Strategies of silence in All’s Well That Ends Well and Measure for Measure

Taboo – among its many meanings – can be understood as the linguistic and cultural negotiation of selective, relative silence. Thus, as demonstrated by Krajewski and Schröder, the concepts of silence and taboo are intrinsically linked (2008). This contribution aims to examine the pragmatic strategies used to establish, maintain and strategically break interpersonal codes of silence within two Shakespearian plays, i.e., All’s Well That Ends Well (henceforth AW) and Measure for Measure (henceforth MM). The silencing of others or the promise to remain silent should be viewed as strategic communicative choices. Both comedies rely on silence and secrecy to fuel their narrative structures. Recent pragmatic approaches to early modern dialogical texts (Busse & Busse, 2010; Del Villano, 2018; Rudanko 1993, 2007) have established a model for the linguistic exploration of interpersonal communicative strategies in literary texts. Austin (1962) and Searle’s (1969) theory and taxonomy of speech acts allows for a pragmatic investigation of the commissives and directives used to establish interpersonal accords of reticence. This chapter aims to analyse the pragmatic strategies used to establish, maintain and tactically break interpersonal codes of censorship and the negotiation of silence as a means to control information and influence behaviour.