This blogpost is aimed at a variety of people; it will be beneficial for students of literature and those preparing for exams on English literature, like UGC-NET. Have you had a look at our practice questions yet?

So far as ‘discourse’ is defined as a "continuous stream of spoken (and sometimes written) language" or "an instance of language use...", it is appropriate to use it for our purposes here.[1]

One could take up several examples; I have selected a few for the present post. The first is Bharadwaj's film Kaminey.[2]

Talking about language in films is not something new; they have been teaching entire courses using stuff from films now.[3] But before coming to the matter at hand, let’s set the scene.

Now if you have read anything about Shakespeare--and please don't tell me he wrote novels--you will know that his was a milieu that allowed for such experiments as he could perform in writing his plays. It could be argued that he was simply meeting the demands of the company or companies he was working for, who in turn were serving the demands of the theatre-going public[4], but this could be said to be one dominant factor contributing to this experimenting rather than being the reason behind it. There...