A Linguistic Approach To Dramatic Discourse:

This dissertation aims to analyze the structure of spoken discourse in literary texts. It seeks to provide a linguistic analysis of the dramatic language of the American dramatist Eugene O'Neill in his two plays: The Hairy Ape (1922) and Long Day's Journey into Night (1956), The primary concern is to study the interactional aspects of some lexico-grammatical forms that mark the structure of the conversational exchanges between the characters in the two plays. The verbal and non-verbal interactions are analyzed as well in order to highlight the coherence of the dialogue. In addition, the dissertation tries to explore the interactional aspects of dramatic discourse to show in what way they can be studied for interpreting the meanings and thematic issues implicit in the conversational exchanges of a dialogue.