Drama: Secondary

Key resources 1 - A social theory of language to underpin drama

Texts and Contexts

Our use of language is highly ‘situational’ and culturally determined. In other words much of what we say and do is bound to the situations that we find ourselves in; different situations require different uses of language. It is through language that we make our private meanings public - communicable to others - and this making public depends on there being a shared set of linguistic resources amongst the communicating group.

If I want to tell you what I’m thinking and feeling, I have to put it into a form of communication that we both understand and which is appropriate to the situation that we find ourselves in. If I have had a nasty car crash, which has caused me distress, I might need to share this distress through communicating it to others. The form through which this communication takes place (and therefore the ‘meaning’ of distress that I communicate) will be different according to whether I am communicating with:

• the police at the scene of the accident
• staff at the hospital where I have been taken
• my family when I get home
• friends who phone to see if I’m alright
• my insurance agent who comes to inspect the damage
• the magistrates at a court hearing

Texts in….

• A text is language-in-action
• A text is constructed according to its function and purpose
• In order to function effectively a text must correspond to certain lexico-grammatical rules and it must be socially and culturally appropriate to its context
• For this reason, a text only has purposeful meaning in a social context
• For this reason, the smallest unit of communicated meaning is the text itself
• The text is more than the words and sentences used to realise it;
• Texts can only be fully understood in the context of their production and reception
• In most cultures, certain text-types are given greater value and therefore power than others. In western culture, writing is given greater value than speech, non-fiction is given greater value than fiction; professional and public texts are given greater value than private and personal text-types

… Contexts

• The construction of texts varies according to dialects (voice) and registers (functions)
• The choice of register is determined by dialect and the particular social context
• But the range of dialects and therefore registers that are available to one is determined by social class and educational opportunity
• The greater the range the more power you will have; linguistic capital can be transformed into economic and cultural capital