Pragmatics of Nonsense

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    The Pragmatics of NonsenseTowards a stylistics of Private Eyes Colemanballs*

    Serman Prayogi (082084040)

    *by Paul Simpson

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    Colemanballs: a selection of linguistic blunders made bytelevision and radio presenters in the Private EyeMagazine

    Colemanballs: David Coleman: a BBC sport comentator Balls=faux=errors

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    The unintentional humor that characterizes the

    Colemanballs genre has received little attention withinstylistics (determining which features of written or spokenlanguage characterize specific groups or contexts)

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    Colemanballs discourse does not slot neatly into the

    categories of humour proposed by humorologists There are only two potentially applicable functions of

    humor out of five proposed by ZIv

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    1. The intellectual function based on absurdities,

    wordplay, and nonsense. The pleasure of humorresides in the temporary freedom from the strict rulesand rationality

    2. The aggressive function directed towards as victimwho is made of fun and ridiculed.

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    A problem which pervades any systematic study of funny

    language, the tokens selected from Colemanballs corpusshould certainly provide some amusement for the readerof this Essay.

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    PsycholinguisticEvidence

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    The potential for humor in speech error can be noticed:

    That speech errors so often produce unintended butmeaningful utterances makes them strong candidates forhumor. (Fromkin 1971:39)

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    Three patterns involving segmental substitution

    predominate:

    1. Anticipations2. Perseverances

    3. Methatheses

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    Maxims andImplicature

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    Grice notes that conversation normally exhibit somedegree of coherence and continuity, which suggests thatspeakers are obeying some general principle of co-operation.

    Speakers should make their conversational contributionssuch as are required by the accepted purpose or directionof the talk in which they are engaged

    The pragmatics analysis of selected tokens from theColemanballs corpus is related with several maxims.

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    Four sets of highly normative conversational maxims:

    1. Maxims of Quantity:2. Maxims of Quality

    3. Maxims of Relation

    4. Maxims of Manner

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    QuantityImplicatures

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    Despite the fact that, within the terms of Gricean model,the token is paradigmatic of a flout on the Maxim of Quantity, it still find their way into Colemanballs

    Hurricane Higgins can either win or lose this final matchtomorrow

    (Archie McPherson)

    Alderman knows that he is either going to get a wicket orhe isnt

    (Steve Brenkley)

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    The humorous potential of the tokens above is dependanton the blockage of intended implicatures.

    A speaker who selects a particular term from a scale willimplicate that any leftwards term does not obtain. Thus inuttering:

    John scored eight points

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    A speaker conversationally implicates that John did notscore nine points or ten points and so on. It is important tostress that such scalar implicatures are pragmaticinferences not logical consequences.

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    Quality Implicatures

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    Broadly speaking, speakers flout the Maxim of Quality bysaying something which is manifestly false in context.

    Such quality implicatures above will incorporate all sorts of traditional rhetoric devices, such as irony, metaphor,meiosis, and Hyperbole.

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    Extending theAnalysis

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    One aspect of the Colemanballs discourse not touchedupon so far concerns the type of metalinguistic activity inwhich presenters are engaged. Such metalinguistic activitytakes the form of either discourse deixis or modality.

    Modality constitutes the second important metadiscoursalfunction. Like discourse deictic, modal expressions are non-propositional in that they lie outside the major informationcarrying components of the utterances.

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    Concluding Remarks

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    The foregoing stylistics will have gone some way towardsexplaining how Colemanballs type humour is developed.

    The humorous potential of tokens does not reside inphonological, morphological, or syntactic structure, nor is ita property of lexical or sentence semantics.

    One route to comparative linguistic safety would beavailable to them if they chose to adhere faithfully to thefour sets of conversational maxims.