Plays Of Harold Pinter In Linguistic Dimensions

The dissertation argues for a reevaluation of Pinteresque language in the lightof the20thcentury Linguistic Turn, which has produced some profound changes in thebasic perceptions of language. The belief that language-word link is the relation ofreference, meaning of a word being the object it refers to, is replaced by the idea thatlanguage is non-referential, meaning stemming not from the correspondence betweenthe signifier and the signified but from relations of difference between components oflanguage. Therefore, language in essence is a kind of form rather than content and it isindependent from the outside world. Actually, language constitutes the world by givingit orders and forms. Meanwhile when human beings employ language, what actuallyhappens is “language speaking rather than human beings speaking”, because the subjectof human beings is a cultural structure “interpellated” by language. Furthermore,language carries power while it functions, both at a macro and micro level.Close reading of Pinter’s seven dramas in the new understanding of languageaforementioned constitutes the main body of the present dissertation composed of threeparts. In the first part it is argued that “reality” is multi-dimensional because the wayhuman beings impose orders upon the world through language is varied. Pinter’s plays,as he himself claims, are not realistic, but real. In fact, what renders his plays a sense ofreality is not the naturalistic minutiae but a spirit of absurdity, because in thepostmodern world, the absurd is found to be one possibility of the reality. In Pinter’sdramatic world, reality is redefined in the perspective of linguistic absurdity. In his TheRoom, Pinter creates a world based on the words of quicksand, where Rose’s incessantattempts to force orders upon an orderless world with language is repeatedly frustratedand finally defeated. Unceasingly gliding signifiers only leads Rose to more and moreother signifiers rather than the absolute signified which is able to get everything fixed.The Caretaker shows how in a world linguistically constituted human beings exploitlanguage to negotiate their position or identity within various relationships into whichthey are thrust now that their existence and essence is not pre-language andextra-language. The Birthday Party is concerned with the cultural construction of subjectivity through language and can be viewed as a dramatization of what Heideggerterms as “language speaks us.” Stanley resists being spoken by language in the tragicway of keeping silent, talking nonsense, and feigning mad.The second part first explores in a theoretical way the relations between languageand memory. Language recreates the past instead of mirroring it. It endows what mighthave disappeared with a linguistic shape. Different from historians endeavoring to seekthe only truth of history, Pinter believes that the past is misty and unverifiable. So in hismemory plays, Pinter exploits to a great degree the ambiguous potential of language toexhibit the mistiness of the past and the vagaries of memory. In Landscape, languageitself is fore-grounded as the real “landscape” of this play. Pinter focuses our attentionon the pure form, or the texture of the language of this play. Beth’s recollection iscomposed of linguistic fragments of flowing poetic images, which leads ourimagination surpassing language itself. In Ashes to Ashes, Pinter touches upon thetheme of Nazi holocaust allusively. He tries to maintain a subtle balance between theabsolute truth in historical studies and his language full of uncertainties and ambiguities.Pinter uses language in a paradoxical way, bringing into presence the infinitenon-presence with the limited presence. He makes language to deconstruct language,thus rendering language to transcend itself to reach the realm of the unfathomable. Thecontinually deferred and deluded signified symbolizes the evasive past which Rebeccafinds no courage to confront. What buries deep in the eternal split between the signifierand the signified is the unspeakable suffering the victim experienced.The third part explores Pinter’s well-known deployment of silences. In thelinguistic theory of reference, silence is viewed as the absence of meaning due to itslack of audible sound, the signifier. After the Linguistic Turn, language is understood ascreative and constructive in nature. Thus, silence is taken as part of language, bothcomplementary and interchangeable to audible speaking. Silence is soundlesscommunication and can be just as or even more articulate than speaking. Pinter employssilences in a multitude ways to create meanings of various kinds. Apart from textual silences, there exists another kind of silence, the silence of the author. Pinter keepssilent by giving up his omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent existence in hisdramatic world. Pinter distinguishes two kinds of silences—one when no word isspoken, and the other when a torrent of words is used evasively. In his Moonlight,silences, verbal and nonverbal, regulate the intensity and trend of characters’ complexemotions; express the interior state that is beyond any expression; create poetictension; serve as ways of real communication; etc. Besides wordless silence andeloquent silence, Pinter attempts to dramatize silence, giving concrete shape to thisabstract void. In The Slight Ache, the elderly match seller who never utters a word is thesymbolization of silence per se. Like a deep whirlpool, he stimulates and assimilatesEdwards’ torrents of speech and finally leads to his collapse. Words seem to be thematerial used to fill the infinite void of silence.