Die dramatiese discours in Pas de deux van Hugo Claus

Abstract

Drama is action, verbal drama is speech action, and the dramatic text is subject to a similar set of rules as that governing the extra-literary communication situation. Dramatic irony, the very essence of drama itself, is generated by a dual, mutually interactive process of communication, whereby the audience is “written into” the text in a way distinguishing it from other literary genres, and by a systematic flouting of the rules governing communication. Pas de deux demonstrates the peculiar duality of dramatic discourse by its complex exploitation of the breakdown/non-breakdown of Grice’s Co-operative Principle-. communication/non-communication becomes reversible and, therefore, mutually constitutive concepts “releasing meaning” and conveying the “ideology” of this play.