Activity types and characterisation in dramatic discourse

This paper aims to enhance our understanding of how characterisation works in dramatic texts, whether written for the stage or the film screen, and to futher the development of a stylistics of drama. Regarding characterisation, we aim to contribute both to an understanding of how characters are constructed in texts by writers and to how they are conceived by readers. Thus,
our general approach might be described as cognitive stylistic, although this paper will focus much more on language than cognition. Regarding the stylistics of drama, we hope to assist in the redress of the quantitative imbalance in work investigating the different literary genres: the quantity of work on drama pales into insignificance compared with work on poetry and prose.
Even less work has looked at language and characterisation in plays.