Social Minds in Drama. Golnaz Shams

them to specific ideological beliefs or groups. In drama studies, there is an unease about treating a playscript as a whole, autonomous narrative consolidating all the parts – stage directions, introductions and the dialogue. I would like to introduce a model where all these parts contribute to telling a story about fictional characters interacting in a storyworld; an inclusive model where one can make use of the clues available in all the parts of the narrative.

1.4 Methodology and Approach

      My theoretical approach is mainly based on Palmer’s theory, but since Palmer himself is working with an eclectic compilation of concepts, I too will draw on the major theories in cognitive narratological studies. After having explained in detail Palmer’s approach, the status of drama in narrative studies, and the concept of character and characterisation within a narrative framework in Chapters Two and Three of this book, in Chapters Four and Five, I will introduce my own concepts.

      In applying Palmer’s theoretical framework I am following in the steps Emmott’s contextual frame theory in her “Construction of Social Space” (2003). Emmott’s approach is a linguistic one. She argues that on the level of each sentence readers are presented with a set of characters, which she calls the “overt participants”. She calls characters that are assumed to be present (in the storyworld, for example), but are not mentioned in that particular sentence she calls the “covert participants”. Thus, proximity plays a central role in Emmott’s theory since “in comprehending narratives, readers have to construct these co-presence relations and make inferences about the social consequences of proximity” (2003: 303). She later states that “[f];rom a social point of view, we are constantly making assumptions about how the actions of characters affect ←25 | 26→the other characters who are co-present” (2003: 304). The foundation of this theory, along with some minor adaptations to the genre of drama, will be a perfect match for Palmer’s theory of social minds in action and my application of it to character groupings in playscripts. One of these adaptations is to expand the object of analysis from a sentence in a novel to a scene in a play. In every scene, there is a set of characters present that form agential constellations. These will be referred to as the overt participants of that particular scene. The other characters who are part of the dramatis personae and thus part of the storyworld but are not present in that particular scene are the covert participants.

      Contextual frame theory allows us to make inferences based on every action and utterance of the characters, and based on these inferences to construct the overt and covert characters’ consciousness. By taking Palmer’s continuing consciousness frame into account, the focus on consciousness helps to convert Emmott’s model into a dynamic and ongoing process active throughout the play, whereby each and every utterance confirms, rejects or revises previous versions of the characters’ consciousness that have been constructed by the reader. Furthermore, the concept of social proximity and co-presence is one of the major processes at work in group formation in different scenes of a play. The dynamic nature of the theory, adapted to drama, takes into account any character that enters or leaves the context during any scene (Emmott 2003: 305), and it highlights the assumption that characters have a social awareness of the co-presence of other characters in their storyworld (2003: 305).

      Though the bulk of drama consists of dialogue, there are other textual features that complement the playscript. In this study, I am analysing the dialogue as well as metadramatic textual features, such as stage directions or additional information at the beginnings of the scenes. I will divide the playscripts into the introductory/explanatory passages, stage directions and embedded/doubly embedded narratives. The introductory and explanatory passages are the least behaviourist part of the playscript and are those passages that occur at the beginning of the plays, acts or scenes. They are detached from the characters and contain the playwright’s information about the characters. The stage directions are the parts that are set apart typographically from the rest of the text through italics or brackets (or both); they are more behaviourist than the introductory/explanatory passages and they belong to the specific characters they are tagged to. The embedded and doubly embedded narratives are the dialogue where we observe the characters talk and act and can extract information directly from a character about herself (embedded) or about another character (doubly embedded). In Chapters Four and Five, I will also show that each playwright has a different style in constructing the consciousness of the characters’ minds with regard to the ←26 | 27→thought-action continuum, and I will argue that this difference in style will affect the reading and characterisation process.

In order to achieve the above goal, I will proceed in a manner similar to that of Palmer in his Fictional Minds (2004). I will decode the actions of the characters in the playscripts and in so doing will establish a link between their thoughts and actions. Specifically, in drama, the actions¹⁰ of the characters are indicative of what goes on in their thoughts. Everything that goes on in a character’s mind is manifested in its speech and actions.

      I would like to use the terms action-based and thought-based characterisation statements, while discussing the construction of characters’ minds. Depending from where on the thought-action continuum the description of a character’s thoughts or actions is located, either of the aforementioned terms can be used. The diversity of thought-based and action-based information given about a character can influence the readers’ reading. A very important, influencing factor is the number of previous exposure readers have had to the character. It is important how complete the image is that readers have constructed of the character: have they already encountered this persona during the course of the narrative? How much information has the authorial agency given them so far? Have the other characters commented on the character already introduced and, if so, to what extent; or is this the first set of information on this particular character the readers encounter? These factors all matter in the construction of the characters’ minds at any given point in the play.

      I will also trace the transition between intramental and intermental thinking. More often than not, it is an intramental thought that develops into or becomes engaged in an intermental one. Thus, the main premises I will consider are social, ideological or even shared physical context which initiate an intermental action or thought. Important in this regard is the notion of group norms, also mentioned by Palmer:

      Social norms are always liable to be transgressed by individuals, and the fatal words are a potentially norm-breaking intramental action. Such dissent is characteristic of many aspects of the relationship between intermental and intramental thinking. (2004: 228–9)

      Group norms and their transgression form a very important part in the dynamics of a play and in the construction of characters’ minds. I believe that such breaking of norms occurs when certain characters establish intermental thinking with ←27 | 28→other characters, based on not only similarities but also on differences in their mindsets. This means that a certain character or group of characters share different mindsets with another character or group, but that there is an incompatibility between them on the grounds of one or several frames.

      Through this kind of analysis, I will try to show how some passages of a play demonstrate fictional minds in action, how they show the reader the characters’ emotions and dispositions, and how fictional minds and their thoughts are made public and open for everyone to read and interpret. I will also show that characters in these passages are engaged in intermental thinking and will trace how the dynamics of drama develop when two or more characters