The 'what-do-you-mean' syndrome: a taxonomy of misundertandings in Harold Pinter's plays

Abstract

Harold Pinter’ s plays usually display situations in which characters misunderstand each other. This paper applies a pragmatic (mainly relevance-theoretic) taxonomy of misunderstandings to the different varieties of miscommunication that can be found in these plays. The result of this application is that, quite unexpectedly, many conversational exchanges in which the speaker relies on very explicitly communicated information in order to guarantee successful communication, systematically end up in misunderstanding. This unexpected abundance of misunderstandings can be explained from two points of view: one discursive, in which these misunderstandings are regarded simply as adding to the lack of communication that is felt in the plays, and the other on a more connotative level, in which misunderstandings are, rather, linguistic exponents of ideological battles of aggression and defensiveness in everyday conversational exchanges between characters.