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Pragmatics3:4.367 -385 InternationalPragmatics Association LEWIS CARROLL: SUBVERSIVEPRAGMATICIST Robin Tolmach Lakoff The field of pragmaticsis broad and diverse;one of its problems,as well as its glories, is the difficulty of defining it so as to cover everythingand satisff everybody.The followingremarks can be consideredone smallcontribution toward making any rigorous definition lessattractive. I like to define pragmaticsas "the interestingstutf about language"- the reason many of us were attracted to linguistics.We wanted to know how languagedid the things it did, to us and for us; why some people used it to get their needs met, and othersto get into variouskinds of trouble;why usinglanguage was sometimesfun, and sometimesfrightening; and so on. As I was reachinglinguistic majority, there was no "linguisticpragmatics": those questionshad to be put aside,as we learned to ask only serious questions: questions that assumed that form alone counted; with the presupposition,I am afraid, that if a question(or its potential answer)was likely to be communicableto a non-specialistor not likely to put such a person immediately to sleep,it was non-linguistics,uninteresting, or too easy. Today I think just the oppositeis true. I think pragmaticsis, and ought to be, the area of study that tells us what we realfy want to know: everythingyou ever wanted to know about languagebut were afraidto ask.Not, that is,everything about language:there is still, of course,phonology, syntax,and the rest of "central"or "core"linguistics. But no responsibleperson is afraid to ask questionsabout those fields. Many of us, however (and even more so, our students)are in somesense or other afraid to articulatethe questionsthey most deeply desirethe answersto, becausethey havegotten the idea that thesequestions aren't sufflcientlyhard-nosed, scientizable, or respectable.I feel,on the contrary,that they are the most respectablequestions anyone can ask,with potentiallythe most important answersanyone can give or get. You can take that, if you like, as an apologyin the Socraticsense for this paper, a justificationfor its explorationof questionsthat somewould define as "non-linguistic" or frivolous.They are as you will seecompletely linguistic, in that they are concerned with the ways in which languagecan be usedto achievesignificant etfects on reality; and they are preciselyas frivolousas is our need to understandthe persuasivepower of language,its use as a political instrument.If this be frivolity, then make the most of it. Consider lrwis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson). Consider his principal contributions to literature and language, the two books Alice's Adventures in Wonderlandand Throttghthe Lookitrg-Glass.lnmost universitydepartments in which 368 Robin Tolntnch Lakoff significantEnglish literature is studied,these books occupy at besta marginalplace, as "children'sliterature," outside anyone's Canon. At the sametime, a remarkablenumber of important writers of English(not to mentionother languages)have either written explicitly about these books, or have in one way or another incorporatedthem into their own works of fiction or poetry.A glanceat the table of contentsof probably the most significantcollection of writings on the Alices,Aspects of Alice (1971) reveals contributionsby (among many others):W. H. Auden, Virginia Woolf, Robert Graves, Harry Levin, Edmund Wilson,Allen Tate, JohnCiardi, J. B. Priestley,William Empson, Kenneth Burke, and (oh yes) Grace Slick.So it is necessaryto accountfor two things: the relegationof the Alices by seriousscholars to marginality;and the recognitionby thosewho createthe cultureof the centralityof thesetexts. I want to suggestthat the paradox is resolvableif we understandthe Alices correctly,as perhapsthe most subversivebooks ever written.As a result,they have beendefined as "children'sbooks" - not to be takenseriously, rendered harmless by the appellationof "nonsense."No lessan Americanicon than Walt Disneyhas undertaken to sanitizethe texts,make them safeand sunlit.But in their originalforms, theAlices are works more dangerouslysubversive than any other writings. And the topic is relevant to pragmaticsbecause (again unlike other subversiveworks) the subversive content of.theAlices specifically undermines our culture'scomfortable view of language: as an orderly,value-free, cognitive and socialphenomenon. It attacksour assumptions that communicativebehavior is normallyrational and fair; it castsdoubt on our belief that human beingsare sensibleand sentient.Other subversiveworks undermineour faith in the validity or rationalityof systemsbuilt on communicativebehaviors and capacities,e.g. politics and religion(Swift's Gulliver's Travels comes to mind).But Alice goesbeneath and beyondGulliver in questioningthe bedrocklevel of thosecapacities that uniquelymake us human:our rationaland socialsystems, and the languagethat makesthem possible.In this respect,Carroll's works are very deeplysubversive: they overturn our assumptionsabout human communicativeinteraction - our pragmatic capacities. They do this by raisingand exploringa numberof assumptionshuman beings - - ordinaryspeakers and, too often,even specialists - make about how communication works.To list a few: (1) Our rules of pragmaticinteraction are the only/bestpossible such rules. (2) Those who have power have the right to it becausethey think and speak better and more rationallythan the powerless. (3) Our rulesmake sensein their own right (ratherthan as linguisticand social; descriptiveand prescriptiveconventionalizaticlns). Carroll leadsus to theseconclusions by constructingalternate universes which, on first sight (by his "naive"protagonist, Alice), appearto operateby the oppositeof our normal pragmaticrules and (therefore)to be "nonsensical."But whenthey are seen on their own terms,they turn out to makejust as much "sense"as our familiarsystem does- and therefore,either all are "sense,"and thereforeany choiceis arbitary;or all systemsrely on clurwillingness to abideby rulesthat are "nonsensical"- and so we are all, to invoke a tavoriteterm of Carroll's,"mad," since mad persons(or creatures)are Lewis Carroll: subversive pragmaticist 369 thosewho do not accommodateto "rational"systems. Seen in this light, the Alices readily transcendtheir traditional categorizationas children'sfiction, being neither. Ultimately, they deconstructour fondest and deepest beliefsof all: in truth, certainty,and predictability.By so doing they revealtheir author as a man over a centuryahead of his time: not only as a pragmaticistbefore there was pragmatics(and an inspirationto Wittgensteinamong others), but asa prematurepost- modernist,whose suspicionof the validity and rationalityof our socialand intellectual justifications for ourselves leads inexorably to the decomposition of our entire trustworthyuniverse. I will give examples in the remainder of this paper of Carroll's skeptical examinationof each of the above. lrt me begin with a brief bibliographicalsketch of the Alices'creator. Charles Lutwidge Dodgson was born in England in 1832. He took first class honors in mathematicsat Christ Church, Oxford, in 1854,and the next year was appointed mathematicallecturer in that college,a positionhe held until 1881.He made a number of contributions,regarded as competent but not groundbreaking, in the fieldsof formal logic and mathematics,and died in 1898.Hisposition required celibacy,and he is not knownto havehad relationshipswith adult women.He was,however, very fond of little girls,and enjoyedtaking them on trips, photographingthem, and telling them stories he had made up. One such story he told to the daughtersof Dean Liddell (co-author of the Liddell and Scott Greek-EnglishLexicon), probably in 1862.In 1865, the first version of Alice's Adventuresin Wonderland(W) was published under the pseudonym lrwis Carroll. Throughthe Looking Glass (LG) appeared in 1871. We might begin by lookingat the pseudonymitself, especially as concernsabout namesand naming occur frequently in the Alices. It is evident that Dodgson'sgiven namesCharles Lutwidge, inverted and translated,create the pseudonym(Lutwidge : Ludwig = Louis : lrwis; Charles : Carolus : Carroll). So to create the Alices Dodgsoninverted the unique elementsof himself(his givennames) - just as the books invert his, and our, reality. Both booksutilize an unusualheroine/protagonist/interpreter/experiencer, Alice. Her age is given (LG VI) as "sevenyears and six months,"and in W she is probably about six months younger. She is a female child, of course, of upper-middle class, academicbackground. Drawings of her made by Dodgson'schosen illustrator, John Tenniel, show her as having unruly below shoulder length dirty blond hair, always dressedin the Victorian child'sunitorm of stockings,knee length dress,and pinafore, neat but not sparkling.The DisneyfiedAlice, on the other hand, has pure blond hair in a shoulder-length,smooth and perfect page-boy,and bouffant spanking-clean clothing.In her pictorial form alone,Alice hasbeen sanitized and renderedrespectable by Disney. We can reflect on the significanceof Carroll's choiceof intermediarybetween ourselvesin our "safe"world, and the peculiaritiesof Wonderland.On the one hand, we can of courseargue, as is surelycorrect, that Carroll choseAlice as she appearsin the books, becauseAlice Liddell was the inspirationbehind the narratives.On the 370 RobinTolmach Lakoff other, we can extendour investigationto includeperlocutionary effect, that is, why the Alices have had the effect on readersthat they have

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