Performativity has always been an interest of mine, so reading these works on performance and intertexuality is very interesting. I am most intrigued again by the ways in which meaning arises from the gaps—from the ways that these texts intersect one another. For example, in the “Spotted Pup” story, it is the way in which the text genres of tall tale, personal experience narrative, and practical joke all come together that ultimately make the story itself a success, and reflect well on Ed Bell’s narrative style.
Bauman’s description of performance as a mode of communication where not only the topic is being communicated but also that the speaker him or herself is drawing attention to the fact that s/he is “on display” seems a useful distinction to me.
This calls back the acknowledgement not only of speaker-hearer participation frame a la Goffman, but also an additional layer—the breaking of the “fourth wall,” to borrow a term from theater. In performance, the audience is acknowledged not only as a hearer participant in the participation framework, but also an audience in the sense of theatre, one for whom the speech itself is designed to produce some noticeable effect. Ed Bell signifies this to his audience through metalinguistic cues, prompting them to challenge him, or acknowledging their probable skepticism of the tall tale or practical joke about which he is speaking. Cues like this tell us a great deal about the performative aspects of any given (discourse) text. I think this may be a useful line of inquiry in my own research, as there is a certain element to which any given speech act in an internet community is being performed for, by the standards of, and with cognizance of the community in which it is written.
No comments:
Post a Comment