The characterisation of chicken in Tennessee Williams's kingdom of earth : a cognitive stylistic study

Abstract EN

This study investigates the characterisation of Chicken from Kingdom of Earth (1968) by Tennessee Williams.

Characterisation is a process in which fictional characters are fleshed out by the author.

Chicken is one of Williams's outstanding male characters.

Going through the process of characterisation attracts attention to how readers come to comprehend Chicken and how they infer some of his traits that are not directly mentioned in the play.

Checking out the linguistic choices made by Chicken in the dialogue explain the entirety of his traits.

In the end, the whole process of characterisation for building up his personality comes in light.

This process of characterisation is guided by Jonathan Culpeper's model to characterisation in which he emphasises the importance of background knowledge that comes to the process of reading.

The model has two sides to it: the knowledge come to the text by the readers and the information that the text possesses.

The analysis of this character is filtered through speech acts theory, conversation analysis, maxims, impoliteness strategies, self and other presentation and finally categorisation and cognitive categorisation.

The conclusion shows that Chicken is an interesting character to read as the inferred traits expand on the traits directly given in the text.