This paper investigates whether differences in grammar affect the production of discourse relations. We report the results of two story continuation experiments on speakers of two typologically unrelated languages, English and Korean, and in two different discourse genres, monologues (Experiment 1) and conversations (Experiment 2), focusing on the contrast between the explanation discourse relation and the result discourse relation. Since the grammar of clause linkage in Korean, but not English, disfavors a backward causal order (explanation relation), we predicted that Korean speakers are less likely to produce EXPLANATION continuations in MONOLOGUES than English speakers. We also predicted that this difference disappears in conversation, as questions that can be uttered in conversations are not subject to the same constraints on clause linkage in Korean. The results confirmed our predictions. The effect of language on the production of discourse relations in monologue suggests that LINGUISTIC STRUCTURES can affect speakers’ discourse expectation and production, while the absence of language effect in conversation suggests that this language effect is not due to differences in the way speakers causally relate events or to conceptual or cultural differences in preferences for iconic discourse between English and Korean speakers.

In this article Stephen Barber investigates performances that take the form of last works by their performers and specifically utilize the distinctive medium of last-gasp monologues which intimate imminent death or unconsciousness. He assesses three such final performances, across theatre and dance – by Ko Murobushi, Antonin Artaud, and Patrice Chéreau – arguing that such performances often engage in a combative manner with processes of representation, and are able to articulate strong currents of memory and anger, often in fragmentary form. These performances also appear prescient for theatrical works today which deal with the vocal evocation of forthcoming calamities, whether corporeal or ecological. Stephen Barber is a Research Professor in Visual Culture at the Faculty of Art, Design, and Architecture, Kingston University. He is the author of several books on the work of Antonin Artaud, including Antonin Artaud: Blows and Bombs (1993), and most recently Muybridge: the Eye in Motion (2012), Performance Projections (2014), and Berlin Bodies (forthcoming, 2017).