The ‘Unsaid’ in Terence’s Eunuch: An Attempt at a Pragmatic Analysis

Abstract

The paper presents a pragmatics-based analysis of passages from Terence’s comedy The Eunuch – an analysis based on implication theory, on Grice’s implicature theory, and on Austin and Searle’s speech act theory. Contemporary research into the language of Roman comedy, using contemporary methods of linguistics and of linguistic pragmatics, has been relatively rare; moreover, it has concentrated on the elements of colloquial language, such as abstract expressions, word order, Greek loan-words, or the conversation elements of the spoken passages (Babič, Bagordo, Karaxis, etc.). The phenomenon of implicitness, on the other hand, has not been examined in its own right. The fundamental insight of this study is that ancient comedy strategically produces meaning by exploiting the fact that one can never be fully explicit in language. A closer look at the main characteristics of Roman comedy reveals that they form one of the basic conditions for the generation of meaning, and that their nature is closely linked to implicitness in language use. Linguistic pragmatics defines implied meaning as what can be meant or communicated in addition to what we literally say, with the aid of special tools for linking the explicit content to the unexpressed but relevant background information. The reference frame by which the unsaid in Roman comedy can be explained or made explicit includes conventions of the stage, drama and language, as well as the social and cultural characteristics of the period in which this comedy emerged, flourished, and declined. Linking the explicit content to the relevant background information, or communicating the implied meaning, is enabled by conventionalised linguistic means, the so-called types of implicit meaning, which may be divided into several categories (presuppositions, implicatures, speech acts). Speech act theory treats semantic processes from the aspect of structure, while implicature theory emphasises their inferential nature. The pragmatic analysis of examples from Terence’s Eunuchseeks to include equally all these aspects in interpreting the selected passages. The search for the unsaid has been narrowed down to three characters – the parasite, the slave, the soldier – and to two scenes which present their conversation. The link between them is the parasite, who takes an active part in both dialogues and whose typical characterisation in comedy may be directly linked to implicitness, a condition revealed (also) by the tools of linguistic pragmatics.