A survey of the impact of play’s theme on audiences’ attitude based on NLP communication Model: A case study of Samuel Becket’s “Waiting for Godot”

Neuro-linguistics programming (NLP) represents the input and output process of information. Furthermore, the psychology of language is fundamental to an understanding of what the NLP model represents. Also, in the 20th century, a new style of literature emerged as absurd literature. In this style, the writers have expressed thoughts of aimlessness, emptiness, isolation, loneliness, and death thoughts. For example, Samuel Beckett, one of the authors of the mentioned style, has dealt with this style in works such as “Waiting for Godot.” In this research, the qualitative method was used. In addition, an attempt was made to examine the effect of meaningless literature on the audience’s attitude. To investigate this issue, themes of “Waiting for Godot” were studied from literature websites such as “www.shmoop.com,” “www.askliterature.com,” “www.msmsol.com,” and “www.literary-articles.com.” The research results showed that in his work, many negative themes were used in “Waiting for Godot.” In conclusion, based on the NLP model, negative themes as negative events create a negative internal representation. Then, the negative internal representation creates a negative state of mind and negative behaviors in the audience of absurd literature. So, the audience should be aware of the influence of absurd literature when studying works of this style.