Accounts in G. B. Shaw's The Shewing-Up of Blanco Posnet: A Dramatic Discourse Analysis

As a linguistic tool, accounts are essential to be applied to literary texts to add further scope to the theory applicability. In dramatic texts, such theory can be proven a useful structural frame within which the characters’ verbal practices would be approached as a way to come to terms with their unexpected activities. Thus, the current research aims at scrutinizing G.B. Shaw’s “The Shewing Up of Blanco Posnet” according to the account theory produced by Scott and Lyman in an attempt to arrive at a recognition and understanding of the characters’ various justifications and excuses when such figures, especially Blanco Posnet, are accused of having practised and committed something undesirable. Some other characters have also accepted the responsibility of doing bad things especially when they justified their commitment to such wrong deeds through reciting sad tales and other justified accounts. Excuses, though lesser in frequency than justifications, appeared to mitigate the characters’ responsibility, especially Posnet, who practised such technique more than any of the other characters.