Word: dictional
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...scenes on the gritty sidewalks of Manhattan allow Berger to find a more congenially savage mode, incorporating an authentic urban snarl into his impeccable diction. His hapless narrator enjoys perfect security by disguising himself as a wino ("That there is no effective form of defense against a derelict is an irreducible truth of city life"). Even the deposed Prince of Saint Sebastian hustles a string of personal appearances, with the Firm as his agent. But these passages make up a mere fraction of the book. As for the rest, one can only agree with a neighborhood hooker who unburdens herself...
...Halley, Jr. should learn how to slur. His excruciatingly enunciated diction gets very tiring play after play, and seems inappropriate for the low comic role of Costard. The same self-indulgence that drove Kilty to play Don Armado marks his performance...
...absurdist fantasies, three others dealt with diseases and hospitals, two depicted the betrayal of noble people by political movements they had served loyally, one was a heartfelt if muddled historical melodrama, and the last was a conventional two-character problem drama about a marriage. Although the scripts varied in diction and temperament, fully half were in essence realistic, and all but two were set in current or recent America. None could be categorized as truly avant-garde. This artistically conservative nature may reflect a rediscovery by playwrights of the values of traditional narrative theater, or it may indicate Actors Theater...
...like to sing Parsifal and perhaps Tristan, Domingo's natural territory is the lyric roles of Italian and French opera. It is too much to expect him to become a true Heldentenor: he lacks the sheer force to surge over Wagner's complex orchestral writing, his German diction is heavily Latinized, and his phrasing belongs to the Mediterranean, not the Teutonic, school. But as an example of pure vocalism, his Lohengrin was a stunning success...
...this quality mirrors a disintegration of consciousness--or, more appropriately, a new realization of the discontinuities of consciousness. It is refreshing that Williamson distinguishes between the deliberate use of anti-lyricism as a technique and the recurrent inattention to poetic technique that characterizes the poets of bad surrealism. Clumsy diction can illustrate the disintegration of consciousness and some poets even use language as a weapon against itself, as James Wright, Galway Kinnell, and Robert Bly do at times. And Williamson rightly praises Plath for the extraordinary lyricism of her poetry. The chapter on the attempt by some poets to destroy...