For years, I have seen teachers teach plays focusing on dramatic devices or the same few big quotes. The problem is that students are not experiencing analysing dialogue. Real dialogue. So, when faced with an approximation of speech, they struggle and falter. If we think of curriculums, how many feature real speech? Instead students are fed a diet of literary texts that range from school to school. All texts are chosen to be similar or prepare students for the GCSE exams. But, because no real speech is included, there is no real need for it to be covered - in some people’s eyes.
Students really enjoy J.B. Priestley’s ‘An Inspector Calls’ and I wouldn’t say it is for the plot. It is for the accessibility of the language. It is real. It is understandable. However, their engagement isn’t reflected in their analysis. They default as usual to the plot, the character, the moments and the ideas, but not about the specifics and the choices made by the writer. If anything is remembered, it is big clunky things the teacher has said and not what they have found. The teacher told us to say it. Yes, students can tell us about the lighting change, but they can’t tell us about Mrs Brilling's use of ‘that’ in ‘a girl of that class’.
I feel that we need to get more real dialogue into English and stop getting so hung up about literary analysis all the time.
Take the following questions:
Who speaks the most?
Who speaks the least?
Who asks the most questions?
Who is the politest?
Who is the least politest?
Who is the most formal?
Who is the least formal?
Who copies the way another person speaks?
Who tries to speak differently to all the rest?
All of these questions relate to language choices and they are a start of exploration. The next question is ‘why’. Why does the character speak the most? Why is the character speaking so informally? Surprisingly, these are very rarely written about in essays. They seem too obvious for students. Students would rather write a paragraph of guff about the Inspector saying ‘I don’t play golf’ than explore the destabilising methods the Inspector uses to unsettle Mr Birling. The limited speech. The questions. The lack of politeness. The lack of reverence.
Now, I know Priestley has a bazillion different adverbs for stage directions and ‘coolly’ I think they are helpful, but Priestley's dialogue is so rich for analysis. Characters who shift pronouns in discussion - ‘you’ to ‘we’. Characters who use euphemism to hide their involvement in things - ‘business’. Characters who distance themselves - ‘a girl of that class’.
One area I think is under-’mined’ is metaphors. How, in particular, Priestley uses metaphor to support ideas. Take, for example, the following ones:
Birling: (angrily) inspector, I've told you before, I don't like the tone nor the way you're handling this inquiry. And I don't propose to give you much rope
Ideas about crime and punishment
Relates to the amount of evidence - the more rope, the stronger the case
Foreshadows their doom - and death of the family
Presents himself as a victim
Birling: Rubbish! If you don't come down sharply on some of these people, they'd soon be asking for the earth.
Ludicrous statement - you cannot ask for the earth
Makes it seem that they want everything - ‘the earth’ - inverts the situation and says they are greedy
With earth we associate natural things and in a way they are asking for natural things like - food, warmth, home
Highlights the unnaturalness of society - asking for something basic
Birling: Have you any idea what happened to her after that? Get into trouble? Go on the streets?
Implies that Eva became a prostitute - euphemistic metaphor
Says a lot about Mr Birling. He assumes that when a woman gets into trouble her only way out is prostitution.
Implies that poor women have less morals
Sheila: Yes, of course it is. That's what I meant when I talked about building up a wall that's sure to be knocked flat. It makes it all harder to bear.
Implies how the rich defend themselves - place a barrier around themselves for protection
Walls reflect their lack of flexibility or willingness to change - indicates their arrogance and stubbornness to change
Of course, there are loads of metaphors throughout the play, but we need to make students willing to spot and explore them more. Being language curious is the key thing here. Not to go back to the knowledge debate, but we have become obsessed with teaching the knowledge of texts rather the knowledge to explore texts. I mean that we’ve got to the point where we deskill students by teaching a text around precise knowledge and precisely formulated ideas. Students should instead be using knowledge to form their own ideas.
Teach students that we talk in metaphor and unleash them on a text and explore it.
If we want to take oracy seriously, then we need to look harder at the examples we use. Oracy needs to be modelled more than it needs to be taught.
Thanks for reading,
Xris
