Dialogue Examples

The Little Princess by Frances H. Burnett, a professional playwright

(This is dialogue from a play written in 1911. The story for the play is even older. Young girls would behave differently now, but their feelings would be much the same.)

Characters:
Sara, the little princess.
She is an orphan and the money her father left her is gone. No longer does she have lovely dresses and the kindness of the school owner. She is forced to live in a small room at the top of the house and work from early morning to late evening. Often she gets nothing to eat. Becky, the scullery maid. (Note how differently Becky talks. She doesn’t have the education that Sara does.)

Scene:
A garret under the roof at the girls’ school; rake roof with garret window, outside of which are showing housetops with snow on them. There are rat holes around. A bed, covered with an old blanket, sheet, and old coverlet, badly torn. A table with a bench behind it. Chairs, an armchair, and a four-legged stool above fireplace. A washstand with pitcher, bowl, soap-dish, and mug. An old trunk. A candle in stick unlighted.

(Sara’s school friend, Ermengarde, has gone to get a box of good things to eat to share with Sara. Sara is very hungry, but she has invited Becky, the maid who also has a room in the garret, to come share in the party. Sara and Becky are setting the table, pretending that it is a very fancy place, indeed.)

 

Sara: Ermy, you go for the box and we will set the table. (Puts Ermengarde out of the door.)

Becky: Oh, Miss – oh, Miss, I know it’s you that asked her to let me come. It makes me cry to think of it.

Sara (cheerfully, embracing her): No, no, you mustn’t cry.
We must make haste and set the table. What can we
put on it? (Sees red shawl) Here’s her shawl – I know she won’t mind. It will make such a nice red table-cloth. (Picks it up and spreads it on table with Becky’s help) What next? Oh! (Clasps hands delightedly) I know, I’ll look for something in my old trunk, that I used to have when I was a princess. (Runs to trunk, opens it and rummages in it. Stops and sees Becky) Becky, do you know what a banquet is?

Becky: No, Miss, is it something to be ‘et, or something to be worn?

Sara (sitting by trunk): It’s a magnificent feast. Kings have
them, and Queens, and Lord Mayors. We are going to have one. Now begin to pretend just as hard as ever you can – and straighten the richly embroidered table-cloth. (Sara turns to trunk again, as Becky straightens table-cloth. Becky then stands, squeezing her eyes tight shut, clenching her hands and holding her breath. Sara takes package of handkerchiefs from trunk, rises to go to table, sees Becky and laughs.)

Sara: What are you doing, Becky?

Becky (opening her eyes and catching her breath): I was
pretending, Miss. It takes a good bit of strength.

Sara: Yes, it does – just at first. But it doesn’t take so much when you get used to it. I’m used to it. Now what do you suppose these are?

Becky (delighted): They looks like ‘ankerchiefs, Miss, but I know they ain’t – 

Sara: No, they are not. They are plates and napkins. Gold and silver plates and richly embroidered napkins – to match the table-cloth. These are the plates and these are the napkins. (Giving each bundle to Becky separately) You must not take the napkins for the plates, or the plates for the napkins, Becky.

Becky: Lor’ no, Miss. They ain’t nothin’ like each other.

Sara: No, they’re not. If you pretend hard enough. (Steps back) Don’t they look nice?

Becky: Jest lovely, Miss. Particular them gold and silver plates…

(Later, Sara learns her father did leave money for her. Sara gets to move into the lovely home of her father’s friend. She brings Becky with her.)

http://artswork.asu.edu/students/lessons/drama_theatre/theatre_book/dialogue_example_princess.php

DIALOGUE

A model for the analysis of dialogue comprises two principal methodological orientations. 

1. Structure: A focus on the way spoken discourse is structured; on how it is organised in a linear fashion and how its various components are bolted together. A structural analysis of discourse thus seeks to explore the connection (or sometimes, lack of connection) in dialogue between questions and answers, statements and acknowledgements, requests and reactions, and so on. 
2. Strategy: The study of discourse in terms of strategy. Here attention is focussed on the way speakers use different interactive tactics at specific points during a sequence of talk. The axis of selection forms a strategic continuum ranging from ‘direct’ to ‘indirect’, along which different types of utterances can be plotted in terms of their varying degrees of politeness. 

Characterisation is created through patterns of language and to highlight the points of departure and/or intersection between the discourse world of the play and the discourse situation of the world outside the play.

A. The strategies of dialogue:

 

Analyzing play dialogue in terms of discourse strategy often involves cross-reference between the character level and the higher-order interactive level of playwright and audience/reader. 

The ‘Theatre of the Absurd’: The tradition of absurd writing is characterised by a preoccupation with the apparent futility of human existence, and this often manifests in play talk that, when compared to the sociolinguistic routines of everyday verbal interaction, stands out as deviant, anti-realist or just plain daft. o 

From N. F. Simpson’s absurdist play One Way Pendulum, a courtroom has been hastily assembled inside a domestic living room to facilitate Mr. Groomkirby’s ‘swearing in’ ceremony: 

The Usher enters followed by Mr. Groomkirby, whom he directs into the witness box. Mr. Groomkirby takes the oath. Mr. Groomkirby: (holding up a copy of ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’) I swear, by Harriet Beecher Stowe, that the evidence I shall give shall be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Judge: You understand, do you, that you are now on oath? Mr. Groomkirby: I do, m’lord. 

A courtroom is institutionally sanctioned to deal exclusively with legal proceedings, and is manifestly not the sort of thing that can be set up by anybody in a domestic living room. Furthermore, although Mr. Groomkirby’s ‘swearing-in’ contains many instantly recognisable formulaic structures such as ‘ . . . the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth . . .’, the use of Uncle Tom’s Cabin clearly violates the pragmatic conditions which govern this ritual. 

Absurdist, as opposed to realist, drama tends to make use of a special kind of incongruity that comes from a mismatch between communicative strategy and discourse context, often deriving from fictional speakers not observing the familiar or expected routines that are cued by everyday discourse contexts. And these incongruities often have humorous outcomes. 

B. The structure of dialogue 

One of the most significant studies of the structures of play talk is Deirdre Burton’s book on dialogue and discourse. Burton investigates a number of play texts using a variety of different models in conversation analysis and speech act theory. Her book culminates with a lengthy breakdown of Harold Pinter’s play The Dumb Waiter 

GUS: I want to ask you something.

BEN: [no response]

BEN: What are you doing out there?

GUS: Well I was just BEN: What about tea?

GUS: I’m just going to make it.

BEN: Well go on, make it.

GUS: Yes, I will. 

In ‘I want to ask you something’, Gus attempts to initiate an exchange , although Ben fails to provide the anticipated second part to this. Furthermore, Gus’s initiation is couched in the form of a discourse act known as a metastatement. Metastatements work as organising devices, but function more as ‘language about language’ than as information-carrying units of discourse in their own right. This request for permission to hold the floor is of course rebuffed by his interlocutor, who immediately initiates his own ‘question and answer’ exchange which this time does elicit a reply from his interlocutor. It is noticeable that Gus is prevented from finishing his reply before Ben opens up a new ‘request and reaction’ type exchange with ‘What about tea?’. 

Concerning characterization, the unequal statuses of the participants, she argues, are reflected in the structure of dialogue On the one hand, Ben is the dominating interactant, the confident director of operations and persons, although there are occasional sequences of talk where his frailer side comes to the fore. Gus, in spite of the odd battle for superiority, is the inferior interactant who as ‘victim’ gains audience sympathy by the end of the play.

Burton makes a number of connections between the structure of Pinter’s dialogue and that of adult-to-child interaction. The means by which Ben for example asserts his conversational dominance bears much similarity to the patterns other researchers have uncovered for the way adults interact with children. Gus’s attempts at initiation, by contrast, resemble those of children who also tend to be less successful initiators of conversational exchanges. 

The overall point is that the structures Burton uncovers in play talk become messages about those characters at the level of discourse between playwright and audience.

http://educationcing.blogspot.com/2012/

Monologue

In theatre, a monologue is presented by a single character, most often to express their mental thoughts aloud, though sometimes also to directly address another character or the audience. Monologues are common across the range of dramatic media (plays, films,^[1] etc.) as well as in non-dramatic media such as poetry.^[2] Monologues share much in common with several other literary devices including soliloquies, apostrophes, and aside. There are, however, distinctions between each of these devices.

Similar Literary Devices

Monologues are similar to soliloquies, apostrophes, and asides. Nevertheless, meaningful differences exist among them. For example, a monologue is distinct from a soliloquy because the latter involves a character relating his or her thoughts and feelings to him/herself and to the audience without addressing any of the other characters. A monologue is the thoughts of a person spoken out loud.^[3] Monologues are also distinct from apostrophes, wherein the speaker or writer addresses an imaginary person, inanimate object, or idea.^[4] Asides differ from each of these not only in terms of length (asides being shorter) but also in that asides aren't heard by other characters even in situations where they logically should be (i.e. two characters engaging in a dialogue interrupted by one of them delivering an aside).^[5]

A soliloquy (from Latin: "talking by oneself") is a device often used in drama when a character speaks to himself or herself, relating thoughts and feelings, thereby also sharing them with the audience. Other characters, however, are not aware of what is being said.^[1][2] A soliloquy is distinct from a monologue or an aside: a monologue is a speech where one character addresses other characters; an aside is a (usually short) comment by one character towards the audience.
Soliloquies were frequently used in dramas but went out of fashion when drama shifted towards realism in the late 18th century. Today, Korean screenwriters often insert brief soliloquies in Korean drama. Queen In-Hyun's Man is a good example.
 

Apostrophe (figure of speech)

Apostrophe (Greek ἀποστροφή, apostrophé, "turning away"; the final e being sounded)^[1] is an exclamatory rhetorical figure of speech, when a speaker or writer breaks off and directs speech to an imaginary person or abstract quality or idea. In dramatic works and poetry written in or translated into English, such a figure of speech is often introduced by the exclamation "O".

Examples

• "God deliver me from fools." English proverb^[2]
• "Where, my death, is thy sting? where, O death, thy victory?" 1 Corinthians 15:55, Saint Paul of Tarsus
• "O, pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth, / That I am meek and gentle with these butchers! / Thou art the ruins of the noblest man / That ever lived in the tide of times." Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, Act 3, Scene 1
• "Is this a dagger which I see before me, The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee! I have thee not, and yet I see thee still." Shakespeare, Macbeth, Act 2, Scene 1
• "To what green altar, O mysterious priest, / Lead'st thou that heifer lowing at the skies, / And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?" John Keats, "Ode on a Grecian Urn"
• "O eloquent, just, and mighty Death!" Sir Walter Raleigh, A Historie of the World
• "Roll on, thou dark and deep blue Ocean -- roll!" Lord Byron, "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage"
• "Thou glorious sun!" Samuel Taylor Coleridge, "This Lime Tree Bower"^[3]
• "Death, be not proud, though some have called thee / Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so", John Donne, "Holy Sonnet X"
• "And you, Eumaeus..." the Odyssey
• "O My friends, there is no friend." Montaigne, originally attributed to Aristotle^[4]
• "Ah Bartleby! Ah Humanity!", from Bartleby, the Scrivener by Herman Melville
• "O black night, nurse of the golden eyes!" Electra in Euripides' Electra (c. 410 BCE, line 54), in the translation by David Kovacs (1998).
• "Then come, sweet death, and rid me of this grief." [(Queen Isabel in Edward II by Christopher Malowe)]
• "O happy dagger! This is thy sheath; there rust, and let me die." Romeo and Juliet (V, iii, 169-170). 

An aside is a dramatic device in which a character speaks to the audience. By convention the audience is to realize that the character's speech is unheard by the other characters on stage. It may be addressed to the audience expressly (in character or out) or represent an unspoken thought. An aside is usually a brief comment, rather than a speech, such as a monologue or soliloquy. Unlike a public announcement, it occurs within the context

“

A little more than kin, and less than kind.

”

This technique has frequently been used in film comedy, for example in the Bob Hope "Road" comedies, Woody Allen comedies and in Ferris Bueller's Day Off.