tatooes on his toilea face. Allan James 124 PIG. Jus my luck, hey! So wers Hans gone, ol Chew-back-a? ! RUNT. Regular are ya? PIG. Once in da moring an again in da evening, doctur! RUNT. Pig too smart for dis tic toc! Da man he screw up da face an lookalike a playt a mash an mushy pea sept a bit more starchey. He look down na Pig an he say, ‘I think you know my little brother.’ PIG. Who he fat man? RUNT. He worked down in the off licence in Blackpool! But now he’s on the dole. PIG. Das a sad an sorry story. RUNT. I watch Pig as da past tap em on da shold wid a hi-dee-hi. Off licence. Blackcruel. Fuck me. PIG. Yeah I noel Foxy, good bloke yeah! (1997: 24-25) The extract displays much of the typical irreverent verbal wit of the figures, which is largely lexically based. First, concerning personal reference, the figures always refer to each other by the proper names ‘Pig’ and ‘Runt’ and not by pronouns, itself a feature of earlier child language, while it is ‘revealed’ elsewhere in the script that their ‘actual’ names are ‘Darren’ and ‘Sinead’, respectively. Ludic references to media-derived figures occur throught the script, here to ‘Sonia’ (O’Sullivan), who won the World Championship 5000 metres race in ‘Goddenburg’ (Gothenburg) in 1995, and to the figures ‘Hans’ (Han Solo) and ‘Chew-back-a’ (Chewbacca) from the film series of Star Wars starting in 1977, the latter signalling the double puns of original Chewbacca (=“chew (to)bacco”) and the present ‘Chew-backa’ (= “chew back of”). There is further intertextuality in ‘champion da wonder horse’ (who ‘gallop her way to suckycess’), which is reference to ‘Champion the Wonder Horse’ of the 1950’s children’s television series and in Runt’s ‘hi-dee-hi’ as reference to the greeting used in the eponymous television comedy series of the 1980’s. Typically, the locations of the figures’ actional scenes in and around Cork, are rendered by them as phonetically similar, but lexically distorted designations, here Blackpool (a suburb of Cork) as ‘Blackcruel’ (other examples elsewhere are ‘Crossheaven’ for Crosshaven (a village outside Cork), ‘Patsy Street’ for St. Patrick’s Street and ‘French Crotch Street’ for French Church Street in Cork itself). Similarly there is ludic near-punning of other lexical items: Pig’s ‘suckycess’ (success), ‘winny-podium’ (winning podium), twice ‘whirl’ (world), ‘rant-hymn’ (anthem), ‘porridge’ (orange), ‘a boy’ (a-boiling? ) ‘Our-land’ (Ireland) and Runt’s ‘toilea’ (toilet), the rhyming slang ‘tic toc’ (doc(tor)), ‘lookalike’ (look like), while Runt’s ‘past’ might be “bast(ard)” and ‘shold’ is “shoulder”. Other verbal humour is in Pig’s answer ‘Once in the morning an again in da evenin, doctor! ’ to Runt’s bouncer line ‘Regular are ya? ’. There is concentrated alliteration and assonance in Pig’s ‘Das a sad an sorry story’ and a representative occurrence of expletives in the Linguistic layering and the play semiotics in Disco Pigs by E. Walsh 125 script. It could also be noted that the figures’ rendering of the bouncer’s speech is in Standard English, as with all ‘external’ figures in the play. The dense idiosyncrasy of the lexical semantics of the language employed by the two figures as analysed with its verbal wit linguistically defines as well as circumscribes the close(d) world the figures inhabit. At the same time, it confirms the prominence of language as a theatrical sign in the present play and of a rich verbality as its performed reality. 5. Brief conspectus and prospectus: Language in postdramatic theatre and language in dramatic theatre: Disco Pigs Much reference has been made in the analysis so far to the leading role language in general has in expressing the play semiotics of postdramatic theatre and indeed “language as protagonist” has been suggested as a suitable formulation for this (= “Sprache als Protagonist” of Poschmann (1997: 177)), as quoted by Barnett (2008: 18)). It is via a play’s language that two key processes of drama, its representation of an ordered fictional world and its structuring of time, are suspended in the postdramatic (Barnett 2008: 14-16), i.e. its representation as ‘mimesis’ and its linearity as ‘telos’ are abandoned and with them the dramatic unities of action, time and place (see also under 1. above). Hence, by and large the Aristotelian ‘ethos’ (characterisation), ‘mythos’ (plot) and ‘opsis’ (setting) as the playdefining elements of drama responsible for the maintenance of ‘mimesis’ and ‘telos’ recede in significance in postdramatic theatre, with their potential signifiers dissolving into a general theatrical, as opposed to dramatic, ‘semioscape’ with its own self-referentiality (see 2.1. above). This ‘semioscape’ is voiced in turn as an intense ‘linguoscape’ communicated as marked ‘vocality’ (see 2.2., 3.5., 3.10), ‘physicality’ (see 3.8., 4.1.) and ‘verbality’ (see 4.2. above), which have thus been pinpointed as defining elements of postdramatic theatre in their own right. Hence it is the very oral expressivity of ‘language’ itself that conveys the ‘theatrical’ of the postdramatic, and in the above it has been shown that a close linguistic analysis of the text written, but also oral (see video reference) of Disco Pigs confirms the prominent language-driven postdramatic of the play. However, at the same time, ‘ethos’, ‘mythos’ and ‘opsis’ have not been entirely abandoned in Disco Pigs, and the following section (6.) presents evidence from the text to indicate that their linguistically signalled presence is criterial to the continuing, and parallel, dramatic essence of the play. Allan James 126 6. Disco Pigs and the dramatic 6.1. A dramatic reading of the play Since the focus of the present discussion is heavily weighted towards the postdramatic of the play, as representing a contemporary complement to both the dramatic of modern theatre (as introduced in some detail in 1. above), the following will present only a bare outline of what is identifiable as dramatic in Disco Pigs in the conventional sense. Wallace (2017) points out that “Enda Walsh’s work cannot be described as postdramatic in any wholesale sense; he still describes himself as a playwright and he proclaims an interest in story and character” (2017: 38). To this one could add also ‘setting’ as a third central element of drama, which is prominent in the play as the sum of the micro-scenes performed in and around Cork. It is still possible for a theatre audience on one level of interpretation to (hope to) recognise ‘characters’, ‘plot’ and ‘setting’ which are enacted and not ‘just’ performed, and indeed it has been mooted in 2.2. above that audiences might be ‘conditioned’ for some evidence of ‘protodramatic narration’. There is indeed a very present narration and a reading of the play is imaginable as representing a closed fictional space, with the named teenage characters Pig and Runt acting out a sad ‘love story’, complete with adolescent emotional and physical violence, in Cork as the setting, if an actual fractured ‘development’ of characterisation, plot and setting is under-interpreted. The following sub-sections will briefly discuss these drama elements of characterisation, plot and setting from a linguistic point of view, making reference to the linguistic analysis of play-constitutive elements as developed in James and Gömceli (2018). 6.2. Characterisation A linguistic approach to characterisation concerns itself in the first place with the “implicit-figural verbal” technique of Pfister (1993: 185), which is expressed via the “voice quality, verbal behaviour, idiolect/ sociolect, register, stylistic texture” (1993: 185) of the characters’ language. In these terms, there is little to distinguish the characterisation of Pig and Runt, since they share the same idiosyncratic duolect, as has been described in previous sections above and mimic other appearing characters in the same way. The latter are characterised as external to the world of Pig and Runt by the employment of Standard English, as has been noted. The one and highly significant point in the play when Runt departs from her idiolect as duolect for her own self-expression occurs when she finally releases herself from Pig at the very end of the play, which is signalled by a gradual move into the standard language, i.e. that of the world beyond their own microcosmos: Linguistic layering and the play semiotics in Disco Pigs by E. Walsh 127 RUNT………….I wan fur sumthin else! Sumthin different! Sumthin different! Fuckin freedom! ! Jus me! ! Jus da Runt! ! So mayb ta Crossheaven, mayb das where a girl can sleep sleep sleep an be alone. Jus me an da big big colour blue. Dat colour blue! (Pause.) An Runt take a breeder on Christy’s Ring . . . an I look a da sun creep up on my pal Pork . . . Cork. An Runt she alone now. But is okay now, is all rih. (Pause.) Runt, she calm, calm down . . . an I watch . . . da liddle quack quacks . . . I look . . . at the ducks . . . as they swim in the morning sun . . . in the great big . . . watery-shite . . . that is the river Lee. Where to? (1997: 29) This final self-release, looking at the River Lea from Christy Ring Bridge in Cork, as the poignant culmination of her emotional turmoil represents the sole significant development of characterisation in the play. Much has been noted above on the language of the figures from a postdramatic perspective including its vocality as a prominent feature of the play’s soundscape (2.2.) and it is a play, by the playwright’s own assertion of his work of the 1990’s, “driven by language” (Wallace 2017: 36). From a dramatic perspective, it has been shown in James and Gömceli (2018), that it is the lexicophonological layer of linguistic structure that is foremostly responsible for the expression of characterisation (2018: 207-211). In the case of Disco Pigs, linguistically it is the phonology, not just the prominent prosody as analysed above (2.2.), but also the segmental structure of their duolect which vocalises the words they produce and projects their characters into dramatic stage (sound) space. 6.3. Plot As already noted above, the plot of Disco Pigs from a dramatic perspective comprises the total of the numerous actions and transactions Pig and Runt are involved in the various activity tableaux they create for themselves. Their actions and transactions are to a large extent confrontational with characters from the ‘outside’ world and socially transgressive (e.g. not paying the bus driver, stealing from Foxy’s off-licence, intimidation of, and violence to a ‘rival’ at the Palace disco), at the same time serving to confirm and cement the close emotional bond between them. From a postdramatic point of view, commentary and analysis has been presented on the extreme physicality of the play with its corporeal actionality and violence (cf. 3.8 and 4.1.). The linguistic manifestation of these features of the play is carried explicitly by predominant types of grammatical structure (e.g. proliferation and succession of exclamatory sentence types, non-finite clauses and generally truncated syntax and morphology) with their associated (truncated) lexis. Returning to a dramatic perspective, it has been shown in James and Gömceli (2018) that it is the lexicogrammatical layer of linguistic structure that is foremostly responsible for the expression of plot (2018: 211-214). Allan James 128 6.4. Setting In dramatic terms, the setting of Disco Pigs is unambiguously the various locations created by the characters (e.g. the hospital, the off-licence, the disco, the pub, the seaside) in Cork and environs. The setting(s) are to some extent specified in the stage directions, frequently in formulations contributing to the ‘soundscape’ of the play, for example as in the initial hospital scene invoked via ‘the sound of an ambulance’, ‘the sound a pregnant woman makes’, ‘Sound of door slamming’, ‘Sound of heartbeats throughout’ (see also 4.1. above). Otherwise they are indicated by name in the characters’ own lines as in: “PIG. Crossheaven, da colour a love, dis where it is hun! ! (1997: 17)”. However, as has already been commented on in 4.2. above, the reallife names of these locations and other locations are lexically distorted by Pig and Runt while retaining largely the pronunciation identity of the originals. Attention has also been drawn in 4.2. to the numerous other examples of lexical distortions, alliterations and assonances, etc. which make up the strong verbal wit of the figures, and from a postdramatic viewpoint, this has been seen as constituting the prominent verbality of the play. In the case of dramatic theatre it has been shown in James and Gömceli (2018) that it is the lexicosemantic layer of linguistic structure that is foremostly responsible for the expression of setting (2018: 214). 7. The dramatic and the postdramatic: The linguistic semiotics of play-defining and play-realisational elements 7.1. Play-defining elements The previous section 6. has examined the linguistic expression of the playdefining elements of characterisation, plot and setting from a dramatic point of view, i.e. as the ‘ethos’, ‘mythos’ and ‘opsis’ of the fictional worlds represented, and the play-defining elements of vocality, physicality and verbality from a postdramatic perspective, i.e. as constituting characteristics of the theatrical performance. It has been pointed out that particular layers of linguistic structure have been analysed as prominent in the realisation of the elements of drama elsewhere (James and Gömceli 2018). Indeed, the above analysis in 6. of the linguistic structuring present in Disco Pigs in association with these play-defining elements leads to the same conclusion, i.e. that lexicophonological structure conveys characterisation, lexicogrammatical structure conveys plot and lexicosemantic structure setting. As conceded in James and Gömceli (2018), with regard to characterisation, and in principle also to plot and setting, other linguistic structurings can also Linguistic layering and the play semiotics in Disco Pigs by E. Walsh 129 contribute to the expression of these elements (e.g. in part, syntactic structures in characterisation (2018: 211)), but the structural layers proposed constitute the most prominent in the dramatic discourse investigated. Regarding the postdramatic elements of vocality, physicality and verbality, it has been suggested above that the same linguistic layers as proposed for the expression of the play-defining elements of drama are connected to their realisation too. Indeed, the analysis of the linguistic characteristics of postdramatic theatre presented in 2., 3., 4., 5. and, latterly, 6. above point clearly in this direction; specifically, that lexicophonological structure conveys the vocality, lexicogrammatical structure conveys the physicality, and lexicosemantic the verbality of such theatre, respectively. With respect to the semiotics signalled by these linguistic patternings, in the first instance they realise the play-defining elements as, respectively, dramatic and (postdramatic) theatrical signs, but without recourse to specific structural semiotic ‘codes’ for doing so (cf. Elam 2002). It has been shown that the hybrid linguistic layers proposed bundle together the wide range of individual lexical, phonological, grammatical and semantic structures found in the play’s language (as semiotic resources) into this generalised higher level of significant linguistic organisation. However, a closer look at the relative weighting of the ‘lexical’ to the ‘phonological’, ‘syntactic’ and ‘semantic’ in these hybrid layers in a dramatic versus postdramatic perspective, leads to the suggestion that whereas in the former, the ‘lexical’, i.e. the word patterning, of the ‘lexicophonological’ in the expression of characterisation, the ‘lexical’ of the ‘lexicogrammatical’ in that of plot, and the ‘lexical’ in the ‘lexicosemantic’ in that of setting, is in each case more semiotically prominent in drama as a ‘logocentric’ medium. In the postdramatic it is the ‘phonological’ of the ‘lexicophonological’ in the expression of vocality, the ‘grammatical’ of the ‘lexicogrammatical’ in that of physicality, and the ‘semantic’ of the ‘lexicosemantic’ in that of verbality that are more semiotically prominent in postdramatic theatre as a ‘post-logocentric’ medium. Table 1 summarises the conclusions of the above discussion (where ‘+’ signals ‘more prominent realisation’; ‘-‘ ‘less prominent realisation’): Allan James 130 Table 1. Play-defining elements and linguistic layers Dramatic theatre Postdramatic theatre Defining elements characterisation vocality Linguistic layers lexico-phonological lexico-phonological + - - + Defining elements plot physicality Linguistic layers lexico-grammatical lexico-grammatical + - - + Defining elements setting verbality Linguistic layers lexico-semantic lexico-semantic + - - + Further reflection on the social semiotics of linguistic structuring, after Halliday (1978) on linguistic structuring and social semiotics and Fairclough (2003) on social semiotics and discourse, and as developed further in James (2008, 2014) and for drama in particular in James and Gömceli (2018), leads to the conclusions that lexicophonology serves an ‘identification’ function from this perspective, lexicogrammar an ‘actional’ function and lexicosemantics a ‘representational’ function. Relating these considerations to the present discussion of the linguistic semiotics of the play-internal elements (and following James and Gömceli (2018: 220-221)), a further conclusion is that lexicophonological structure signals not only characterisation in dramatic theatre and vocality in postdramatic theatre but also ‘identification’ in both, lexicogrammatical structure plot in the dramatic and physicality in the postdramatic and ‘action’ in both, and lexicosemantic structure setting in the dramatic and verbality in the postdramatic and ‘representation’ in both. However, the social semiotic functions have different referents in the dramatic and postdramatic: whereas in dramatic theatre ‘identification’ is of the characters in characterisation, in postdramatic theatre it serves that of the vocal performers themselves; whereas in dramatic theatre ‘action’ signals the (progression of) the plot, in postdramatic theatre it communicates the performance itself in its physicality; and whereas in dramatic theatre ‘representation’ is of the setting, in postdramatic theatre ‘representation’ is of the immediate staged world that the performance expresses via its vo- Linguistic layering and the play semiotics in Disco Pigs by E. Walsh 131 cality. Note that here ‘representation’ (like ‘action’ and ‘identification’) expresses a social semiotic relation of realisation between the constituent of an entity of sociocultural life (character, plot, setting of dramatic theatre; vocality, physicality, verbality of postdramatic theatre) and its manifestation as ordered linguistic structuring. It is not to be compared with the theatrical ‘representation’ of the fictional world of drama in the form of acted mimesis and does not in any way contradict the staged realisation process of postdramatic theatre being termed ‘presentation’ (as opposed to the ‘representation’ of drama). Concluding the present discussion, it will be noted that ‘identification’, ‘action’ and ‘representation’ are conveyed more via the ‘lexical’ of the ‘lexicophonological’, ‘lexicogrammatical’ and ‘lexicosemantic’ in dramatic theatre and the corresponding ‘phonological’, ‘grammatical’ and ‘semantic’ in postdramatic theatre, following the previous discussion above. Table 2. Play-defining elements, linguistic layers and social semantic functions Dramatic theatre Postdramatic theatre Defining element characterisation vocality Linguistic layer lexicophonological lexicophonological Social semiotic function identification identification (referents) (of characters) (as vocal performers) Defining element plot physicality Linguistic layer lexicogrammatical lexicogrammatical Social semiotic function action action (referents) (of story) (as performers) Defining element setting verbality Linguistic layer lexicosemantic lexicosemantic Social semiotic function representation representation (referents) (of dramatic world) (of theatre as world) Allan James 132 7.2. Play-realisational elements and text addressivity In James and Gömceli (2018) a linguistic semiotics of dramatic discourse is developed that unites play-defining elements, i.e. the characterisation, plot and setting of above, with play-realisational elements constituting the three phases of a play’s realisation from presentation of the written text of the play to its staging (mise-en-scène) to its performance (2018: 215-219). While noting the obvious phenomenological and material distinctions between the three contexts of realisation, “(I)t is worthwhile remembering that it is the same text that is linked across the realisation levels as a relationship of intertextuality” (2018: 218). However, the text at each stage is defined by its addressivity. Building on previous analyses of play addressivity in dramatic theatre of, e.g., Feng and Shen (2001: 84), Baumbach and Nünning (2009: 58) and Cruickshank and Lahey (2010: 68), the present analysis follows James and Gömceli (2018) in positing a core addressivity of the text by writer/ playwright to reader(s) at a (literary) work of drama level of address, by playwright/ director to actor(s) at a staging level of address, and by character to character(s) at a performance level of address. And while there are other addressivities present in the play realisation process, such as between writer and director, actors and audience or between characters and audience, it is this core addressivity of the text “that is criterial to the dramatic realisation (and success) of the play at these three levels of literary work, stage production and theatre performance” (2018: 219). The identity of the text mutates from (literary) work to staging script to performance dialogue. Returning to a consideration of postdramatic discourse, and linking the play-defining elements of ‘verbality’, ‘physicality’ and ‘vocality’ to the playrealisation elements constituting the three phases of a play’s realisation from presentation of the written text of the play to its staging (mise-enscène) to its performance, following on from what has been concluded regarding the realisation of dramatic theatre, it may be noted that there are equally three phases distinguishable in a play’s realisation which are defined by the core addressivity between the participants. Postdramatic theatre does not typically result from a literary text or a dramatic text as employed in non-literary theatre, but from a text addressed by a playwright/ director to actors at the script level, the text ‘addressed’ from figure to figure(s) at the staging level and from performer to spectators at the performance level. These core addressivities are equally criterial to the realisation (and success) of postdramatic theatre as with the case of drama. Connecting the play-defining elements of the postdramatic to the play-realisation elements, one notes that regarding ‘verbality’, the play text is indeed ‘verbalised’ by the director to the actors, regarding ‘physicality’ the figure to figure(s) ‘address’ constitutes a ‘physicalisation’ of the text at staging level and regarding ‘vocality’ in performance, it is indeed ‘vocalised’ by performers to spectators. Table 3 summarises the conclusions drawn: Linguistic layering and the play semiotics in Disco Pigs by E. Walsh 133 Table 3. Play-realisational elements and addressivity Dramatic theatre Postdramatic theatre Realisational element text as (literary) drama text as script Addressivity writer/ playwright  reader(s) playwright/ director  actor(s) Realisational element staging staging Addressivity director  actor(s) figure  figure(s) Realisational element performance performance Addressivity character  character(s) performer  spectator(s) Linking now to the linguistic analysis of play-defining elements in 7.1., as in James and Gömceli (2018) it can be posited for drama that characterisation as realised lexicophonologically is indeed closely related to character-character(s) addressivity at the performance level, plot as realised lexicogrammatically is closely related to playwright/ director-actor(s) addressivity at staging level, and setting as realised lexicosemantically is closely related to writer/ playwright-reader(s) addressivity at (literary) work of drama level (2018: 220). And from a linguistic semiotics point of view, these play-defining and play-realisation elements can be linked via the linguistic layer structuring to the social semiotic functions of ‘identification’, ‘action’ and ‘representation’ which emerge at the play-realisation levels of performance, staging and ‘literary text’, respectively (2018: 220- 221) As already noted above in 7.1. with regard to the play-defining elements of postdramatic theatre, linguistically, the lexicophonological realises ‘vocality’, the lexicogrammatical ‘physicality’ and the lexicosemantic ‘verbality’. From a social semiotic perspective, ‘identification’ is signalled via the linguistic layer at the play-realisation level of performance, ‘action’ via the linguistic layer at the staging level and ‘representation’ via the linguistic layer at the initial text communication stage. Allan James 134 Table 4. Play-realisation elements, play-defining elements, linguistic layers and social semiotic functions Dramatic theatre Postdramatic theatre Realisational element text as (literary) drama text as script Defining element setting verbality Linguistic layer lexicosemantic lexicosemantic Social semiotic function representation representation Realisational element staging staging Defining element plot physicality Linguistic layer lexicogrammatical lexicogrammatical Social semiotic function action action Realisational element performance performance Defining element characterisation vocality Linguistic layer lexicophonological lexicophonological Social semiotic function identification identification 8. Conclusion On the most general level of reflection, the present analysis has attempted to show that new forms of drama and theatre expression require new forms of linguistic understanding. More specifically, it argues that via a close empirical analysis a linguistics of drama and theatre must engage directly with the play-defining and play-realisational elements that are present in drama and theatre practice themselves and develop an approach to the language structuring they manifest which acknowledges the nature of the meanings they convey. Such meanings are in the first place dramatic and theatrical ‘signs’ which via their consistent language patterning in the second place also become linguistic signs in their own right. Thus emerges a linguistic Linguistic layering and the play semiotics in Disco Pigs by E. Walsh 135 semiotics of drama and theatre, as opposed to an earlier semiotics of drama and theatre which limits ‘the linguistic’ to the specification of the particular codes and rules employed in the realisation of dramatic/ theatrical discourse in general (cf. the discussion of Baumbach and Nünning (2009) in 2.1. and Elam (2002) in 2.2. above). A relative absence of connection in linguistic analysis to the semiotic signalling of dramatic and theatrical structures themselves may also be noted in extant stylistics approaches to play analysis, which focus principally on the discourse of drama itself from a textual or cognitive point of view. Such approaches employ the frameworks of pragmatic or ‘discourse linguistics’ models of analysis such as speech act theory (Burton 1980) and conversation analysis (Herman 1995) or cognitively oriented text-world theory (Cruickshank and Lahey 2010), respectively, to capture the reader’s understanding of the text of plays (cf. also the discussion in 2.2. above). For the linguistic analysis of play semiotics it has been the intention to show that the hybrid layers of linguistic structure proposed have the propensity to capture the linguistic regularity of the dramatic and postdramatic meanings that plays signal. 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