ABSTRACT
This chapter shows that a variety of forms of analysis can be applied to short extracts from a range of dramatic texts from different historical periods. Commands, like threats, are not accessible to all of the participants in a particular speech situation and therefore also mark clear social relationships. The term ‘pragmatic’ is usually reserved for presuppositions relating to immediate context and immediate social relations. The maxim of quality often appears to be broken in casual conversation, where people quite frequently repeat what has already been said in another form. But the ‘meaning’ of such behaviour is more likely to be part of the general expression of social cohesion than implicature-like in type. The chapter concludes with a fuller discussion of a complete play, trouble in the works by Harold Pinter, underlining that key features in the development of the relationship between the two characters cannot be fully explained without reference to linguistic features of the conversational dynamic.
