Pragmatic Strategies And Humour In The Birthday Party And No Man’s Land By Harold Pinter:

Hoda Ahmed Hamdy

This study is an attempt to examine Pinter’s language in representative extracts from two comic playsi— The Birthday Party 1957 and No Man’s Land his 1974— so as to specify thelinguistic features that Pinter uses to create the tragic-comic effect. It has been acknowledged by humour theorists that humour generally results from the upending of rules and norms. It hasbeen acknowledged in the field of the linguistics of humour that jokes also exhibit some deviation from linguistic norms/rules. The present study attempts to detect the linguistic incongruities that cause humour in Pinter’s plays. Humour has also assumed various functions such as release of tension (Freud 1905) and expression of superiority (Bergson 1899). The aim ofthis study is also to explore the function that the language of humour plays in Pinter’s overalldramatic technique. The study, thus, necessarily involves a multidisciplinary approach withlinguistic, literary, and humour components. The intersection of these three elements has createda newly–explored discipline, that is, ”the linguistics of literary humour.” (Nash 1985 and Attardo2001 & 2003) This is a branch of linguistics that employs linguistic tools to analyse the languageused to create humorous effects in literary works. (See App. A. 1)The cognitive cause of humour in the data analysed is derived from the Incongruity Theory of humour that explains humour in terms of deviant versus normal. The psychologicalfunction is derived from the Release Theory of humour that regards humour as a safety valve against otherwise pathological outbursts of basic human motives. The sociological function isexplained in terms of the Superiority Theory of humour in which the humour act is a feeling of superiority over the butt of humour. (See III. 2.2) The analysis is performed with thedevelopments of the theory of comedy from the literary tradition in the background. (See II. 3. 1)In so doing, the researcher hopes to find some answer to the research questions.