Brian Friel's play Translations focuses on the importance of language, language to an existing culture and the re-creation of a previously existing culture. Friel uses language as the foundation to expand on the matters of history, changes, and political awareness. Language affects three major other themes throughout this play including, historical and social significance of the Irish vs English, how the language presents power, and language inequality.
Historical and Social Significance
Translations take place in 1833. This is of importance because it marks the invasion of the British in Ireland. In the early decades of the 19th century, there was a widespread turn against the Irish language. Friel references the potato blight and mass emigration, the combination of the two leads to the reduction of the Irish speakers. The decline of the Irish and its culture began to further diminish by the colonization of the English. Modernizations of the political, social, and educational systems are hinted at throughout the play. The Irish becoming accepting to the colonization of the English is explained by the character Maire in the opening act. “I don’t want Greek. I don’t want Latin. I want English… I want to be able to speak English because I’m going to America as soon as the harvest’s all saved” (25). The desire of economic advancement and success becomes a strong motivator for the increase in immigration.
The play still ends with the Irish’s dilemma between the need to learn the language or attempt to preserve their own. Language is seen to be the vital because it is the pillar of the Irish community. Historically and presently, Friel accentuates the importance that history should be written and documented in order to limit the dam...
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...e Irish people and creates a hierarchy of language and gender. The primary hierarchy developed by the struggle between languages exists between Irish Gaelic and English: English is powerful and dominant, while Irish is powerless and subservient. English is masculine and practical, and Irish is feminine and spiritual; in the traditional western paradigm of gender relations, this by default places English in the dominant, active role—as conqueror—and it places Irish in the submissive, passive role as the conquered. English becomes the language because language provides a kind of power, the inability to use language is otherizing; this divide between the articulate and the inarticulate creates another hierarchy in which language is placed over silence, or the ability to use a culturally preferred language is placed over the ability to use other forms of communication.
How Friel Involves his Audience in the Conflict Between Coloniser and Colonised in his Play Translations
Translations depicts the cultural take over of Ireland by the British Empire, yet it cannot be said to be simply pro-Irish.’ Consider this comment. English Literature Coursework- ‘Translations depicts the cultural take over of Ireland by the British Empire, yet it cannot be said to be simply pro-Irish.’ Consider this comment on the play. The Cultural take over of Ireland by the British Empire is a central issue in Translations.
The language in this written is in the apropeiet of the year wher this story talk about, and is popular written. It is very easy to understend for all age who watch the play and is a stage as comedy should be. The language is funny, and it doesn't let you stop laughing. It is a wild and wacky farce and rolling audience with echoing. To many part of pras we can remember and use as a comic tops of our dicenery and in the recent memory.
To realize the vision of the play, the script, set-up, costumes, stagecraft, sound design, and acting have to communicate a unified message with which the audience will relate. The script will be tailored to ensure that the audience can understand the play as it proceeds. This is in terms of the language and terms used. Though the language will not be modern, it will be English that can be understood by the audience. This will be English of antique England as it will give the play a feeling of ancient times. The scriptwriter will carry out research on the level of understanding the local people will have of ancient English so as to ascertain that the script matches this level. Although many plays of that era were sung and accompanied by dance, this play will be acted out with spoken word rather than songs. This is because speaking will ensure the audience hears the conversations as they go on and that they understand. This is ...
...ne else in the play the power of language to alter reality, and the issues of conscious or unconscious deceit.
L’Engle, L'Engle. “Focus On The Story, Not Readers…” Writer Apr 2010: p. 24-25. MAS Ultra-School Edition. EBSCOhost. Web. 25 Feb. 2014.
Tan’s essay does more than just illuminate the trouble with language variations; her essay features a story of perseverance, a story of making a “problem” harmonize into a “normal” life. Almost like a how-to, Tan’s essay describes an obstacle and what it takes to go above and beyond. Mirroring Tan, I have been able to assimilate “the [world] that helped shape the way I saw things” and the world that I had to conform to (Tan 129). Life is a struggle, but what makes it worth it is the climb, not what is on the other side.
The archetypal tragedy of two star-crossed lovers, separated by familial hate, is a recurring theme, which never fails to capture the minds of the audience. It is only at great cost, through the death of the central characters that these feuding families finally find peace. This is an intriguing idea, one antithetical. I have chosen to analyze both Shakespeare 's Romeo and Juliet and Laurent 's West Side Story. The purpose of this essay is showing how the spoken language is utilized in these different plays to meet differing objectives. The chosen scenes to further aid comparison and contrast are the balcony scenes.
Transformations are altering certain thematic concerns of the original text, yet still retaining much of the storyline. The process of transformation requires some conscious decisions which shape and re-shape the meaning, and must be justified in order to execute them. . This is explored in ‘BBC’s Shakespeare Re-told: Much ado about Nothing”, an adaptation of Shakespeare’s original playwright “Much ado about Nothing”
2. Setterquist, Jan. Ibsen and the Beginnings of Anglo-Irish Drama. New York: Gordian Press, 1974. 46 - 49, 58 - 59, 82 - 93, 154 - 166.
Dawson, Ema, and Pierre Larrivee. “Attitudes to Language in Literary Sources: Beyond post-colonialism In Migration Literature.: English Studies 91.8(2010): 920-932. Literary Reference Center. Web. 30 Jan. 2014
James Joyce began his writing career in 1914 with a series of realistic stories published in a collection called The Dubliners. These short literary pieces are a glimpse into the ‘paralysis’ that those who lived in the turn of the century Ireland and its capital experienced at various points in life (Greenblatt, 2277). Two of the selections, “Araby” and “The Dead” are examples of Joyce’s ability to tell a story with precise details while remaining a detached third person narrator. “Araby” is centered on the main character experiencing an epiphany while “The Dead” is Joyce’s experiment with trying to remain objective. One might assume Joyce had trouble with objectivity when it concerned the setting of Ireland because Dublin would prove to be his only topic. According the editors of the Norton Anthology of Literature, “No writer has ever been more soaked in Dublin, its atmosphere, its history, its topography. He devised ways of expanding his account of the Irish capital, however, so that they became microcosms of human history, geography, and experience.” (Greenblatt, 2277) In both “Araby” and “The Dead” the climax reveals an epiphany of sorts that the main characters experience and each realize his actual position in life and its ultimate permanency.
—. Language: Readings in Language and Culture. 6th ed. New York: St. Martin's, 1998. Print.
McCann et al. Belfast: Institute of Irish Studies, 1994, 95-109).
To commence this discussion, it is first essential to establish an understanding surrounding the role of language in relation to national identity. Theoretically, the more power language has in this relation, the more powerful language planning may be when creating a national identity. However, the role language plays in this respect is somewhat problematic to define and has proven to be a debatable topic among nationalists, sociologists and sociolinguists. For instance, May demonstrates that ‘sociological commentators, unlike sociolinguists, have generally been loath to apportion a prominent role to language in the explanation of minority ethnic and national identity claims’ (2001: 8). Consequently emulating distaste from sociologists to credit language with significant power in a national identity. In a similar sense, de Vries notes that, in relation to a language community, ‘social scientists have generally ignored the systemic properties of language’ (1991: 39), thus, concurrently suggesting with May, a disagreement from the social sciences over the role of language in terms of identity and national identity. Similarly, circa the French revolution, the concept