Abstract:
Pinteresque has attracted not only literary critics but also linguists to investigate the
characteristics of that style. The present study aims at analysing the discourse of deception in
Harold Pinter's the Caretaker (1960) from a linguistic standpoint. It emphasizes the forms of
verbal deception uncovered from the characters' discourse by applying Grice's theory of
Conversational Implicature (CI) that deals with the four maxims of conversation: quality,
quantity, relation and manner. The analysed corpus is extracted from the characters' dialogues
in which they overlook the four maxims; therefore, forms of deception are generated. The
results are interpreted through a Qualitative Content Analysis (QCA), a research tool that
examines language characteristics and contextual meaning; then, organized based on the
framework of verbal deception suggested by Gupta (2013). Findings yielded from the analysis
of the second chapter suggest that characters violate all maxims specifically relation; hence,
contrived statement is the most generated form of deception.
