Pragmatic Study of Speech Act in Beckett’s Waiting for Godot Act - I

Abstract

Language is a means of communication and is an essential matter of fact to study the nature of it by the various angles developed by the various scholars of language and literature. Therefore, an attempt is made in this paper to study some of the selected pieces of conversations in Beckett’s well-known play Waiting for Godot - Act I, by the pragmatic point of view in general and Austin’s Speech Act in particular, to draw the implied meanings of it. The present study identifies the unusual language used in the play Waiting for Godot Act I, categorizes them in turns of the observation and violation of pragmatic principle Speech Act and offer explanation from the pragmatic point of view following observation of speech act theory, especially focusing on the illocutionary speech act, to find out the implied meaning of the characters’ utterances.