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THE STYLISTIC POTENTIAL OF PHONETIC AND GRAPHIC LINGUISTIC MEANS IN DRAMATIC TEXTS (BASED ON THE PLAYS OF THE THEATER OF THE ABSURD) // Tomsk State Pedagogical University Bulletin. 2018. Issue 7 (196). P. 48-53

Despite the disposition of the theater of the absurd for linguistic minimalism, the plays of the British theater of the absurd possess a great phonographic potential due to the generic features of the dramatic text. The article explains the paradoxical ability of the dramatic text to transfer performer’s phonostylistic means through the author’s remarks, special syntactic constructions and graphic tools. The identified phonostylistic and graphic means in the absurdist plays by Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter and Tom Stoppard do not only help to convey the authors’ ideas, but also conform to the philosophy of the absurd. The most represented means is the instrumentation based on different sound repetitions (alliteration, consonance, rhyme) with the use of sound symbolism. The phonographic analysis of the texts also revealed some cases of onomatopoeia and paronomasia. Rhythm has a special stylistic meaning in the drama. It is inherent in both theatrical actions and speech, which is reflected in the dramatic text. The article considers the ways of creating a specific slow, monotonous rhythm peculiar to the theater of the absurd with its idea of cyclical existence. The described examples confirm the stylistic markedness of the plays of the theater of the absurd which can be an object of further research in linguistics and stylistics.

Keywords: theater of the absurd, dramatic text, phonostylistics, graphic language means, instrumentation, sound symbolism, rhythm