CIORA ANDREEA

LCBA
PRAGMATICS

THE TEXT:
George: Youre a monster. You are.
Martha: Im loud and Im vulgar, and I wear the pants in the house because somebodys
got to, but I am not a monster. Im not.
George: Youre a spoiled, self-indulgent, willful, dirty-minded, liquor-ridden...
Martha: SNAP! It went SNAP! Im not gonna try to get through to you any more. There
was a second back there, yeah, there was a second, just a second when I could have
gotten through to you, when maybe we could have cut through all this, this CRAP. But
its past, and Im not gonna try.
THE ANALYSIS:
The text is taken from Edward Albees play Whos Afraid of Virginia Woolf?. The
main characters of this play are the married-couple George and Martha.
The fragment above presents a usual conversation between George and Martha,
the oddest couple in American fiction. They seem to argue and hurt themselves all the
time. Martha and Georges verbal communication has the power to bind them together,
although their open war on each other is sometimes shocking.
Even though it is usual for them to fight with words, words have power, and
Martha is clearly hurt to be called a monster, and reacts by attacking George. Like any
couple, the two have reference moments when they might have connected, when they
might have understood each other, but those moments are always already past and
wasted.
Despite the amount of arguing they do, George and Martha rarely seem to reach
an understanding. That is, their argument is more about the process of arguing rather than
any conclusion or agreement achieved by argument. What matters is how they conduct
their argument, how they interact with each other how they choose to exist in this
situation in which theyve found themselves trapped.
From a pragmatic point of view, we have the following analysis of the
conversation:
The context: George and Martha are at home, in a private and intimate place, so they can
talk as loud as they want, using the words they want. Being husband and wife for some
time, they are used to arguing and for them words are weapons used to destroy the other.
Conversational implicatures:
After George tells Martha that she is a monster, the woman reacts and acknowledges
that even though she is loud and vulgar and she wears the pants in the family (which
can be seen as a direct attack on George), she is not a monster. Therefore one can see

that the first utterance was understood and responded to, even though the second
sentence is a sort of denial of the first.
George continues to call her names but Martha tries another strategy, saying that for a
second she was able to communicate with him, but that second is now gone. We can
say that even though the third sentence was heard, Martha did not react as with
Georges first utterance, instead she chose to attack him indirectly saying that she will
not try anymore to talk to him.
We have here two direct accuses from George, and two different ways of responding
to each insult.
The maxims of conversation:
In his first statement, George respected the maxim of quantity, saying only the
necessary, though he emphasized it in order to make himself understood. (Youre a
monster. You are). His second statement is longer than the first, and would be even
longer if Martha would not stop him, to respond to his insults (Youre a spoiled, selfindulgent, willful, dirty-minded, liquor-ridden...).
As far as Martha is concerned, she does not respect this maxim by saying much more
than necessary. For example, as a response to Georges utterance that she is a monster,
instead of simply saying that she is not a monster, she first accepts that she is loud,
and vulgar, which we can see as arguments to sustain her statement, and then denies
the fact that she is a monster (Im loud and Im vulgar, and I wear the pants in the
house because somebodys got to, but I am not a monster. Im not). In her second
statement she just repeats an idea in order to make herself perfectly understood, thus
flouting this maxim again.
Regarding the maxim of quality, George says about Martha all the things he believes
she is (a monster, spoiled, self-indulgent, willful, dirty-minded, liquor-ridden), though
he lacks the necessary evidence. On the other hand, Martha disagrees with Georges
statement that she is a monster, and tries to prove him wrong by accepting the fact
that she is loud and vulgar.
The maxim of relation demands for relevance in a conversation, and in this case both
Martha and George flout this maxim, by saying more than enough, especially Martha
in her fourth sentence, when she repeats an utterance over and over again (There was
a second back there, yeah, there was a second, just a second).
The maxim of manner is also flouted as neither George nor Martha is brief or orderly
in their statements (exception: Georges first statement).
It is clear that they speak in turns, they do not overlap each other, and, though the
conversation is not based on questions and answers, each one has the right to respond
to the others utterance.