A Stylistic Analysis of the Dramatic Dialogues in Akbar Radi's Melody of Rainy City (1998)

This paper analyzes communicative style of dialogues in Akbar Radi’s Melody of Rainy City (1998), using Grice’s ‘cooperative principle.’ The word ‘Gilan’, the name of the main character of the Melody of Rainy City, refers to a female name and also a province in the northern Iran. The play reveals the contradictions which can be naturally seen in the gap between the traditional culture and the imposing elements of modernity. Examining the cultural differences of characters, this paper deals with their hesitation to defend or dispose their individual values. Gilan’s nervous instability symbolizes the cultural chaos the province is facing. She is the young girl of an old caretaker who works for an aristocratic family. Gilan is in love with a youngguy who has just completed his academic education and returned home from the West. The socio-political debates of family members during their daily talks and their quarrels over the legacy of father, basically, have made these cultural gaps to be largely explicit. By using a cultural approach for the analysis of the relationship between characters, this article reveals how these paradoxical behaviors have been especially prevalent among the middle class of Iranian society. This paper finally presents a stylistic reading of dramatic dialogues as the conversational behavior of social characters.