Deadlocks in Roman Tragedies

This paper focuses on deadlocks in Roman tragedy. More specifically, it argues for a pattern to be found in ending such conversations, namely forced closings. The corpus has been analysed relying on a theoretical approach borrowed from Conversation Analysis (CA). A correlation is suggested between the characterisation of the speakers, struggling for power and dominance, their ineptitude in handling interpersonal communication, and their linguistic choices when bringing to an end the ongoing conversation.