“Then you shouldn’t talk” literalizes a false rule: that speech must be preceded by fully formed thought. In ordinary discourse, pausing with “I don’t think—” signals reflection; in Wonderland, the Hatter pounces on the fragment to silence Alice. The retort completes an earlier pattern: the tea-party crew twists equivalences (“say what you mean” vs. “mean what you say”), riddles without answers, and grammar quirks into weapons. Here, a grammatical interruption becomes evidence that Alice lacks the right to speak. The Hatter’s line is both pedantry and power move: it enforces an etiquette standard while exempting himself from coherence (his buttered watch, his feud with Time). The irony is sharp: those who talk most nonsense claim authority to regulate when others may talk at all. The sentence also parodies Victorian didactic maxims that equate moral rectitude with neat verbal formulas. Alice’s attempted reasoning threatens the tea-party’s rule-bound nonsense; cutting her off restores their closed loop of talk that produces nothing—eternal six o’clock, endless shifting of seats, and circular stories. The result pushes Alice toward critical independence: she rejects the conversation and walks away.