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: [email protected] 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 1.mp4
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 syllabus, 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.
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