Examination of ‘Pause’ in Pinter's The Homecoming and Baker's Circle Mirror Transformation

Abstract

Pauses as pragmatic markers are considered important devices that help readers to gain a better and deeper understanding of certain texts as well as speech, promoting effectively language communication. They can help both the speaker and the hearer, due to the functions they have in a text. Their occurrence in speech has a value that they make it more understandable. In this regard, the present study aims to examine the forms and functions of pauses in literary texts, more specifically, in selected extracts from two dramas, namely, Pinter's The Homecoming and Baker's Circle Mirror Transformation and to compare how the two writers use pauses in these two dramas. To do so, the sequential production approach of turn-taking by Sacks, Schegloff and Jefferson (1974), in combination with the contributions of some scholars who state the multifunctional use of pauses, has been used. The findings of the present study show that pauses do not exist arbitrarily in speech, but they are found to serve certain functions depending on the context in which they occur. Pauses, whether silent or filled have certain references. They are not merely meaningless. Pauses can express what is going on inside the characters without even saying a word. Regarding the selected extract from each play, it is noticed from the comparison that the two writers employ pauses frequently. Pauses are used by the two writers to be informative and that is why they should be studied with great care as they affect the interpretation of a certain text and consequently affect understanding