Persuasive Speech and the Power Play in Pinter’s Mountain Language: An Interdisciplinary Analysis

Taking an interdisciplinary approach, this paper analyses power play, speech strategies, and speech impact in Harold Pinter’s one-act play Mountain Language (1988), in which prison officials exercise power over inmates and their visitors through various tactics of control and subjugation. The paper’s methodological framework of corpus analysis is founded upon the linguistic features of police speak in the English language (a hybrid genre of spoken language police officers use when interrogating suspects), which, we propose, permeates the discourse in Mountain Language. The paper first reflects on discourses on/of power as observed in literary theory, then examines discursive strategies in the play, to illustrate speech impact caused by “conduct-regulating persuasion” and linguistic features of verbal violence. It also reflects on the concept of the persuasive power of discourse, in terms of the impact it may have on the mindset and behaviour of the interlocutor(s).