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INVESTIGATING EXISTENTIAL INTERPRETATION OF WAITING FOR GODOT: A CORPUS-BASED STUDY OF LEXICAL FEATURES
Corresponding Author(s) : Ijaz Asghar
Humanities & Social Sciences Reviews,
Vol. 9 No. 3 (2021): May
Abstract
Purpose of the study: In this study, Samuel Beckett's dramatic writings' major aspects and linguistic qualities are examined, focusing on Waiting for Godot. The importance of these texts' linguistic characteristics has also been investigated. The study also looks into whether linguistic interpretations of Waiting for Godot are compatible with Existential readings.
Methodology: Computational techniques such as UAMCT, MAT, SUAS, and AntConc were used to analyze the data. However, UAMTC was employed as the primary tool, and the other techniques were only used to verify the results' validity and complement specific areas of analysis that UAMCT lacked.
Main Findings: Samuel Beckett's dramatic works are a linguistic paradox, lexically simple but structurally complicated, according to our linguistic analysis. Waiting for Godot's linguistic elements develop themes such as "Pessimism," "Directionlessness," "Skepticism," "Nothingness," "Existence," "Ambivalence," "Boredom," and "Alienation," These topics are consistent with Waiting for Godot's Existential interpretations.
Applications of this study: Applications of this study reside on its far-reaching pedagogical consequences for literature and language. It is extremely important for students and teachers of English Language and Literature and syllabus designers who deal with literature.
Originality/ Novelty: The play has a linguistic spontaneity of Existential themes. In a nutshell, in Waiting for Godot, Beckett has not told the predicament of Existence but made it happen linguistically.
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- Abid, S. (2021). The element of time in waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett. Journal of World English and Educational Practices, 3(4), 16-22. https://doi.org/10.32996/jweep.2021.3.4.3 DOI: https://doi.org/10.32996/jweep.2021.3.4.3
- Afridi, A. (2020). Waiting for Godot: Adieu to language. NUB Journal of Social Science and Humanities, 1(1), 57-68.
- Alexander, M. (1979). The poetic achievement of Ezra Pound. Barkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press. https://doi.org/10.1525/9780520315075 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1525/9780520315075
- Bell, L. A. J. (2011). Between ethics and aesthetics: The residual in Samuel Beckett’s minimalism. Journal of Beckett Studies, 20(1), 32-53. https://doi.org/10.3366/jobs.2011.0004 DOI: https://doi.org/10.3366/jobs.2011.0004
- Bhatti, I. J., Azher, M., & Abbas, S. (2019). Syntactic deconstruction of Beckett’s dramatic text: A transitivity analysis of Waiting for Godot. International Journal of English Linguistics, 9(4), 93-106. https://doi.o rg/10.5539/ijel.v9n4p93 DOI: https://doi.org/10.5539/ijel.v9n4p93
- Biber, D. (1988). Variations across speech and writing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org /10.1017/CBO9780511621024 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511621024
- Can, D. T. (2017). The representation of anacoluthon in Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett. Atatürk Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü Dergisi, 21(1), 1-17.
- Carriere, J. F. (2005). Samuel Beckett and bilingualism: How the return to English influences later writing style and gender roles in All that fall and Happy days. (Unpublished Doctoral Thesis). Louisiana State University.
- Cohn, R. (2001). A Beckett canon. Michigan: University of Michigan Press. https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.15933 DOI: https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.15933
- Cronin, A. (1999). Samuel Beckett: The last modernist. New York: De Capo Press.
- Dreyfus, S., & Bennett, I. (2017). Circumstantiation: taking a broader look at circumstantial meanings. Functional Linguistics, 4(5), 1-31. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40554-016-0036-y DOI: https://doi.org/10.1186/s40554-016-0036-y
- Farahani, M. V., & Arbabi, M. (2016). Manipulation in drama translation: A case study of Waiting for Godot. International Journal of Research, 5(4), 83-94. https://doi.org/10.5861/ijrsll.2016.1316 DOI: https://doi.org/10.5861/ijrsll.2016.1316
- Farahani, M. V., & Kaleybar, N. M. (2019). Domestication and foreignisation of allusions in Persian translations of Waiting for Godot: A case study. Global Journal of Foreign Language Teaching, 9(2), 91-100. https://doi.org/10.18 844/gjflt.v9i2.3633 DOI: https://doi.org/10.18844/gjflt.v9i2.3633
- Hulle, D. V. (2011). The urge to tell: Samuel Beckett not I as a Texte Brise for television. Journal of Beckett Studies, 18(1), 44-56. https://doi.org/10.3366/E0309520709000260 DOI: https://doi.org/10.3366/E0309520709000260
- Hwang, I. K. (2019). The rebellious maxims of conversation in postmodern absurdity focusing on Harold Pinter’s the birthday party & Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. International Journal of Language and Linguistics, 6(4), 159-67.
- Ilyas, S., & Rafi, M. S. (2016). A Bakhtinian interpretation of Beckett: Waiting for Godot. Gomal University Journal of Research, 4, 77-84.
- Ionescu, A. (2020). Language as Becoming: The cases of Self-Translation of Samuel Beckett and EM Cioran. In The Time is Now. Essays on the Philosophy of Becoming (pp. 63-92). Bucharest: Zeta Books.
- James, A., & Gomceli, N. (2018). The textual analysis of dramatic discourse revisited Linguistic layers and the (social) semiotics of play-constitutive and play-realisational elements. English Text Construction, 11(2), 199-224. https://doi.org/10.1075/etc.00009.jam DOI: https://doi.org/10.1075/etc.00009.jam
- Kouachi, R. (2018). Eloquent silences in Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot and Harold Pinter's the dumb waiter. AWEJ for Translation & Literary Studies, 2(1), 172-81. https://doi.org/10.24093/awejtls/vol2no1.13 DOI: https://doi.org/10.24093/awejtls/vol2no1.13
- Krennmayr, T. (2011). Metaphor in newspapers. [Doctoral Dissertation, Free University of Amsterdam]. Utrecht: LOT dissertation series, 276.
- Laws, C. (1996). Music and language in the works of Beckett. [Unpublished Doctoral Thesis]. University of York.
- McDonald, R. (2006). The Cambridge Introduction to Samuel Beckett. New York: Cambridge University Press, New York. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511607417 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511607417
- Mene, R. (2016). The world of boredom and sorrow: Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot as an absurd drama. Research Scholar, 3(1), 253-256.
- Nykänen, E., & Koivisto, A. (2016). Fictional dialogue and the construction of interaction in Rosa Liksom’s Short stories. International Journal of Literary Linguistics, 5(2), 1-30. https://doi.org/10.15462/ijll.v5i2.60 DOI: https://doi.org/10.15462/ijll.v5i2.60
- Padilla, K. C. (2017). The language of the “Absurdâ€: The d/evaluation, deviation and (mis) use of language in Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. The Southern Luzon Journal of Arts and Sciences, 9(1), 9-40.
- Paraskeva, A. (2013). Beckett, biomechanics and Einstein’s reading of Kleist’s Marionettes. Journal of Beckett Studies, 22(2), 161-179. https://doi.org/10.3366/jobs.2013.0070 DOI: https://doi.org/10.3366/jobs.2013.0070
- Pattie, D. (2009). Coming out of the dark: Beckett’s TV plays. Journal of Beckett Studies, 18(1-2), 123-135. https://doi.org/10.3366/E0309520709000314 DOI: https://doi.org/10.3366/E0309520709000314
- Pormouzeh, A., & Nilchian, E. (2019). Essence or existence? Existentialist reading of Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot. European Journal of English Language and Literature Studies, 7(2), 24-30.
- Rohman, T. N., Nababan, M., & Santosa, R. (2019). An analysis of translation in translated drama script entitled Waiting for Godot. International Journal of Multicultural and Multireligious Understanding, 6(6), 195-200.
- Salisbury, L. (2008). What is the world: Beckett’s aphasic modernism. Journal of Beckett Studies, 17(1-2), 78-126. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3366/E0309520709000090
- Shahid, A. (2018). Towards a deconstructive text: Beyond language and the politics of absences in Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. International Journal of Cognitive and Language Sciences, 12(1), 108-113. https://doi.org/10.3366/E0309520709000090 DOI: https://doi.org/10.3366/E0309520709000090
- Sikorska, L. (1994). The language of entropy: A pragma-dramatic analysis of Beckett’s Endgame. Studia Anglica Posnaneinsia, 28, 195-208.
- Tubridy, D. (2014). Samuel Beckett and performance art. Journal of Beckett Studies, 23(1), 34-53. https://doi.org/10.3366/jobs.2014.0085 DOI: https://doi.org/10.3366/jobs.2014.0085
- Ullah, I., Iqbal, L., & Rehman, A. (2016). A study of absurdity in Samuel Beckett’s play Waiting for Godot and Albert Camus novel the outsider. Global Language Review, 1(1), 46-57. https://doi.org/10.31703/glr.2016(I-I).04 DOI: https://doi.org/10.31703/glr.2016(I-I).04
- Weisberg, D. (2000). Chronicles of disorder: Samuel Beckett and the cultural politics of the modern novel. Albany: State University of New York Press.
- William, D., & Taylor, C. (2011). Peripheral expressions: Samuel Beckett’s marginal drawings in Endgame. Journal of Beckett Studies, 19(1), 29-55. https://doi.org/10.3366/E0309520709000430 DOI: https://doi.org/10.3366/E0309520709000430
- Woycicki, P. (2012). Mathematical aesthetic as a strategy for performance: A vector analysis of Samuel Beckett's quad. Journal of Beckett Studies, 21(2), 135-156. https://doi.org/10.3366/jobs.2012.0043 DOI: https://doi.org/10.3366/jobs.2012.0043
References
Abid, S. (2021). The element of time in waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett. Journal of World English and Educational Practices, 3(4), 16-22. https://doi.org/10.32996/jweep.2021.3.4.3 DOI: https://doi.org/10.32996/jweep.2021.3.4.3
Afridi, A. (2020). Waiting for Godot: Adieu to language. NUB Journal of Social Science and Humanities, 1(1), 57-68.
Alexander, M. (1979). The poetic achievement of Ezra Pound. Barkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press. https://doi.org/10.1525/9780520315075 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1525/9780520315075
Bell, L. A. J. (2011). Between ethics and aesthetics: The residual in Samuel Beckett’s minimalism. Journal of Beckett Studies, 20(1), 32-53. https://doi.org/10.3366/jobs.2011.0004 DOI: https://doi.org/10.3366/jobs.2011.0004
Bhatti, I. J., Azher, M., & Abbas, S. (2019). Syntactic deconstruction of Beckett’s dramatic text: A transitivity analysis of Waiting for Godot. International Journal of English Linguistics, 9(4), 93-106. https://doi.o rg/10.5539/ijel.v9n4p93 DOI: https://doi.org/10.5539/ijel.v9n4p93
Biber, D. (1988). Variations across speech and writing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org /10.1017/CBO9780511621024 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511621024
Can, D. T. (2017). The representation of anacoluthon in Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett. Atatürk Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü Dergisi, 21(1), 1-17.
Carriere, J. F. (2005). Samuel Beckett and bilingualism: How the return to English influences later writing style and gender roles in All that fall and Happy days. (Unpublished Doctoral Thesis). Louisiana State University.
Cohn, R. (2001). A Beckett canon. Michigan: University of Michigan Press. https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.15933 DOI: https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.15933
Cronin, A. (1999). Samuel Beckett: The last modernist. New York: De Capo Press.
Dreyfus, S., & Bennett, I. (2017). Circumstantiation: taking a broader look at circumstantial meanings. Functional Linguistics, 4(5), 1-31. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40554-016-0036-y DOI: https://doi.org/10.1186/s40554-016-0036-y
Farahani, M. V., & Arbabi, M. (2016). Manipulation in drama translation: A case study of Waiting for Godot. International Journal of Research, 5(4), 83-94. https://doi.org/10.5861/ijrsll.2016.1316 DOI: https://doi.org/10.5861/ijrsll.2016.1316
Farahani, M. V., & Kaleybar, N. M. (2019). Domestication and foreignisation of allusions in Persian translations of Waiting for Godot: A case study. Global Journal of Foreign Language Teaching, 9(2), 91-100. https://doi.org/10.18 844/gjflt.v9i2.3633 DOI: https://doi.org/10.18844/gjflt.v9i2.3633
Hulle, D. V. (2011). The urge to tell: Samuel Beckett not I as a Texte Brise for television. Journal of Beckett Studies, 18(1), 44-56. https://doi.org/10.3366/E0309520709000260 DOI: https://doi.org/10.3366/E0309520709000260
Hwang, I. K. (2019). The rebellious maxims of conversation in postmodern absurdity focusing on Harold Pinter’s the birthday party & Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. International Journal of Language and Linguistics, 6(4), 159-67.
Ilyas, S., & Rafi, M. S. (2016). A Bakhtinian interpretation of Beckett: Waiting for Godot. Gomal University Journal of Research, 4, 77-84.
Ionescu, A. (2020). Language as Becoming: The cases of Self-Translation of Samuel Beckett and EM Cioran. In The Time is Now. Essays on the Philosophy of Becoming (pp. 63-92). Bucharest: Zeta Books.
James, A., & Gomceli, N. (2018). The textual analysis of dramatic discourse revisited Linguistic layers and the (social) semiotics of play-constitutive and play-realisational elements. English Text Construction, 11(2), 199-224. https://doi.org/10.1075/etc.00009.jam DOI: https://doi.org/10.1075/etc.00009.jam
Kouachi, R. (2018). Eloquent silences in Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot and Harold Pinter's the dumb waiter. AWEJ for Translation & Literary Studies, 2(1), 172-81. https://doi.org/10.24093/awejtls/vol2no1.13 DOI: https://doi.org/10.24093/awejtls/vol2no1.13
Krennmayr, T. (2011). Metaphor in newspapers. [Doctoral Dissertation, Free University of Amsterdam]. Utrecht: LOT dissertation series, 276.
Laws, C. (1996). Music and language in the works of Beckett. [Unpublished Doctoral Thesis]. University of York.
McDonald, R. (2006). The Cambridge Introduction to Samuel Beckett. New York: Cambridge University Press, New York. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511607417 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511607417
Mene, R. (2016). The world of boredom and sorrow: Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot as an absurd drama. Research Scholar, 3(1), 253-256.
Nykänen, E., & Koivisto, A. (2016). Fictional dialogue and the construction of interaction in Rosa Liksom’s Short stories. International Journal of Literary Linguistics, 5(2), 1-30. https://doi.org/10.15462/ijll.v5i2.60 DOI: https://doi.org/10.15462/ijll.v5i2.60
Padilla, K. C. (2017). The language of the “Absurdâ€: The d/evaluation, deviation and (mis) use of language in Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. The Southern Luzon Journal of Arts and Sciences, 9(1), 9-40.
Paraskeva, A. (2013). Beckett, biomechanics and Einstein’s reading of Kleist’s Marionettes. Journal of Beckett Studies, 22(2), 161-179. https://doi.org/10.3366/jobs.2013.0070 DOI: https://doi.org/10.3366/jobs.2013.0070
Pattie, D. (2009). Coming out of the dark: Beckett’s TV plays. Journal of Beckett Studies, 18(1-2), 123-135. https://doi.org/10.3366/E0309520709000314 DOI: https://doi.org/10.3366/E0309520709000314
Pormouzeh, A., & Nilchian, E. (2019). Essence or existence? Existentialist reading of Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot. European Journal of English Language and Literature Studies, 7(2), 24-30.
Rohman, T. N., Nababan, M., & Santosa, R. (2019). An analysis of translation in translated drama script entitled Waiting for Godot. International Journal of Multicultural and Multireligious Understanding, 6(6), 195-200.
Salisbury, L. (2008). What is the world: Beckett’s aphasic modernism. Journal of Beckett Studies, 17(1-2), 78-126. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3366/E0309520709000090
Shahid, A. (2018). Towards a deconstructive text: Beyond language and the politics of absences in Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. International Journal of Cognitive and Language Sciences, 12(1), 108-113. https://doi.org/10.3366/E0309520709000090 DOI: https://doi.org/10.3366/E0309520709000090
Sikorska, L. (1994). The language of entropy: A pragma-dramatic analysis of Beckett’s Endgame. Studia Anglica Posnaneinsia, 28, 195-208.
Tubridy, D. (2014). Samuel Beckett and performance art. Journal of Beckett Studies, 23(1), 34-53. https://doi.org/10.3366/jobs.2014.0085 DOI: https://doi.org/10.3366/jobs.2014.0085
Ullah, I., Iqbal, L., & Rehman, A. (2016). A study of absurdity in Samuel Beckett’s play Waiting for Godot and Albert Camus novel the outsider. Global Language Review, 1(1), 46-57. https://doi.org/10.31703/glr.2016(I-I).04 DOI: https://doi.org/10.31703/glr.2016(I-I).04
Weisberg, D. (2000). Chronicles of disorder: Samuel Beckett and the cultural politics of the modern novel. Albany: State University of New York Press.
William, D., & Taylor, C. (2011). Peripheral expressions: Samuel Beckett’s marginal drawings in Endgame. Journal of Beckett Studies, 19(1), 29-55. https://doi.org/10.3366/E0309520709000430 DOI: https://doi.org/10.3366/E0309520709000430
Woycicki, P. (2012). Mathematical aesthetic as a strategy for performance: A vector analysis of Samuel Beckett's quad. Journal of Beckett Studies, 21(2), 135-156. https://doi.org/10.3366/jobs.2012.0043 DOI: https://doi.org/10.3366/jobs.2012.0043