The Incommunicability of Language in Harold Pinter's "The Caretaker"

Essay from the year 2014 in the subject English - Literature, Works, grade: PhD, University of Tehran, language: English, abstract: The Caretaker (1960) by Harold Pinter, as a successful play in the twentieth century, reflects the incommunicability of language. In fact, Pinter has depicted the failure of communication, implying that language is at the verge of crisis.

In order to analyze the elements that play role in revealing the non-essential quality of language, Jan Blommaert's Critical Discourse Analysis that describes the mechanism through which language and linguistic patterns act in social system can be helpful and efficient. This efficiency lies in investigating the common grounds of language and social studies. In the play, the incommunicability of language is drawn by the inequality the characters are involved with, the choice they have in using the language, the archive they use when choosing their language as the representative of determination. Furthermore, the personages have different voices in the work. The function of voice is controlling discourse. The voices that the characters employ in the play are directly related to their inequality formed in social system and to their identity constructed in it.

Speaking of identity, it is accounted the major concept for which the figures, consciously or unconsciously, struggle. Identities are formed through interactions and can be subjected to change by switching from one discourse to another. Generally speaking, the present paper intends to unveil the incommunicability of language in The Caretaker by Harold Pinter through studying some of the devices of the CDA as explained by Jan Blommaert.