Sculpting the Language, or Stage Speech

Abstract

From the discussion above it appears that even the most complicated theatre phenomena may be explained and elucidated by analysis of the time structures involved. When language is the object of scrutiny, however, the situation becomes particularly complex.¹ The raw material of natural language (speech) is air, or more precisely, sound waves of a particular frequency, emitted by the vocal apparatus. In describing the chemical composition of air and presenting diagrams of wave frequencies in the process of verbal articulation, we do not even touch upon the complicated problem of language as a sign system, particularly in such uncommon uses of language as we find in artistic texts or when it is one of the constitutive substances in a performance. In theatre, what we hear is the articulation of the factual speech of the actors, not of the figures. Language becomes a sign of a sign, even more than that. The utterances of the figures are only implied, they are not audible. Thus, the initial premise that I shall attempt to prove in this chapter is that the language used by the actors is transformed into an iconic system of signs, and above all becomes a sign of the natural language used by fictional figures.² What follows is that the meaning of signs that involve verbal utterances is generated by the juxtaposition of the direct meanings of the latter within the phenomenal stage (and the real world outside, which naturally includes other cultural texts and codes) and the denoted, hence indirect, meanings within the fictional realm.