Address pronouns revisited: a case of theatre and translation pragmatics

Title: Address pronouns revisited: a case of theatre and translation pragmatics
Author: Graziano, Alba
Source document: Theatralia. 2021, vol. 24, iss. 1, pp. 119-135
Extent
119-135
  • ISSN
    1803-845X (print)
    2336-4548 (online)
Type: Article
Language
 

Notice: These citations are automatically created and might not follow citation rules properly.

Abstract(s)
After an overview of the general scholarship both on the uses of the second person singular pronouns in Early Modern English (EME) and on the contrast between English and the so-called "T/V" languages (such as Italian) in terms of translation issues, this article focuses on Restoration comedy. Some observations on modern Italian translations (even in the absence of explicit indications by the translators) lead to a case study drawn from a personal experience as the translator of Aphra Behn's Sir Patient Fancy, which will serve to illustrate the performative force exerted by address pronouns on the stage and the impact on both academic and dramaturgical renderings of comedic texts.
References
[1] ANDERMAN, Gunilla M. 1993. Untranslatability: The Case of Pronouns of Address in Literature. Perspectives. Studies in Translation Theory and Practice 1 (1993): 1: 57–67.

[2] ANDERMAN, Gunilla M. 1998. Drama Translation. In Mona Baker (ed.). Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies. London: Routledge, 1998.

[3] ANDERMAN, Gunilla M. 2005. Europe on Stage: Translation and Theatre. London: Oberon Books, 2005.

[4] BARBER, Charles. 1981. You and thou in Shakespeare's Richard III. Rep. In Vivian Salmon and Edwina Burness (eds.). A Reader in the Language of Shakespearean Drama. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 1981: 163–179.

[5] BASTIN, George L. 1998. Adaptation. In Mona Baker (ed.). Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies. London: Routledge, 1998.

[6] BIGLIAZZI, Silvia, Peter KOFLER and Paola AMBROSI. 2013. Introduction. In Theatre Translation in Performance. New York/London: Routledge, 2013: 1–26.

[7] BROWN, Penelope and Stephen C. LEVINSON. 1978/1987. Politeness. Some Universals in Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978/1987.

[8] BROWN, Roger W. and Albert GILMAN. 1960. The Pronouns of Power and Solidarity. In Thomas A. Sebeok (ed.). Style in Language. Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1960: 253–276.

[9] BRUTI, Silvia. 2000. Address Pronouns in Shakespeare's English: A Re-appraisal in Terms of Markedness. In Dieter Kastovsky and Arthur Mettinger (eds.). The History of English in a Social Context: A contribution to historical sociolinguistics. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 2000: 25–51.

[10] BURTON, Ernest J. 1960. The British Theatre 1100–1900. London: Herbert Jenkins, 1960.

[11] BUSSE, Ulrich. 2002. Linguistic Variation in the Shakespeare Corpus. Morpho-syntactic Variability of Second Person Pronouns. Amsterdam-Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2002.

[12] CANFIELD, Douglas. 1997. Tricksters and Estates. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 1997.

[13] CANFIELD, Douglas. (ed.). 2001. The Broadview Anthology of Restoration and Early EighteenthCentury Drama. Peterborough, Ont.: The Broadview Press, 2001.

[14] CERUTTI, Tony (ed.). George Etherege, L'uomo alla moda, ovvero Sir Fopling Flutter. In Paolo Bertinetti (ed.). La commedia inglese della Restaurazione e del Settecento. Napoli: Liguori, 2005.

[15] COLOMBO, Rosy (ed.). 2007. William Shakespeare Agostino Lombardo Giorgio Strehler. La Tempesta tradotta e messa in scena. Roma: Donzelli, 2007.

[16] DEL VILLANO, Bianca. 2018. Using the Devil with Courtesy. Shakespeare and the Language of (Im) Politeness. Bern: Peter Lang, 2018.

[17] DILLON, Janette. 1994. Is There a Performance in This Text?. Shakespeare Quarterly 45 (1994): 1: 74–86. | DOI 10.2307/2871293

[18] DORREGO, Jorge Figueroa. 2019. 'Dwindling down to Farce'?: Aphra Behn's Approach to Farce in the Late 1670s and 80s. Journal of English Studies 17 (2019): 127–147. | DOI 10.18172/jes.3565

[19] ECO, Umberto. 1977. Semiotics of Theatrical Performance. The Drama Review 21 (1977): 1: 107–117. | DOI 10.2307/1145112

[20] ELAM, Keir. 1980. The Semiotics of Theatre and Drama. London: Methuen, 1980.

[21] ESPASA, Eva. 2000. Performability in Translation: Speakability? Playability? Or Just Saleability?. In Carole-Anne Upton (ed.). Moving Target: Theatre Translation and Cultural Relocation, Manchester: Saint Jerome, 2000: 49–62.

[22] FERNANDES, Alinne Balduíno Pires. 2010. Between Words and Silences: Translating for the Stage and the Enlargement of Paradigms. Scientia traductionis 7 (2010): 120–133.

[23] GRAZIANO, Alba (ed.). 2003. Aphra Behn. Sir Patient Fancy. Viterbo: Sette Città, 2003.

[24] GRAZIANO, Alba. 2008. Translating Aphra Behn's Plays into Italian: The Case of Sir Patient Fancy. In Annamaria Lamarra, and Bernard Dhuicq (eds.). Aphra Behn in/and Our Time. Paris: Les Éditions d'En Face, 2008: 118–129.

[25] HOBBY, Elaine. 2007. Introduction: Prose of the Long Restoration (1650–1737). Prose Studies 29 (2007): 1: 1–3. | DOI 10.1080/01440350701201217

[26] HOLLAND, Peter. 1979. The Ornament of Action. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979.

[27] HORTON, David. 1999. Social Deixis in the Translation of Dramatic Discourse. Babel 45 (1999): 1: 53–73. | DOI 10.1075/babel.45.1.05hor

[28] INNOCENTI, Loretta (ed.). 2009. William Wycherley. La moglie di campagna. Venezia: Marsilio, 2009.

[29] JAKOBSON, Roman. 1959. On Linguistic Aspects of Translation. In Reuben A. Brower (ed.). On Translation. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1959: 232–239.

[30] JOHNSON, Anne C. 1966. The Pronoun of Direct Address in Seventeenth-century English. American Speech 41 (1966): 261–269. | DOI 10.2307/453500

[31] KOWZAN, Tadeusz. 1975. Littérature et spectacle. The Hague: Mouton, 1975.

[32] KRAJNÍK, Filip, Anna MIKYŠKOVÁ, Klára ŠKROBÁNKOVÁ, Pavel DRÁBEK and David DROZD. 2009. English Restoration Theatre in Czech: An Ongoing Research Project Conducted at the Department of English and American Studies and the Department of Theatre Studies in Brno. Theory and Practice in English Studies 8 (2009): 1: 123–127.

[33] LARTHOMAS, Pierre. 2001. Le langage dramatique. Sa nature, ses procédés. Paris: Quadrige/PUF, 2001.

[34] LYONS, John. 1980. Pronouns of Address and Solidarity in Anna Karenina: The Stylistics of Bilingualism and the Impossibility of Translation. In Stephen Greenbaum, Geoffrey Leech, and Jan Svartvik (eds.). Studies in English Linguistics for Randolph Quirk. London/New York: Longman, 1980: 109–122.

[35] MAZZON, Gabriella. 2003. Pronouns and Nominal Address in Shakespearean English: a Socioaffective Marking System in Transition. In Irma Taavitsainen and Andreas H. Jucker (eds.). Diachronic Perspectives on Address Term Systems. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2003: 223–250.

[36] MULHOLLAND, Joan. 1967. Thou and you in Shakespeare: A Study in the Second Person Pronoun. Rep. in Vivian Salmon, and Edwina Burness (eds.). A Reader in the Language of Shakespearean Drama. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 1981: 153–161.

[37] NIKOLAREA, Ekaterini. 2002. Performability versus Readability: A Historical Overview of a Polarization in Theatre Translation. Translation Journal 6 (2002): 4. Available online at http://www.bokorlang.com/journal/22theater.htm (last accessed Nov. 2020).

[38] PARTRIDGE, Astley C. 1969. Tudor to Augustan English, A Study in Syntax and Style from Caxton to Johnson. London: Deutsch, 1969.

[39] QUIRK, Randolph 1974. The Linguist and the English Language. London: Edward Arnold, 1974.

[40] RANDALL, Dale B. J. 1995. Winter Fruit: English Drama, 1642–1660. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 1995.

[41] RUFFINI, Franco. 1978. Semiotica del testo. L'esempio teatro, Roma: Bulzoni, 1978.

[42] SEGRE, Cesare. 1984. Teatro e romanzo. Torino: Einaudi, 1984.

[43] SERPIERI, Alessandro. 1977. Ipotesi teorica di segmentazione del testo teatrale, Strumenti critici 11 (1977): 32–33: 90–137.

[44] SERPIERI, Alessandro. 2013. Semantics and Syntax in Translating Shakespeare. In Silvia Bigliazzi, Peter Kofler, and Paola Ambrosi (eds.). Theatre Translation in Performance. New York/London: Routledge, 2013: 50–60.

[45] SNELL-HORNBY, Mary. 1988/1995. Translation Studies: An Integrated Approach. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 1988/1995.

[46] SONCINI, Sara. 2007. Intersemiotic Complexities: Translating the Word of Drama. In Marcella Bertuccelli Papi, Gloria Cappelli and Silvia Masi (eds.). Lexical Complexity: Theoretical Assessment and Translational Perspectives. Pisa: Plus, 2007: 271–278.

[47] STYAN, John L. 1986. Restoration Comedy in Performance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986.

[48] SUH, Joseph Che. 2011. The Performability and Speakability Dimensions of Translated Drama Texts: The Case of Cameroon. inTRAlinea 13 (2011). Available online at http://www.intralinea.org/archive/article/1671 (last accessed Nov. 2020).

[49] TOTZEVA, Sophia. 1995. Das theatrale Potential des dramatischen Textes: Ein Beitrag zur Theorie von Drama und Dramenübersetzung. Tübingen: Gunter Narr, 1995.

[50] UBERSFELD, Anne. 1977. Lire le théâtre. Paris: Editions Sociales, 1977.

[51] VV. AA. 1981. Drama, Theater, Performance: A Semiotic Perspective. Poetics Today 2 (1981): 3.

[52] WALKER, Terry. 2003. You and thou in Early Modern English Dialogues: Patterns of Usage. In Irma Taavitsainen, and Andreas H. Jucker (eds.). Diachronic Perspectives on Address Term Systems. Amsterdam-Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2003: 309–342.