Résumé:
The present paper is an application of a discourse-pragmatic oriented approach to
Pinter’s drama. In this study, the theories of pragmatics and discourse analysis are applied to
Pinter’s three plays: Trouble in the Works, Betrayal and Mountain Language. The aim of the
first analysis is to investigate the pragmatic theories and particularly the cooperative
principles of Grice. The second analysis displays the strategic manipulation of language for
showing what is socially appropriate, and hence, Brown’s and Levinson’s theory of politeness
is tackled. In the last play, a critical discourse analysis is applied to Pinter’s political text.
After having investigated the structure of verbal interaction and assessed the strategies that
speakers and hearers use in conversations taken from the three plays, the findings of the
present enquiry first demonstrate the importance of the cooperative principles in accounting
for the absurdity of the play. Second, they illustrate how participants manipulate their use of
language under the restriction of context, social distance and relative power, and finally, they
exhibit the role of language and language use in the reproduction of dominance and
inequality
