Analysing Grice’s Maxims In Pinter’s Play ‘trouble In The Works’ (1959): A Literary Pragmatic Approach

Abstract

The present paper is an application of a literary pragmatic approach to Pinter’s drama, namely his play Trouble in the Works (1959). To this aim, we analyse the play based on Grice’s maxim theory. In other words, it seeks to analyse how and why Pinter’s characters in the play employ certain linguistic patterns at specific contexts to generate particular dramatic effects. Moreover, this work illustrates that the violation of the conversational rules is the source of absurdity. After analysing the data, the findings of the present enquiry demonstrate how the violations of Grice’s cooperative principles account for the absurdity of the play.