Linguistic Features of Radio Drama: A Case Study of Albert's Bridge

The role of radio as a special medium within mass media, especially when lots of audiences are concerned, becomes more vivid and important. As a result, radio paly as one of the most successful entertaining programs among radio works, gains a specific value. In this article, the unique features of radio are discussed, and the role of language in this medim is studied. Afterwards, radio drama and its linguistic features have been analysed, and four linguistic patterns (stage directions, place diexix, speech acts, and textual cohesion) have been checked. Finally these features have been applied to the radio play Albert’s Bridge by Tom Stoppard (1969). The issues coverd in this study encompass all the major features studied in the linguistic analysis of conversation. Therefore, issues such as speech act theory and its several subcategories, as well as diexis analysis, cohesion and coherence have been considered. Speech act as the main feature of the current study revealed some very interesting results. As we know, Speech acts can be analysed on three levels: A locutionary act, the performance of an utterance: the actual utterance and its ostensible meaning, comprising phonetic, phatic and rhetic acts corresponding to the verbal, syntactic and semantic aspects of any meaningful utterance; an illocutionary act: the pragmatic ‘illocutionary force’ of the utterance, thus its intended significance as a socially valid verbal action; and in certain cases a further perlocutionary act: its actual effect, such as persuading, convincing, scaring, enlightening, inspiring, or otherwise getting someone to do or realize something, whether intended or not. There are five illocutionary speech acts which were considered in this study, which are assertives (speech acts that commit a speaker to the truth of the expressed proposition, e.g. reciting a creed), directives (speech acts that are to cause the hearer to take a particular action, e.g. requests, commands and advice), commissives (speech acts that commit a speaker to some future action, e.g. promises and oaths), expressives (speech acts that express the speaker’s attitudes and emotions towards the proposition, e.g. congratulations, excuses and thanks), and declarations (speech acts that change the reality in accord with the proposition of the declaration, e.g. baptisms, pronouncing someone guilty or pronouncing someone husband and wife). The other feature studied in this paper is the extent of cohesion and coherence of the text in radio drama. Cohesion is the grammatical and lexical relationship within a text or sentence. Cohesion can be defined as the links that hold a text together and give it meaning. It is related to the broader concept of coherence. There are two main types of cohesion: grammatical, referring to the structural content, and lexical, referring to the language content of the piece. A cohesive text is created in many different ways. On the other hand, Coherence is what makes a text semantically meaningful. It is especially dealt with in text linguistics. Coherence is achieved through syntactical features such as the use of deictic, anaphoric and cataphoric elements or a logical tense structure, as well as presuppositions and implications connected to general world knowledge. All these factors have been checked on the play Albert’s Bridge, and the results have been put forward in several tables.