The Disorders of Verbal Communication in the Dramatic Works of Nathalie Sarraute

Nathalie Sarraute is one of the pioneers of the new novel in France. In all of Sarraute's works, there is a kind of linguistic disorder and confusion, rooted in indescribable feelings. This feeling is the equivalent of a phenomenon called tropism. Sarraute borrowed the term from biology and defined it as indefinable movements, which slide very rapidly to the limits of our consciousness. They are at the origin of our gestures, of our words, and of the feelings we manifest, we believe to experience. For Sarraute, language, besides the outer part—the apparent part of the message— has an inner part that has not yet reached the stage of message production. This interior part corresponds to the uncertain movements to which Sarraute refers in the definition of tropism. The verbal disturbances in Sarraute’s text are due to the existence of the same outlaw and uncontrollable inner language, which is much more powerful than conventional and external language. In fact, surrendering to outer and conventional language guides the desire to be social and communicable to others, but the problem of the characters exists in their inability to transfer feelings perfectly in the form of normal and external language. Their inner language is so powerful that it affects the outer language and disturbs it. In this article, we examine briefly a number of communication problems caused by the tension of the inner language in the words of the characters.