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YOUR STORY
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Here is a subject on which virtually nothing has ever been written, a subject which nobody, down to 1928, had reason to take seriously. Even the dialogue of stage plays has never been properly analyzed and reduced to its technical elements. So what you are about to read is absolutely new. It will sound very strange to you, unless you have studied drama closely; and even then, much of it may turn out to be a little perplexing.
To understand the aims, purposes, and methods of dialogue, we must go all the way back to language itself. We don’t mean the English language, and we don’t mean grammar or rhetoric. We mean the primitive act of uttering sounds. This is a matter about which few people are well informed. It is intricate and obscure; so most of it will have to be glossed over here. But certain facts must be emphasized.
The novice assumes innocently that dialogue is talk, and that talk is merely telling somebody something. This notion is responsible for stupid conversation in daily life and for still duller dialogue in plays and pictures. Dialogue is not merely talk. It is a form of language. And language is much more than talk, if we define talk as telling somebody something. Language is vocal behavior. And vocal behavior embraces many, many acts besides talk. The most important of these may be classified as follows:
1. Noises incidental to breathing, sneezing, coughing, snoring, and so on.
2. Ejaculations, such as the noises made as responses to simple stimulations of shock, surprise, pain, pleasure, and the like.
3. “Self-expressive” utterances, such as the cries and words which are evoked in moments of appetite and emotion, when we give vent to our wishes, cravings, commands, and personal atti