In the following essay, the author discusses Pinter's use of the "voice-over" technique in his play Mountain Language to articulate the political elements of "communicating beyond language through language."

Inspired and appalled by his visit to Turkey in 1985, Harold Pinter in Mountain Language (1988) attempts to re-create the linguistic oppression he witnessed. Like the Turkish government which considers the language of Kurdistan subversive and so prohibits its usage, Pinter's torturers outlaw the "mountain language" of their victims. Clearly such a situation presents a difficult dilemma for a playwright. How can one represent the absence of language through language? Specifically, how can Pinter represent the effects of such oppression when the means for that representation, the convention of dramatic dialogue, is denied by the real-life situation which gave rise to the dramatic idea?

Pinter has made a career out of dramatizing such absences. His casts are filled with the...