Turn-taking Analysis of Harold Pinter's The Room

Abstract

In the words of H. G. Widdowson, ‘We may know what the language means but still not understand what is meant by its use in a particular text' (Widdowson 4). This is exactly true as far as a Pinterian text is concerned. The plays of Harold Pinter are very disturbing and enigmatic in nature. It is a tenuous task to decipher the meaning of the plays written by Pinter. Pinter's departure from the conventional style of dramatic dialogue and his experiment with a new language of drama endow him with great novelty. The current study examines and analyses the different extracts from Pinter's one-act play The Room by using the various variables of the turn-taking system, which the ambivalent dramatic dialogue projects. The research paper aims at describing the systematic properties involved in turn-taking in the dialogues of the play, taking into consideration both the aspects – turn-allocational component and turn-constructional component – proposed by the Conversation Analysts in order to facilitate better understanding of this absurd drama.