A pragmatic approach to C.L. Leipoldt's early dramatic monologues

Abstract

This mini-dissertation is a pragmatic analysis of C.L. Leipoldt' s early dramatic monologues. The term pragmatics refers to the "study of language in use" (Sell 1991: 193). Levinson (1983:7) defines pragmatics as "the study of language from a functional perspective". In brief, pragmatics is concerned with how communication takes place in a particular situation. C. Louis Leipoldt's dramatic monologues are characterized by a conversational technique. A dramatic monologue, to use the Abrams' words, "is a speech by a single individual" (1988:46), which makes it unlikely that a dramatic monologue can be regarded as the interaction between a speaker and his listener. This mini-dissertation investigated the applicability of the pragmatic aspects of speaker-listener interaction, the cooperative principle (which includes maxims), speech acts, contextual elements like rhetoric, deixis, anaphora and deviation to C.L. Leipoldt' s dramatic monologues. It has been demonstrated that a dramatic monologue can be perceived as like any other communicative situation. However, because of the limited scope of this mini-dissertation,

the focus has been on essential aspects of pragmatics as outlined above. They have been applied mainly to two poems, namely Oom Gert Vertel and Vrede-aand. But at times reference has been made to two other poems, Sekretarisvoel and Kriekie! Kriekie!. The study has demonstrated that it is possible to adopt a pragmatic analysis to C.L. Leipoldt's dramatic monologues. Taking the text as a medium of communication, put Leipoldt' s early dramatic monologues in a new light. These poems, like any communication medium, are subject to communicative constraints. Because pragmatics has as its central concept context,. poetry does not remain confined to specific periods, but can be recontextualized for the prese