Multimodal Pragmatics and the Stylistics of Drama: Meaning-Making in Performance in David Hare’s Skylight

Abstract

This article applies a multimodal pragmatic approach to David Hare’s Skylight, examining how characterisation and power relations are constructed through the interaction of verbal and non-verbal modes in theatrical performance. By combining pragmatic inquiry with the semiotics of drama, it underscores the importance of analysing recorded drama not merely as scripted text but as embodied, performed discourse. As a case study, the article focuses on the 2014 production directed by Stephen Daldry and starring Carey Mulligan and Bill Nighy, exploring how paralinguistic, proxemic, and kinesic features interact with language to convey interpersonal conflict, emotional tension, and ideological divergence. The analysis demonstrates that meaning in Skylight emerges from the orchestration of multiple semiotic modes, each contributing to the pragmatic force and narrative complexity of the performance. More broadly, it shows the explanatory potential of a multimodal pragmatic approach for understanding how characters are constructed and how ideological tensions are dramatised through the interplay of language, body, and space on stage.