Daniel McLeod

Negation in Harold Pinter’s The Black and White

The Black and White was first published in 1966 as a two page, 880 word, short story.

The story’s publication came after Pinter’s major comedies of menace such as The

Birthday Party (1957), The Dumb Waiter (1957), The Caretaker (1959), and The

Homecoming (1964), which elevated the dramatist to prominence on the international

stage and solidified his reputation as one of the most compelling playwrights of the 20th

century. The story was later adapted into a revue sketch (one scene play), and has

received wider reception in terms of audience in this form. As a result, the handful of

reviews on The Black and White are focused on its incarnation as a dramatic script or

performance. To date, there is no critical analysis of the original short story. The

following paper is an attempt to fill this gap in criticism by providing a cognitive stylistic

analysis of Harold Pinter’s short story The Black and White. The paper will argue that

negation is a conflict-creating mechanism, essentially active in contradictions,

contrastives, and in qualitatively negative lexis. Finally, it will be posited that as a

monologue told through a first person point of view, negation could serve the pragmatic

function of establishing the narrating character’s mind style; however, the constrictions of

this paper prevent an in-depth exploration of this notion from a cognitive psychological

perspective. I adopt as theoretical foundations for this analysis Hidalgo-Downing’s

categories of negation, Werth’s text world theory, and Semino’s theory of mind style in

order to provide a cognitive stylistic analysis of The Black and White.

The Black and White forms an intriguing text for cognitive stylistic analysis, as it

currently exists without interpretation—a veritable blank slate of prose from a formidable

author. Additionally, the question of its validity as a work of short fiction, which arises

from its apparent lack of conflict, becomes in itself a motivation for analysis: in my view,

the very question of whether a piece is worth analyzing justifies its critical analysis. By

performing such an analysis, one is provided the opportunity to both test the current

cognitive stylistic frameworks available and in doing so determine the literary value of

the text at hand. In short, the aim is to understand what, if anything, separates The Black

and White from countless texts that pass unread, each day, into obsolescence.

Daniel McLeod

This paper will focus solely on story’s original prose form. Told in first person

through the point of view of a woman, probably in her late 30s or 40s, who spends her

nights riding all-night buses and killing time in diners. One particular diner, The Black

and White, forms the setting of much of her monologue. In the story, the female narrator

describes the clientele of The Black and White, the view from the table “near the top”,

and what goes on in other parts of London during the night. Readers learn through

inference that she and her friend are prostitutes. By the end of the story, readers gain a

strong sense of who this character is, as well as what kind of place is The Black and

White.

1. Introduction to Negation

For an analysis of The Black and White, I will use Hidalgo-Downing’s framework of

negation, which is founded upon text world theory, developed as a model for discourse

by Werth (1999). Text world theory arises out of the claim that reality is not directly

accessible to us, but rather “we make use of mental representations in order to interpret

reality.” (1999; 8) Werth introduces the concept of two distinct worlds, the discourse

(real) world and the text (fictional) world, which arise from the “indirect relation between

human mind and external reality (that) governs our interaction and processing of texts.”

(1999; 8) Werth delineates within the text world multiple subworlds, outlined by

Hidalgo-Downing as follows:

1) Deictic alternations: include alternations in time, place, entity

2) Propositional attitudes: represent notions entertained by the protagonists, such as

desires, beliefs, and purposes

3) Epistemic subworlds: modalized propositions expressed by participants or

character. They include hypothetical worlds and modal worlds, quantity and

negation

Negation falls into the category of epistemic subworlds, as it “projects a

counterfactual reality which contrasts with the state of affairs described in a text world.”

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(Hidalgo-Downing, 2002; 123) Hidalgo-Downing outlines two major discourse functions

of narration which correspond to Werth’s notions of function-advancing and world-

building propositions, and defines their subcategories as follows:

1. General function of rechanneling information in discourse

a. Modification of function-advancing propositions

b. Modification of world-building propositions

c. Modification of frame knowledge

d. Negative accommodation

2. General function of blocking information in discourse

a. Pure contradictions

It is beyond the scope of this paper to define each term. For reference, please see

Hidalgo-Downing, 2002.

2. Negation in The Black and White

The majority of negations in The Black and White are split between denials of function-

advancing propositions and negative accommodation, with some instances that deny

world-building parameters. In the following sub-sections, instances of negation in The

Black and White are explored before culminating the article with an analysis of negation

from a cognitive perspective. We will first focus on modification of function-advancing

propositions.

2.1 Modification of Function-Advancing Propositions

Function advancing propositions tell the story and help to “satisfy the speech act upon

which the discourse… is founded.” (Werth, 1990) The following examples show denials

of function-advancing propositions in The Black and White:

1) “I always catch the all-night bus, six days out of the week.”

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2) “I always keep her place but you can’t always keep it.”

3) “It’s always warm in the Black and White, sometimes it’s draughty…”

4) “We soon told him off, my friend did.”

“The denials of function-advancing propositions typically illustrate the nature of

negation as defeating an expectation; events or states are introduced in the discourse with

a subsequent defeat of expectations which have been created.” (Hidalgo-Downing, 2000;

227) In 1, for example, the narrator says that she always catches the all-night bus, then

defeats the expectation that “always” refers to every day by saying “six days out of the

week.” In 2, the expectation that the narrator always keeps a seat for her friend is

defeated by the concession “but you can’t always keep it.” In 3, the expectation that it’s

always warm in The Black and White is immediately defeated by the admission that

sometimes it’s draughty; and in 4 we learn from the second clause that our expectation

that the narrator and her friend told the cop off together is defeated by the knowledge that

it was only her friend who did so, and the narrator played no part. 1

2.2 Negative Accommodation

Werth coined the term negative accommodation to refer to a type of negative subworld

which introduces new information into the discourse in order to deny it. (Hidalgo-

Downing, 1999; 225) He describes negative accommodation as a device that “allows the

recipient to deduce the expectation which the negation itself defeats or removes.” (Werth,

1999: 254) Thus, contrary to the examples in section 2.1 which deal with the denial of

function-advancing propositions, taking the form of “A is the case, A is not the case”,

which introduces a function-advancing proposition followed by its denial, negative

accommodation reveals only “A is not the case”, leaving the reader to infer the

proposition’s positive polarity. The following are examples of negative accommodation

in The Black and White:

5) “I never speak to the men on the all-night buses.”

6) “I never speak to them when they take it.”

7) “I never go down to the place near the embankment.”

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8) “They won’t do that with tea.”

The process of negation here is similar to that found in the denial of function-

advancing propositions. In 5, for example, “I never speak to the men on the all-night

buses” defeats the expectation that the narrator might speak to the men on the all-night

buses. This expectation arises simultaneous with its defeat within the text: the reader

realizes the narrator might speak to the men on the all-night buses simultaneous with

reading that she doesn’t, ie. from reading there are men on the all-night buses to whom

she doesn’t speak. This process of simultaneous introduction and defeat of expectations

comprises the dominant form of negation in The Black and White. 2

2.3. The contrastive and contradictive nature of negation

Within The Black and White, Werth’s various functional forms of negation operate in

contextually meaningful ways with respect to the interpretation of narrative voice. Both

denials of function-advancing propositions and instances of negative accommodation are

manifest in sentences performing a semantic function of contrast or contradiction.

It is important now to differentiate contrastives from contradictions. I will define

contrastives as any two clauses with differing propositional content that carry an

underlying thread of semantic cohesion, but are separated by a coordinating conjunction

(or implied coordinating conjunction) which highlights their difference(s). Contrastives

favour an interpretation of the positive truth value of both clauses, and often use

qualitatively negatively lexis in order to achieve semantic opposition. Examples of

contrastive sentences are found in 9 and 10.

9) “They won’t do that with tea but they do it with soup.”

10) “She’s older than me but thinner.”

In both cases, a negative is either explicitly or implicitly revealed by a clause. In 9,

that the servers at The Black and White will not give a piece of bread with tea is

contrasted with their giving it with soup. A positive truth value of the negative polarity

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proposition “They won’t do that with tea” is affirmed, as is a positive truth value of the

positive polarity proposition “they do it with soup.” In 10, both propositions comprise

positive polarity and both affirm a positive truth value; however, it is implied through the

contrastive clause “but thinner”, signaled by the coordinating conjunction but, that the

reader is meant to infer the narrator’s attitude towards her own weight, by comparison.

This is an example of what Stockwell terms “qualitatively negative lexis”, (Stockwell,

2009; 35) where the quality of thinness is understood as a contrary marked semantic form

of thickness, or unfitness. In both cases, contrastives contribute to the confrontational

nature of narration, affirming that two differing propositions are true, and that this is

somehow of consequence.

Contradictions, Hidalgo-Downing writes, form “any two clauses with the same

propositional content which differ with respect to their polarity; the two clauses may or

may not be contiguous.” (Hidalgo-Downing, 2000; 233) In terms of negation,

contradictions can function in numerous capacities. Most often in The Black and White,

contradictions function to rechannel the ongoing discourse, “thus favouring an

interpretation of the contradiction… by means of interpreting one of the propositions

(either the positive or negative one) as more relevant. (Hidalgo-Downing, 2000; 234)

11) “It’s always warm in the Black and White, sometimes it’s draughty”

In 11, the narrator’s claim that “It’s always warm in the Black and White” is

apparently corrected by the following clause. The typical interpretation of this sentence

will be that, while it is typically warm in the Black and White, sometimes it is draughty.

In other words, the second proposition is favoured over the first.

An alternative function of contradictions can be found in the story, whereby the

contradictory propositions can be understood as being simultaneously valid in two

different domains (Fauconnier, 1985; Escandell, 1990) The reader is able to infer the

validity of the two different domains, and so the contradiction obtains meaning, in the

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sense that it expresses an opposition which arises out of a conflict of interests.” (Hidalgo-

Downing, 2000; 234)

12) “I always keep her place but you can’t always keep it.”

Example 12 is best understood by interpreting a positive truth value of both

propositions in different domains. The first proposition, “I always keep her place”, is

valid as a propositional attitude: that the narrator always aims to keep her friend’s place.

This is contradicted by the reality that sometimes the café is too busy to do so.

It is important to note here that contradictions have a destabilizing effect, raising the

question of what is real and what is not real.

3. The Cognitive Effects of Negation

Negative utterances and their positive counterparts are not pragmatically equivalent.

Werth (and Horn, 1989; Givon, 1984) term this the asymmetrical view of negation,

wherein “negative utterances, unlike their positive counterparts, aren’t just negative

assertions but rather should be seen as a foregrounding process, whereby some

background proposition (asserted, assumed, expected, claimed, presupposed) is focused

on and challenged.” (Werth, 1999) Hidalgo-Downing points out that this seems to explain

why negative utterances are not used as discourse initials, while affirmative ones

frequently are. “From a cognitive perspective, affirmative utterances describe events

which are less frequent and, consequently, more salient than non-events and non-being.”

(Hidalgo-Downing, 2000; 234) This is based on the figure-ground relationship; every

non-event and non-entity forms the ground, from which figures arise in the form of

positive utterances. However, when a negative utterance is mentioned explicitly, it

becomes more salient than positive utterances and emerges as figure from the ground,

making the positive utterances the new ground. This pragmatic asymmetry establishes

negation as a foregrounding device, a stylistic feature that stands out from the

background text (Hidalgo-Downing, 2000) 3

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The notion of pragmatic asymmetry in negation evolves from the idea that speakers

make their linguistic contributions meaningful, while “hearers work to recover the

intended meaning of these contributions.” (Grice, 1975; 41-58) “Negation is essentially

context dependent, and in order to understand a negated proposition a reader must

cognitively process both the semantic content of the proposition and its context of use”

(Nahajec, 2009; 110). Context of use refers to both the “local context of the preceding

text and the larger context of the text’s production, including social and cultural

knowledge shared by reader and writer.” (2009; 110) Thus, when the narrator says “I

never speak to the men on the all-night buses.” she is performing two functions with her

use of negation. Firstly, she is indicating a semantic relation and instructing how the

proposition is to be understood. Secondly, she is performing a pragmatic function. In

order to understand the pragmatic function of negation in this context, we must consider

the Gricean maxims of relation (relevance) and quality (truthfulness). By assuming the

proposition is truthful and asking ourselves how it is relevant, we can infer several

potential meanings, varying along a scale of plausibility: that the narrator is too shy to

talk to the men on the all-night buses; that the men on the buses are not to her liking; that

solicitation is prohibited on public transit, and so on. These meanings are only available

to readers who consider the proposition in its larger context, ie. as a statement that comes

from a prostitute, and the implications of this origination.

McHale (1987) refers to the postmodernist tendency towards ontological instability.

Most (if not all) of Harold Pinter’s plays thematize instability, achieved through inter-

character conflict. In his comedies of menace, Pinter’s characters use language as a

weapon with which to gain power over others. In The Black and White, instability is

achieved not through dialogue but through conflict manifest by the narrator’s use of

negation, which acts to create disorder and conflict within the narrative voice. Statements

are uttered then contradicted. New information is introduced by denying its existence,

creating a destabilizing effect.

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3.1 Negation and Mind Style

Hidalgo-Downing (2000) writes that contradictions are involved in the systematic

undermining of truth and that “the recursion of negation creates a distinctive pattern of

discourse which determines the projection of an idiosyncratic world view.” (2000; 237)

Such a pattern also emerges from repeated use of contrastives and negative lexis, and

together these features combine in The Black and White to create an idiosyncratic world

view founded upon conflict.

Told through first person, homodiagetic narration (Genette, 1980), negation in

The Black and White comprises what Fowler calls “cumulatively consistent structural

options”, which agree “in cutting the presented world to one pattern or another”, and

“give rise to an impression of a world-view”, or what he calls a “mind style.” (Fowler,

1977; 76) In other words, rather than being concerned with what is apprehended, mind

style concerns itself with how a world is apprehended. (Leech and Short, 1981; 187)

A plausible theory is that the world of The Black and White is apprehended through

a narrative mind wrought with conflict and doubt, contradiction and uncertainty. I argue

that the character through whom readers experience The Black and White is one whose

personality has been ravaged by life on the streets, by objectification and rejection—“I

see them look. Mostly nobody looks.” (Pinter, 1966)—ultimately resulting in the

narrating character’s difficulty in construing purely positive propositions, revealing an

inherently negative, conflicted mind. 4

4. Conclusion

This paper has demonstrated the various functions of negation in Harold Pinter’s The

Black and White, having argued that negation is a conflict-creating mechanism active in

contradictions, contrastives, and qualitatively negative lexis. Such features maintain the

consistent thematic thread that runs through Pinter’s catalogue of work, typically defined

by power struggles, conflict, and uncertainty. The unprecedented use of negation in The

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Black and White foregrounds much of the 880 word short story, establishing the text as a

stylistically deviant piece of fiction, while consideration of negation’s pragmatic function

in tandem with first person narration compels readers to question the narrator’s cognitive

state, and, in doing so, uncover the vast psychological trauma inherent in her character. It

is beyond the scope of this paper to provide a detailed behavioral analysis of this

character; however it should be noted that Pinter’s work is typically known to provide

poignant social commentary 5, and the implications of the narrator’s mental state could

provide a worthwhile topic for future study.

Word Count: 2992

1 For a full list of denials of function-advancing propositions, see Appendix A.2 For a full list of negative accommodation propositions, see Appendix B.3 See also Stockwell, (2002; ch. 2) for work on Figure/Ground.4 For an updated review of repetitive negative thinking across a wide range of Axis I cognitive disorders, see Ehring and Watkins, 2008.

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References:

Cohn, Dorrit. Transparent Minds: Narrative Modes for Presenting Consciousness in Fiction. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1978. Print.

Carston, Robyn. Metalinguistic Negation and Echoic Use. University College London. Web. 18 Apr. 2016.

Ehring, Thomas, and Watkins, Edward. Repetitive Negative Thinking as a Transdiagnostic Process. International Journal of Cognitive Therapy 1(3):192-205. September, 2008.

Herman, David. "Narrative Theory and the Cognitive Sciences." Narrative Inquiry NI 11.1 (2001): 1. Web.

Hidalgo-Downing. Negation in discourse: A text world approach to Joseph Heller’s Catch-22. Language and Literature. London: SAGE publications. 2000.

Hidalgo-Downing. Creating things that are not: the role of negation in the poetry of Wislawa Szymborska. Walter de Gruyter. 2002.

Horn, Laurence E. "A Natural History of Negation." The David Hume Series: Philosophy and Cognitive Science Reissues. CSLI Publications. Web. 18 Apr. 2016.

Fowler, Roger. Linguistics and the Novel. London: Methuen, 1977.Print.

Genette, Gérard. Narrative discourse: An Essay in Method. United States: Cornell University Press. 1980.

Givon, Talmy. Mind, Code, and Context: Essays in Pragmatics. Hillsdale, NJ: L. Erlbaum Associates, 1989. Print.

Leech, Geoffrey N., and Short, Mick. Style in Fiction: A Linguistic Introduction to English Fictional Prose. London: Longman, 1981. Print.

McHale, Brian. Postmodernist Fiction. London: Methuen. 1987. Print.

Nahajec. “Negation and the Creation of Implicit Meaning in Poetry.” Language and Literature. London: SAGE publications. 2009.

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Nørgaard, Nina. Disordered collarettes and uncovered tables: Negative polarity as a stylistic device in Joyce’s “Two Gallants”. Walter de Gruyter. 2007.

Palmer, Alan. Fictional Minds. Lincoln: U of Nebraska, 2004. Print.

Pinter, Harold. Complete Works ’54-’60. New York: Grove Press. 1990

Ryan, Marie-Laure. Possible Worlds, Artificial Intelligence, and Narrative Theory. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1991. Print.

Semino, E. "A Cognitive Stylistic Approach to Mind Style." Cognitive Stylistics: Language and Cognition in Text Analysis. Amsterdam: J. Benjamins Pub., 2002. Print.

Semino. Mind Style 25 Years On. Author Posting. 'Northern Illinois University, English Department'. 2007.

Semino, Elena and Swindlehurst, Kate (1996) Metaphor and mind style in Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.Style, 30 (1). pp. 143-166

Stockwell, Peter. Cognitive Poetics: An Introduction. London: Routledge, 2002. Print.

Werth, Paul. How to Build a World: (in a Lot Less than Six Days, and Using Only What's in Your Head). Print.

Werth, Paul. Text Worlds: Representing Conceptual Space in Discourse. Harlow: Longman, 1999. Print.

Zunshine, Lisa. Why We Read Fiction: Theory of Mind and the Novel. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 2006. Print.

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Appendix A — Full Text Reproduced

The Black and White

I always catch the all-night bus, six days out of the week. I walk to Marble Arch and get the two-

nine-four, that takes me to Fleet Street. I never speak to the men on the all-night buses. Then I go

into the Black and White at Fleet Street and sometimes my friend comes. I have a cup of tea. She

is taller than me but thinner. Sometimes she comes and we sit at the top table. I always keep her

place but you can’t always keep it. I never speak to them when they take it. Some remarks I never

listen to. A man slips me the morning paper sometimes, the first one. He told me what he was

once. I never go down to the place near the Embankment. I did go down there once. You can see

what goes on from the window by the top table if you look. Mostly it’s vans. They’re always

rushing. Mostly they’re the same van-drivers, sometimes they’re different. My brother was the

same. He used to be in on it. But I can do better without the night, when it’s dark, it’s always light

in the Black and White, sometimes it’s blue, I can’t see much. But I can do better without the

cold when it’s cold. It’s always warm in the Black and White, sometimes it’s draughty, I don’t

kip. Five o’clock they close down to give it a scrub round. I always wear my grey skirt and my

red scarf, you never see me without lipstick. Sometimes my friend comes, she always brings over

two teas. If there’s someone taken her place she tells him. She’s older than me but thinner. If it’s

cold I might have soup. You get a good bowl. They give you the slice of bread. They won’t do

that with tea but they do it with soup. So I might have soup, if it’s cold. Now and again you can

see the all-night buses going down. They all run down there. I’ve never been the other way, not

the way some of them go. I’ve been down to Liverpool Street. That’s where some of them end up.

She’s greyer than me. The lights get you down a bit. Once a man stood up and made a speech. A

copper came in. They got him out. Then the copper came over to us. We soon told him off, my

friend did. I never seen him since, either of them. They don’t get many coppers. I’m a bit old for

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that, my friend told him. Are you, he said. Too old for you, she said. He went. I don’t mind,

there’s not too much noise, there’s always a bit of noise. Young people in cabs come in once. She

didn’t like the coffee. I’ve never had the coffee. I had coffee up at Euston, a time or two, going

back. I like the vegetable soup better than the tomato. I was having a bowl then and this man was

leaning from across the table, dead asleep, but sitting on his elbows, scratching his head. He was

pulling the hairs out of his head into my soup, dead asleep. I pulled my bowl away. But at five

o’clock they close down to give it a scrub round. They don’t let you stay. My friend never stays,

if she’s there. You can’t buy a cup of tea. I’ve asked but they won’t let you sit, not even with your

feet up. Still, you can get about four hours out of it. They only shut hour and a half. You could go

down to that one near the Embankment, but I’ve only been down there once. I’ve always got my

red scarf. I’m never without lipstick. I give them a look. They never pick me up. They took my

friend away in the wagon once. They didn’t keep her. She said they took a fancy to her. I’ve

never gone in for that. You keep yourself clean. Still, she won’t stand for any of it in the Black

and White. But they don’t try much. I see them look. Mostly nobody looks. I don’t know many,

some I’ve seen about. One woman in a big black hat and big black boots comes in. I never make

out what she has. He slips her the morning paper. It’s not long. You can go along, then come

back. When it’s light I go. My friend won’t wait. She goes. I don’t mind. One got me sick. Came

in a fur coat once. They give you injections, she said, it’s all Whitehall, they got it all worked out,

she said, they can tap your breath, they inject you in the ears. My friend came later. She was a bit

nervy. I got her quiet. They’d take her in. When it’s light I walk up to Alwych. They’re selling

the papers. I’ve read it. One morning I went a bit over Waterloo Bridge. I saw the last two-nine-

six. It must have been the last. It didn’t look like an all-night bus, in daylight.

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Appendix B — Denials of Function Advancing Propositions

- I always catch the all-night bus, six days out of the week.

- I always keep her place but you can’t always keep it.

- I never go down to the place near the Embankment. / I did go down there once.

- Mostly they’re the same van-drivers, sometimes they’re different.

- But I can do better without the night, when it’s dark, it’s always light in the Black and

White, sometimes it’s blue, I can’t see much.

- It’s always warm in the Black and White, sometimes it’s draughty, I don’t kip.

- We soon told him off, my friend did.

-

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Appendix C — Instances of Negative Accommodation

- I never speak to the men on the all-night buses.

- I never speak to them when they take it.

- Some remarks I never listen to.

- I never go down to the place near the Embankment.

- you never see me without lipstick.

- They won’t do that with tea

- I’ve never been the other way, not the way some of them go.

- I never seen him since, either of them.

- They don’t get many coppers.

- I don’t mind

- She didn’t like the coffee.

- I’ve never had the coffee

- They don’t let you stay.

- My friend never stays, if she’s there.

- You can’t buy a cup of tea. I’ve asked but they won’t let you sit, not even with your feet up.

- They never pick me up.

- They didn’t keep her.

- I’ve never gone in for that.

- Still, she won’t stand for any of it in the Black and White. But they don’t try much.

- I never make out what she

- It’s not long.

- I don’t mind.

- It didn’t look like an all-night bus, in daylight.

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Appendix D — Contrastives (not included in Appendix B or C)

- She is taller than me but thinner.

- He told me what he was once. (Implies that she forgot ‘what he was’)

- But I can do better without the cold when it’s cold.

- She’s older than me but thinner.

- They won’t do that with tea but they do it with soup.

- She’s greyer than me.

- I like the vegetable soup better than the tomato.

- You could go down to that one near the Embankment, but I’ve only been down there

once.

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