دفاتر في اللسانيات والتعليمية
Volume 6, Numéro 1, Pages 189-197
2016-06-30
Pinter’s Absurd Drama: When Language Is Tweaked To Mean
Authors : Neddar Bel Abbes .
Abstract
Literary critics classify Harold Pinter's drama under the heading of the absurd just because it deals with a drama where characters experience a dull meaningless life in which nothing happens. No action seems to take place. Boredom and futility top man’s life. However, I take the view that the absurdity of Pinter’s drama is of another type. It is a linguistic absurdity, where language- this essential characteristic of our being- is distorted, tweaked to make the text means. The aim of this paper is to argue for the absurdity of Pinter’s drama at the level of language by drawing on pragmatic theories namely, Austin and Searle’s Speech Act Theory (1962, 1969), Grice’s Cooperative Principle (1975) and Sperber and Wilson’s Relevance Theory (1986). Key pragmatic features that characterise interactions in Pinter’s drama are not only highlighted but also discussed and described.
Keywords
Pinter’s Absurd Drama: when language is tweaked to mean
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