This paper examines the issue of genre classification in Death of a Salesman by focusing on the dialectic relation at the heart of the play's structure between tragedy and social drama. It argues that the tragic resolution brought to the theme of social protest and the characterization of the protagonist is what gives the play its unique place as the quintessential modern tragedy. It is concluded that tragedy and the social theme are not mutually destructive in Death of a Salesman as some critics stated. Rather, they are combined to make an intense dramatic treatment of the modern American individual's most pressing issues. Without being constrained by prescriptive standardized rules, Miller produced a dramatic form that rightly claims the status of what can be labeled a modern tragedy, appealing to modern audiences as rarely any other modern play did.

This paper examines the issue of genre classification in Death of a Salesman by focusing on the dialectic relation at the heart of the play’s structure between tragedy and social drama. It argues that the tragic resolution brought to the theme of social protest and the characterization of the protagonist is what gives the play its unique place as the quintessential modern tragedy. It is concluded that tragedy and the social theme are not mutually destructive in Death of a Salesman as some critics stated. Rather, they are combined to make an intense dramatic treatment of the modern American individual’s most pressing issues. Without being constrained by prescriptive standardized rules, Miller produced a dramatic form that rightly claims the status of what can be labeled a modern tragedy, appealing to modern audiences as rarely any other modern play did.

This paper examines the issue of genre classification in Death of a Salesman by focusing on the dialectic relation at the heart of the play's structure between tragedy and social drama. It argues that the tragic resolution brought to the theme of social protest and the characterization of the protagonist is what gives the play its unique place as the quintessential modern tragedy. It is concluded that tragedy and the social theme are not mutually destructive in Death of a Salesman as some critics stated. Rather, they are combined to make an intense dramatic treatment of the modern American individual's most pressing issues. Without being constrained by prescriptive standardized rules, Miller produced a dramatic form that rightly claims the status of what can be labeled a modern tragedy, appealing to modern audiences as rarely any other modern play did.

This paper investigates the speech act of refusal taking as a case study British responses to a salesperson’s offer through the study of recordings of 109 conversations between the salesperson and a potential British customer. The data are analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively with the aim of finding the most frequent responses that denote refusal by the English native speakers. Most of the expressions used to reflect the British people’s annoyance with the use of cold calls, the majority being brief phrases of refusal. In addition to the recorded calls, two questionnaires were conducted in Britain to shed light on the frequent expressions used on the phone in response to the salesperson. It is interesting here to catalog the range of strategies used by individuals, most of the time verbal, to avoid talking to the salesperson. These strategies seem to exist on a continuum of directness-indirectness. Firstly to perform an act of refusal efficient enough to end the call. Secondly to make the balance between the impacts of refusal per se and the keeping up with the social convention of mutual cooperation presented in the theory of politeness.