"Dialogul dramatic sau despre abolirea comunicării în teatrul lui Eugen Ionescu"

"This paper analyses three of Eugen Ionescu’s plays, namely The Bald Soprano, The Lesson, and The Chairs, by employing methodology specific to pragma linguistics and literary theory. In the aforementioned plays, the characters behave like puppets, and are devoid of inner life. Their communication turns into gibberish that fails to convey additional information, while the characters cling to words as if they were lifebelts saving them from drowning in nothingness. The study follows the characters’ inability to have communicative competence: the speakers are mere operators of language, which they “bend” on the level of the signified and signifier alike."