Merleau-Ponty and My Dissertation

I met with my advisor, Eric, on Monday and he's great! He did his PhD on comedy in theatre and was an actor for years. He is a big part of the acting program here at Trinity. He was the one staff person I did not know on the panel for discussing our dissertation proposals. When I saw him last week, I had the sense that physical performance (i.e. clowning) was one of his strengths. Much like dancers, there is a different way of holding oneself when there is a heightened awareness of the body and how to use it effectively.

Anyway, we discussed my dissertation topic and my lack of a clear methodology. He recommended a couple authors for me to peruse. The timing is right for me to read a bit this week and then let those ideas percolate while I work on my first paper (which is due at the beginning of April). One author is Maurice Merleau-Ponty, French philosopher and phenomenologist. He does lots on perception which could be good for talking about Irish perceptions of the performances I want to analyse. The other recommendation from Eric was John Searle on Speech Act Theory. (This was actually started by a linguist Austin and has been continued by others since.) I could use Speech Act Theory to discuss how the performance could effect the audience.

Personally, I am leaning towards the Speech Act Theory because it's more stable footing. It's difficult to get a clear knowledge of the audience response. Even if I do a survey, will I get enough responses to make the information viable for speaking to a larger community? Is that even what I want to do? This isn't a sociological experiment, although I could make it one... With Speech Act Theory I can analyse from the speaker's point of view rather than approach analysis from the reception side. I think there will be less speculation involved with the semiotic/Speech Act analysis. But I also don't need to make that decision for another month. Feel free to read a bit for yourselves and let me know what you think.