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 Topic 12 - Meaning between the lines (Session A) > Conversational implicature and The Dumb Waiter > Task C > Answer skip topic navigation

Session Overview
Inference and the Discourse Architecture of Drama
Grice's Cooperative Principle
Practising Gricean Analysis
Top Girls
Conversational implicature and The Dumb Waiter
Gricean Self-Test
 
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The Dumb Waiter Passage
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Conversational implicature and The Dumb Waiter

Task C - Our answer

When Ben tells Gus in turn 3 to 'Go and light it' he is being conversationally efficient in his adherence to the maxim if quantity. His use of the pronoun 'it' is perfectly clear in context, and Gus should be able to interpret Ben's conversational intent without difficulty. So when Gus asks, via an echo question, for the reference of 'it' to be specified, it would appear that he is being uncooperative and obstructive.

When Ben says 'light the kettle' in turn 5 he is using a common idiomatic expression at the time (1960) the play was first performed (in this era the use of electric kettles was not common in Britain and most people heated the water to make tea on gas stoves). 'Light the kettle' is elliptical ('light [the gas under] the kettle') and Ben's understanding of this fact is made clear a little later, in turns 13 and 15, when he refers to 'light the kettle' as a 'figure of speech' and 'common usage'.

So when Gus says 'you mean the gas' in turn 6, he is flouting the maxim of quantity by telling Ben something he clearly already knows. Effectively he spells out what Grice calls a CONVENTIONAL IMPLICATURE. Gus's conversational behaviour indicates that he is being obstructive and challenging (though it is not at all clear why - Perhaps because he is not very bright? Perhaps because he just wants to be awkward?).

When Ben says 'If I say go and light the kettle I mean go and light the kettle' in turn 11 he flouts the maxim of quality, as it is clear that if he says 'light the kettle' he does not mean 'light the kettle' but 'light [the gas under] the kettle', and this implicates that Ben wants Gus to do as he is told (and so act in line with Ben's assumptions about his status in relation to Gus).

However, when Gus asks 'How can you light a kettle?' in turn 12 he is abiding over-demonstrably by the maxim of quality. You can't literally light a kettle because it is made of material which is not combustible under normal circumstances, but it is difficult to believe that Gus is not aware of the conventional implicature which Ben used in turn 5 (this is why what Gus says seems pedantic). Gus's pedantry opposes the characterisation Ben has just produced, thus indicating his conversational challenge. It is just about possible that Gus is not aware of the idiomatic expression he is challenging, and so is not actually violating the Gricean maxims. But this seems difficult to believe.

Ben flouts the maxim if quantity in turn 13, by repeating 'It's a figure of speech!', implicating his exasperation at Gus's behaviour, but Gus denies this in 14, violating the quality maxim. The fact that Ben then breaks the quantity maxim in 15 by repeating the contentious expression and his 'figure of speech' characterisation of it, if in different words, reinforces his exasperation, and it is clear that at the author-audience level, Pinter is implicating that the two assassins are completely, and ludicrously, at odds with one another over this trivial issue of phrasing.

 


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