Author(s) :

Jean-Pierre Aimé Patrick OUATTARA, Muhamed DJANÉ .

Volume/Issue :

Abstract :

This article describes how negotiating meaning and absurdity interact in Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. It identifies contexts where meaning emerges from absurd linguistic productions. Using P. Grice’s (1975) Cooperative Principles and J. Derrida’s (1967) Deconstruction Theory, the study shows that meaning is dynamic: speakers assign their own semantics, creating a polysemic setting where the speaker’s model seems absurd to the hearer. Absurdity manifests through contradictions, paradoxes, circular and repetitive speech, nonsequiturs, ambiguity, and vagueness. These features create semantic gaps in communication. However, negotiating meaning through misdirection, deflection, reformulation, redundancy, humour, irony, and extralinguistic items helps bridge those gaps triggered by polysemic absurdity.

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