Dialogue in Waiting for Godot and Grice's Concept of Implicature

Dialogue in Waiting for Godot and Grice's Concept of Implicature KRIPA K . GAUTAM AND MANJULA SHARMA A characteristic feature of the pattern of dialogue in absurdist drama is the gap between what is uttered and what is conveyed. In Waiting for Godot what is said and what is implicated together form the meaning of the utterance in its context. In this play, the gap between what is literally expressed and what is intended is so great that a reader unable to understand what is implicated will not appreciate the complex nature of the exchanges between Vladimir and Estragon. A Gricean approach may be useful in studying this aspect of the use of language in Waiting for Godot. I H.P. Grice's theory of implicature "provides some explicit account ofhow it is possible to mean (in some general sense) more than what is actually 'said,.,,2 It also suggests that there is a set of over-arching assumptions guiding the conduct of conversation. These assumptions arise from basic rational considerations and may be formulated as guidelines for the efficient and effective use of language in conversation. Grice identifies as guidelines of this sort four basic "maxims" of conversation, which jointly express a general "Co-operative Principle.,,3 These principles have been expressed as follows . The Co-operative Principle. Make your contribution such as is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the verbal exchange in which you are engaged. The Maxim of Quality. Try to make your contribution one that is true, specifically: i) do not say what you believe to be false; ii) do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence. The Maxim of Quantity. i) Make your contribution as informative as is required for the current purposes of the exchange; ii) do not make your contribution more informative than is required. The Maxim ofRelevance. Make your contribution relevant. The Maxim ofManner. Be perspicuous, and specifically: i) avoid obscurity; ii) avoid ambiguity; iii) be brief; iv) be orderly. Waiting for Godot and Implicature 58J But no one actually follows these maxims all the time, and Grice too admits that people do not observe these guidelines to the letter. Whenever a certain maxim is violated, of course, with the intention to maintain the assumption of co-operation in spoken exchanges, it gives rise to "implicatures." Grice adopts the term "implicature" to refer to the various kinds of calculations by which we make sense of what we hear. The coherence of any conversation depends a great deal on implicatures. Let us illustrate the concept by the following simple exchange: A I need a set of Beckett's plays. 8 There is a shop around the comer. If B's response here is taken to be appropriate and relevant, A will assume that the shop is open and that it stocks Beckett's plays. !fthe shop turned out to be a grocery store, A would be justifiably annoyed, because B was violating the maxim of "Relevance," as is the case in the following exchange: A I have a toothache. B How do you like my shoes? !f B's odd response is not the result of not hearing or mishearing A's remark, B could be indicating total lack of concern for A's toothache. In the play Waiting for Godot the attitudes of and relationship between Vladimir and Estragon are largely defined by such minimal exchanges. In Waiting for Godot Beckett seems to be doing three things. He is depicting the irksome monotony of modem man's existence in the form of "waiting," he is examining a situation of existential despair through the verbal exchanges between the characters, and he is exploring the possible way out. When we examine the utterances of the characters in the play in the light of the Gricean framework of"conversational implicature" we discover a pattern of coherence underneath what has been dubbed "a veritable barrage of wildly irrational, ofteo nonsensical goings-on...4 Even though both Vladimir and Estragon experience the tedium of waiting for an unknown being who mayor may not arrive, it is in fact Vladimir who feels tied down to Godot...