verbal and non- verbal linguistic devices in pinter’s ‘ the birthday party’

Topic : Verbal and non- verbal linguistic devices in Pinter’s ‘ The Birthday Party’.Name : Kinjal PatelPaper Name: The Modernist LiteraturePaper No: 9Sem : 3Roll No: 14Year: 2014Submitted to: Department of English Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University. Follow me: patelkinjal.u21@gmail.com http://www.slideshare.net/123kinjal

About author • Harold Pinter was born in

1930 and died in 2008.• He was a Nobel Prize

winning English playwright, screen writer, director and actor.

• He was one of the most influential modern British dramatist who wrote for round about 50 years.

• Differs from other absurdist's

Beckett

IonescoPirandello

His well known works

• The Birthday Party ( 1957 )

• The Homecoming ( 1964 )

• Betrayal (1978 )

Harold Pinter

• “Drama is about conflict and degrees of perturbation disarray, I’ve never been able to write a happy play”.

The Birthday Party

• Second Full length play

• Most frequently performed plays

• About Stanley Webber

Gold berg

•Two strangers

Sinister

McCann

Language in The Birthday Party

• Use of structural language

• Lexical items• Simple dialogues• Oral language• Non verbal device

Use of oral language

• Start with daily Chores

The device of repetition in the dialogue

• For instance, at the beginning of The Birthday Party, Meg, having served Petey his cornflakes asks:

• “ Are they nice”? Petey replies: “ Very nice.” Meg then says: “ I thought they’d be nice.”

The play shifts from casualness towards

absurdity

• “ Meg: (…) What are you reading?

• Video

Cohesion and coherence

• Here there is a lack of cohesion and coherence. Now let’s see the conversation where McCann and Goldberg cross examine Stanley so that he should collapse.

• Video • Video

• Conversation creates bafflement confusion, uncertainty and tension

Organize a party

• Meg tells Goldberg and McCann that she is going to organize party for Stanley’s birthday where Stanley denies his birthday.

• video

Non verbal device

Non verbal device

pausesilences

noises

Use of pauses and silences

• To give a character time to think before saying

• To avoid conversation• To show extreme emotional strain• As an answer to rhetorical question• To see the effect of what is said.

• “ There are places in my heart… where no living soul… has… or can ever … trespass.”

Example

• Communication but weapon• Silence of fear• Fear of intimacy• “Pinter’s dialogue is as tightly

perhaps more tightly controlled than verse.”

Controlled dialogue

• “ Every syllable, every inflection the succession of long and short sounds, words and sentences, is calculated to nicety.” --- Martin Esslin

Conclusion • There is more to Pinter’s language than

merely accurate observation.• In fact what sounds like tape-recorded

speech is highly stylized, even artificial. • Pinter’s dialogue is tightly controlled.

Every syllabus, every inflection, the succession of long and short sounds, words, and sentences are calculated to nicety.

• Pinter used language in a dramatic way as a vehicle and instrument of dramatic action.