<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><p>This paper examines Harold Pinter’s late play <italic>Mountain Language</italic> as a depiction of political oppression specifically rooted in linguistic oppression. The play presents a “mountain people” who have been forbidden to use their “mountain language” by a coercive state authority. The play contrasts the brutality of the officers and guards with the humanity (represented through two still-life ‘tableau’ scenes) of the victims, the “mountain people.” The paper notes, however, that there is an unsettling linguistic twist to the play, in that the “mountain language” and the “language of the capital” are both English in performance. The paper suggests that this is partly motivated by Pinter’s expressed desire to make the play disturbingly recognizable to western audiences, thus removing the spectator’s or reader’s ability to judge such oppressions as being exotic, irrelevant, or encountered only in distant unstable countries. The paper argues that Pinter’s focus upon linguistic prohibition, linguistic discrimination, and linguistic denigration is rendered unexpectedly universal through the reliance of the text upon English as the medium for both the prohibited language and the language of authority.</p></abstract>

This paper examines Harold Pinter’s late play Mountain Language as a depiction of political oppression specifically rooted in linguistic oppression. The play presents a “mountain people” who have been forbidden to use their “mountain language” by a coercive state authority. The play contrasts the brutality of the officers and guards with the humanity (represented through two still-life ‘tableau’ scenes) of the victims, the “mountain people.” The paper notes, however, that there is an unsettling linguistic twist to the play, in that the “mountain language” and the “language of the capital” are both English in performance. The paper suggests that this is partly motivated by Pinter’s expressed desire to make the play disturbingly recognizable to western audiences, thus removing the spectator’s or reader’s ability to judge such oppressions as being exotic, irrelevant, or encountered only in distant unstable countries. The paper argues that Pinter’s focus upon linguistic prohibition, linguistic discrimination, and linguistic denigration is rendered unexpectedly universal through the reliance of the text upon English as the medium for both the prohibited language and the language of authority.

’Your Language is Forbidden’: Language Negation As Political Oppression in Pinter’s Mountain Language

Sustainable Multilingualism

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.

This paper examines Harold Pinter’s late play Mountain Language as a depiction of political oppression specifically rooted in linguistic oppression. The play...

’Your Language is Forbidden’: Language Negation As Political Oppression in Pinter’s Mountain Language

Published Online: Jun 18, 2019

Page range: 16 - 31

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/sm-2019-0001

Keywords
Harold Pinter, linguistic prohibition, language policy, oppression

© 2019 Andrew Goodspeed, published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.

’Your Language is Forbidden’: Language Negation As Political Oppression in Pinter’s Mountain Language

Published Online: Jun 18, 2019

Page range: 16 - 31

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/sm-2019-0001

KeywordsHarold Pinter, linguistic prohibition, language policy, oppression

© 2019 Andrew Goodspeed, published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.

Keywords
Harold Pinter, linguistic prohibition, language policy, oppression