A Cognitive Study Of Ironies In Samuel Beckett’s Dramatic Texts

Beckett is one of the most influential writers of the20thcentury. He becomesfamous to a large extent due to his plays. In the past four decades, numerous books andarticles have been published on Beckett and his works within the fields of history,philosophy, psychology and structuralism and the like. However, the studies onBeckett’s plays from the perspective of cognitive linguistics are much less. The writingtechniques in Samuel Beckett’s plays differ from that of the traditional theatres byemploying irony, humor, metaphor, parody and so forth. Irony is one of the salientcharacteristics in Samuel Beckett’s plays. This paper attempts to analyze ironies inBeckett’s dramatic texts from the view of cognitive linguistics.The paper is intended to demonstrate some problems relevant to the theories ofirony firstly. In traditional view of irony, it is defined as a figure of speech to expressincongruity between what is expected and what occurs in daily communication and it isperceived as dialectical negative to a certain degree. Since the1960s, people began toquestion the traditional irony theories. With the development of the modern linguistics,the researches on irony turn to cognitive level. Therefore, irony studies on Beckett’splays have to shift to cognitive aspect. Secondly, this paper analyzes ironies in Beckett’splays from the aspects of time-space notion and emotional reaction respectively. Timeand space notion is throughout Beckett’s plays. Emotional reaction is one of the salientfeatures of Beckett’s plays. So we should find out how Beckett dealt with these ironytheories in his dramatic writing.This research analyzes ironies in Beckett’s plays from the levels of pragmatics andcognition, covering allusional pretense, indirect negation and graded salience hypothesisin Beckett’s plays (Chapter Four) and time-space notion and emotional reactions in hisplays (Chapter Five).Firstly, this paper attempts to study allusional pretense in Beckett’s Waiting forGodot (1957), Endgame (1960) and Act without Words (1975). It appears that Becketttold familiar Bible stories to the audience by applying allusional pretense theory ofirony so as to show human’s sense of loss and helplessness. Besides, this researchemploys indirect negation theory of irony and graded salience hypothesis to exploreironies in his Waiting for Godot, Endgame and Happy Days (1960). It shows thatBeckett aims to apply these irony theories to reveal the characters’ sorrow. Secondly,this research probes into Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, Happy Days, Endgame, Krapp’sLast Tape (1957) and Footballs (1975) and the utterances of all characters in these plays involve irony phenomenon, such as the country road, barren trees and repetitive actionsand irrelevant conversations in Waiting for Godot, the mound in Happy Days, theconfined room in Endgame, Krapp listens to his records in the past repeatedly inKrapp’s Last Tape and the character paces back and forth in Footballs, all these reflectthe concept of time and space. In addition, this paper applies emotive theory to interpretverbal ironies in Waiting for Godot, Not I (1972) and Come and Go (1971) so as touncover the characters’sense of helplessness, loneliness and sorrow.In a word, this paper studies irony in Beckett’s dramatic texts with relevant ironytheories that are now available. Through this research, we find that all characters inBeckett’s plays are subjected to sufferings; however, they dare to fight with theirdestinies and never give up. In short, it is helpful for us to seek for the ironic meaning inBeckett’s plays by studying ironies in his dramatic texts and understand the multiplethemes of his plays, which represents human’s loneliness and Beckett’s great concernabout the human existence.