Part of
Dialogue across MediaEdited by Jarmila Mildorf and Bronwen Thomas
[Dialogue Studies 28] 2017
► pp. 19–36
Edited by Jarmila Mildorf and Bronwen Thomas
[Dialogue Studies 28] 2017
► pp. 19–36
Pragmatic stylistics and dramatic dialogue
Re-assessing Gus’s role in Pinter’s The Dumb Waiter
In this chapter, I follow Short (1989, 1998) and view dramatic dialogue as a form of exchange that can be read on the page just as legitimately as it can be experienced on stage. Employing a pragmatic stylistic analysis linking the text on the page to my interpretation, I offer a re-reading of Pinter’s The Dumb Waiter. While for Burton (1980) Ben was “the dominating and superior interactant,” and Gus “the dominated and inferior one” (70), I argue here that it is Gus who can be considered the dominating character and show in the concluding discussion why this recalibration of power is significant for our wider understanding of the play.
References
Bakhtin, Mikhail
1981 “Discourse in the Novel.” In The Dialogic Imagination, ed. by Michael Holquist, trans. by Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist, 259-422. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.
Brewer, Mary
2009a “Introduction: The Dumb Waiter – A Different Kind of Theatre.” In Harold Pinter’s The Dumb Waiter, ed. by Mary Brewer, xi-xiv. Amsterdam: Rodopi.
2009b “ ‘Mixed Feelings about Words’: Language, Politics and the Ethics of Intersubjectivity in The Dumb Waiter
.” In Harold Pinter’s The Dumb Waiter, ed. by Mary Brewer, 189-209. Amsterdam: Rodopi.
Brown, Penelope, and Stephen Levinson
1987 [1978] Politeness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Buck, Ruth A
1997 “Pinter’s The Dumb Waiter
.” Explicator 56 (1): 45-48. 
Burton, Deirdre
1980 Dialogue and Discourse. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Carter, Ron
1982 “Style and Interpretation in Hemingway’s ‘Cat in the Rain.’” In Language and Literature: An Introductory Reading in Stylistics, ed. by Ron Carter, 65-80. London: George Allen and Unwin.
Clark, Billy
2009 “Salient Inferences: Pragmatics and The Inheritors
.” Language and Literature 18 (2): 173-212.
Fish, Stanley
1996 [1973] “What is Stylistics and Why are They Saying Such Terrible Things About It?” In The Stylistics Reader, ed. by Jean Jacques Weber, 94-116. London: Arnold.
Esslin, Martin
1968 The Theatre of the Absurd. 2nd ed. Middlesex: Penguin Books.
Grice, H. Paul
1975 “Logic and Conversation.” In Syntax and Semantics Vol. 3: Speech Acts, ed. by Peter Cole and Jerry L. Morgan, 41-58. New York: Academic Press.
Halliday, Michael A.K
1985 An Introduction to Functional Grammar. London: Edward Arnold.
Herman, Vimala
1995 Dramatic Discourse. London: Routledge.
James, Oliver
2014 Office Politics. London: Vermilion.
Jeffries, Leslie
2010 Critical Stylistics. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan.
Mandala, Susan
2007 Twentieth-Century Drama Dialogue as Ordinary Talk. Aldershot: Ashgate.
Nastić, Radmila
2009 “
The Dumb Waiter: Realism and Metaphor.” In Harold Pinter’s The Dumb Waiter, ed. by Mary Brewer, 17-29. Amsterdam: Rodopi.
Norman, Lance
2009 “Anti-Ritual, Critical Domestication and Representational Precision in Pinter’s The Dumb Waiter
.” In Harold Pinter’s The Dumb Waiter, ed. by Mary Brewer, 173-188. Amsterdam: Rodopi.
Patterson, Michael
2009 “Pinter’s The Dumb Waiter: Negotiating the Boundary between ‘High’ and ‘Low’ Culture.” In Harold Pinter’s The Dumb Waiter, ed. by Mary Brewer, 127-140. Amsterdam: Rodopi.
Pinter, Harold
1991 The Room and The Dumb Waiter. London: Faber and Faber.
Prentice, Penelope
2009 “ ‘The Ironic Con Game’ Revisited: Pinter’s The Dumb Waiter, A Key to Courage.” In Harold Pinter’s The Dumb Waiter, ed. by Mary Brewer, 143-159. Amsterdam: Rodopi.
Quigley, Austin
1975 The Pinter Problem. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Rees, Catherine
2009 “High Art or Popular Culture: Traumatic Conflict of Representation and Postmodernism in Pinter’s The Dumb Waiter
.” In Harold Pinter’s The Dumb Waiter, ed. by Mary Brewer, 111-125. Amsterdam: Rodopi.
Rose, Brian
1992 “The City Beyond the Door: Effects of the Urban Milieu in Pinter’s Early Plays.” Theatre Studies 37: 56-65.
Rufford, Juliet
2009 “ ‘Disorder. . . in a Darkened Room’: The Juridico-Political Aspects of The Dumb Waiter.” In Harold Pinter’s The Dumb Waiter, ed. by Mary Brewer, 89-109. Amsterdam: Rodopi.
Searle, John R
1969 Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
1976 “A Classification of Illocutionary Acts.” Language in Society 5: 1-23.
Shaw, Marc
2009 “Unpacking the Pinteresque in The Dumb Waiter and Beyond.” In Harold Pinter’s The Dumb Waiter, ed. by Mary Brewer, 211-229. Amsterdam: Rodopi.
Shandell, Jonathan
2009 “The ‘Other” Within Us: the Rubin’s Vase of Class in The Dumb Waiter
.” In Harold Pinter’s The Dumb Waiter, ed. by Mary Brewer, 161-171. Amsterdam: Rodopi.
Short, Mick
1989 “Discourse Analysis and the Analysis of Drama.” In Language, Discourse and Literature, ed. by Paul Simpson, 139-168. London: Unwin Hyman.
1998 “From Dramatic Text to Dramatic Performance.” In Exploring the Language of Drama: From Text to Context, ed. by Jonathan Culpeper, Mick Short, and Peter Verdonk, 6-18. London: Routledge.
Sinclair, John, and Malcolm Coulthard
1975 Towards an Analysis of Discourse. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Thomas, Jenny
1984 “Cross-Cultural Discourse as ‘Unequal Encounter’: Towards a Pragmatic Analysis.” Applied Linguistics 5 (3): 226-235.
Tsui, Amy B.M
1994 English Conversations. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Van Laan, Thomas
1981 “The Dumb Waiter: Pinter’s Play with the Audience.” Modern Drama 24 (4): 494-502.