The Role of Language in Roddy Doyle's "The Commitments"

Carmen Peresich

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Seminar paper from the year 2014 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 1, Klagenfurt Univer...

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Seminar paper from the year 2014 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 1, Klagenfurt University (Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik), course: Topics in Literature: Modern Irish Literature, language: English, abstract: The aim of this paper is to have a closer look at language in Roddy Doyle's "The Commitments" in order to describe the strategies the author uses in terms of language to offer the readership a possibility to identify with the characters easily as well as to make the language appear authentic. These strategies affect almost all areas of language. Since dialogue is the driving force in "The Commitments", what in itself plays an important role, the language used in the novel is strongly oriented towards oral speech. Therefore, Doyle chooses to use vernacular rather than Standard English. Thus, in particular spelling and vocabulary tremendously differ from what readers normally expect to find in a novel. Moreover, the language used allows the reader to draw inferences about the characters. In the following I will discuss these characteristics by reference to selected examples and reason why and how they contribute to create authenticity and facilitate reader identification.