Masaryk University Faculty of Arts
Department of English and American Studies
English Language and Literature
Martin Pospíšil
Metalinguistic Discourse in George Carlin's Work Bachelor's Diploma Thesis
Supervisor: PhDr. Kateřina Tomková, Ph.D.
2016 I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently, using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography.
…………………………………………….. Author’s signature
2 I would like to thank my supervisor, PhDr. Kateřina Tomková, Ph.D., for both helping me narrow down the topic of the thesis and for the feedback provided during the writing.
3 Table of Contents
1 Introduction...... 6
2 Theoretical Background...... 8
2.1 Humour...... 8
2.1.1 Psychoanalytical theories...... 9
2.1.2 Social theories...... 10
2.1.3 Cognitive theories...... 10
2.1.4 The place of linguistics in relation to studies of humour...... 12
2.1.5 Definition of humour...... 14
2.2 Conversational Humour, Pragmatics and Discourse...... 14
2.3 The Term Metalinguistic...... 16
3 Stand-Up Comedy and George Carlin...... 18
3.1 Stand-Up Comedy...... 18
3.1.1 Historical background...... 18
3.1.2 Description and features...... 19
3.2 George Carlin...... 20
4 Metalinguistic Discourse in Carlin's Work...... 24
4.1 Classification by Content...... 24
4.1.1 Morphology...... 25
DERIVATIVES...... 26
COMPOUNDS...... 28
COINING NEW LEXEMES...... 29
4.1.2 Lexical meaning...... 30
CONCEPTUAL MEANING...... 31
CONNOTATIVE MEANING...... 35
4 SOCIAL MEANING...... 36
AFFECTIVE MEANING...... 37
REFLECTED MEANING...... 38
COLLOCATIVE MEANING...... 40
4.1.3 Speech acts and performatives...... 41
4.1.4 Cratylistic theories...... 43
4.2 Discussion...... 46
4.2.1 The range of subject matter...... 47
4.2.2 Mixing of linguistic topics...... 48
4.2.3 Multifacetedness of humour...... 49
5 Conclusion...... 51
Works Cited...... 54
Sources...... 57
Appendix A: Excerpts (DVD content)...... 58
Summary...... 63
Souhrn...... 64
5 1 Introduction
George Carlin was one of the most influential stand-up comedians of the
1960s and 70s, the counter-culture era. To this day, many stand-up comedians' performances include material related to issues such as politics, gender, religion and race. In this, Carlin was no different. A major source of inspiration for Carlin which is less prominent in other comedians' routines, however, is language; specifically American English. From minor observations regarding particular expressions to commenting on different codes, from humorous definitions of words to his famous act Seven words you can never say on television, Carlin would talk about language explicitly in many of his routines. Coincidentally, according to Tony Hendra who helped write his “sortabiography”, Carlin also
“loved it when academics would want to use his routines. . . in their papers”
(Roberts, 2009).
The focus of this thesis is a linguistic analysis of Carlin's metalinguistic discourse. The examples are taken from 11 of his HBO specials and two of his audio books. Where appropriate, incongruity and incongruity-resolution approach is used, though this does not always seem the best approach, or at times a possible one to use. Nevertheless, in several instances it does provide a good insight into the workings of the humour present in the excerpts.
The thesis is divided into five chapters including this introduction.
Chapter two provides the necessary theoretical background, namely basic introduction to academic studies of humour and certain useful terms, such as metalinguistic and conversational humour. Chapter three presents the reader with a basic description of stand-up comedy, since stand-up routines form a major portion of the excerpts examined. It also contains information about the
6 development of Carlin's career. Chapter four forms the core of the thesis: several of Carlin's routines about language are discussed here. Finally, chapter five provides findings and a summary of the thesis.
7 2 Theoretical Background
This chapter familiarizes the reader with a few concepts related to the subject at hand. The object of interest is metalinguistic material in George
Carlin's work. Although Carlin himself stated that after a certain point, he consciously incorporated serious, unfunny material in his act, that “there were times in the show when it was okay not to get laughs” (zdrux, 2013), the majority of examples analysed will be of humorous nature. Therefore it is relevant to talk briefly about (the study of) humour. In addition to describing this broad topic, it is also appropriate to explain the terms metalinguistic and discourse.
2.1 Humour
As with many linguistic terms which are also used in everyday life, speakers have few problems in using and comprehending the word humour or humorous. If a lay person were to define what the word means, their reply could be something similar to “That which makes a person laugh.” Indeed, this intuitive description is mirrored in the definition given by Longman English
Dictionary: “the quality in something that makes it funny and makes people laugh” (Humour, n.d.). As is commonly the case, neither lay nor dictionary definitions are sufficient for academic purposes.
Yet defining humour in academic terms is not without its problems. As
Marta Dynel (2009a) points out, humour is a multifaceted phenomenon (p.
1296; see also Forabosco, 2008, p. 57) and has been debated and studied since at least the times of ancient Greece and from many different perspectives
(see Attardo, 1994, pp. 14-59). These include the fields of psychology,
8 psychiatry, sociology, anthropology, linguistics and neuroscience (Dynel, 2008).
When linguistics emerged in the 19th century, few scholars—with the notable exceptions of Bergson and Freud—were interested in the field's potential contribution in the study of humour (Attardo 1994, pp. 46). In any case, none of the scholarly fields has claimed monopoly on the study of humour. Thus instead of a single, broad theory of humour, there exists a wide range of theories. Most of them are limited in their scope, focusing on particular features of humour
(Dynel, 2008, p. 3). The most prominent families of theories of humour are briefly introduced in the following subsections:
2.1.1 Psychoanalytical theories
Psychoanalytical theories of humour include release, relief, relaxation, sublimation, liberation and economy theories (Attardo, 1994; Krikmann, 2006).
These theories are centred around the notion that humour allows a person to vent impulses which are otherwise seen as socially unacceptable and “thus avoid wasting additional mental energy to suppress them” (Krikmann 2006, p.
28). Humour therefore serves as a mechanism for relieving stress and tension suffered due to adhering to social inhibitions or convention:
In terms of linguistic behavior, release theories are interesting because
they account for the ‘liberation’ from the rules of language, typical of puns
and other word-play, and also for the infractions to the principle of
Cooperation . . . typical of humor at large. (Attardo, 1994, p. 50)
Hence, these theories are focused on the individual (Krikmann, 2006) and the effect of humour on their psyche.
9 2.1.2 Social theories
Social theories acknowledge the “aggressive side” of humour (Attardo.
1994, p. 49). These are the theories of hostility, superiority, triumph, criticism, derision, disparagement or aggression (Attardo, 1994; Krikmann, 2006). All of the above presume that humour is directed against someone. The party against whom a humorous remark or a joke is directed is commonly known as the target or butt. This social group is often distinguished from the speaker along
“political, ethnic or gender grounds” (Krikmann, 2006, p. 27), though it need not be so, for example in cases of sarcastic remarks or putdowns (ie. remarks
“carrying no humour to be appreciated by the by the [sic] butt;” Dynel, 2009a, p.
1294). The role that antagonism between the speakers and the butt plays in humour had already been noticed by Plato and Aristotle, and later advocated by the philosophers Thomas Hobbes and Henri Bergson (Attardo, 1994, p. 49).
2.1.3 Cognitive theories
Cognitive theories are commonly known as incongruity or incongruity- resolution theories, or sometimes also inconsistency, contradiction or bisociation theories (Attardo, 1994; Krikmann, 2006). Incongruity theories have been very influential in the study of humour (Dynel, 2008; Forabosco, 2008). As the term suggests, they focus on humour that contains an incongruous stimulus, that is to say a stimulus which “diverts from the cognitive model of reference”
(Forabosco, 2008, p. 45), which from a linguist's point of view translates into “a mismatch or contrast between two meanings” (Dynel, 2011, p. 3). Or put in yet another way, such humour
10 . . . involves two different planes of content. . . These two are mutually
incompatible, but also include a certain common part which makes the
shift from one to another possible. . . . some instantaneous cognitive
work will be done to overcome the contradiction and another
interpretation that has so far remained hidden can be found. The renewal
of understanding is attended by the emotion of surprise and satisfaction,
causing the reaction of laughter. (Krikman, 2006, p. 28)
The above definitions also reveal one more thing common to all incongruity theories. They are essentialist, meaning that they attempt to identify necessary and sufficient conditions of a phenomenon (Attardo, 1994, pp. 1-2, 48-49); in other words, they aim to describe what makes something humour, to describe what is it about an utterance or text that makes them humorous.
Of interest are the expanded versions of incongruity theories, the incongruity-resolution theories. This alternative is usually credited to Jerry Suls, or sometimes also to Thomas Schultz (Forabosco, 2008, p. 47; Dynel, 2008, p.
3). Incongruity theories treat incongruity as the only linguistic source of humour, but according to incongruity-resolution theories, while incongruity is necessary, it alone is not sufficient (Attardo, 1994, p. 143). Suls states that a hearer of a joke makes a prediction about the likely outcome upon hearing the set-up
(Martin, 2007, p. 64). The punchline differs from this prediction and causes surprise, which in turn causes the hearer to re-search the set-up for a cognitive rule (Martin, 2007, p. 64), a mechanism which reconciles the incongruous elements in the mind of the hearer (Forabosco, 2008, p. 47-48). Thomas
Schultz similarly proposes that hearers keep listening to a joke until they hear the incongruous punchline, then re-examine the set-up to search for an
11 ambiguity that would makes sense of the punchline and thus resolve the incongruity (Martin, 2007, p. 64). This reconciliation or resolution is thought necessary for something to be humorous. Resolution is playful, but not a complete one; it does not mean the eradication of incongruity, instead it coexists with it (Attardo, 1994, p. 144; Martin, 2007, p 66.). The form of this generalised mechanism varies across different forms of humour (Dynel, 2008, p. 3). It may be for example phonological or lexical in nature, and even non-linguistic (Martin,
2007, p. 64). In contemporary thought, both incongruity and incongruity- resolution have their place, with the former one being more prominent in visual and children's humour1, while the latter one in verbal, language-based humour
(Forabosco, 2008, pp. 47-48).
2.1.4 The place of linguistics in relation to studies of humour
Majority of linguistic theories of humour fall into the cognitive family of theories. Notable exceptions include those by Sigmund Freud and more recently William Fry and Harvey Mindess, who propound psychoanalytical theories (Attardo, 1994, p. 50). Social theories are also sometimes favoured among sociolinguists thanks to their emphasis on the interpersonal, social aspect, though they are “of limited application elsewhere” (Attardo, 1994, p. 50).
These exceptions aside, majority of linguistic theories are centred around the
1 Somewhat confusing is the fact that studies show that children often find incongruity alone
humorous. This would suggest that for children's humour, resolution is unnecessary
(Forabosco 2008, pp. 47-48); Attardo (1994 p. 143) on the other hand points out that children
do perceive incongruity in puns, yet do not find them funny, implying that incongruity alone
cannot be the source of humour for children and hence the incongruity-resolution alternative
accounts for children's humour better.
12 concept of incongruity and incongruity-resolution. Forabosco asks in the title of his 2008 article: “Is the Concept of Incongruity Still a Useful Construct for the
Advancement of Humour Research?” and his conclusion is an affirmative one
(p. 57). That being said, Marta Dynel (2009b) points out that “[a] precise description of humour processes entails an anti-essentialist approach, i.e. a detailed multi-faceted analysis of distinct language phenomena within clearly delineated borders.” (p. 1). Given that incongruity theories are essentialist theories, this means that they alone cannot provide this multi-faceted analysis.
Perhaps this need not be as great an obstacle as it seems at first glance, since according to Krikmann (2006), most theories are in fact blends of multiple approaches. Compare the aggressive element addressed in social theories and the release gained by venting one's aggressive impulses which is the focus of psychoanalytical theories; likewise, requiring an element of incongruity does not preclude a joke to also serve as an expression of hostility or to provide release from social tension. This is to say the theory families are to a great extent compatible, but it does not mean they are easy to unify. This again shows that humour is a complex subject and a difficult one to study in a comprehensive manner.
In linguistic analyses of humour, it is common to study particular phenomena2 in isolation, not “placed on any hierarchical tier in humour taxonomy” (Dynel, 2008, p. 3). From a very broad point of view, this perhaps makes studying humour less systematic, but arguably also richer and allows for a more practical application of these studies.
2 Examples of these are canned jokes, stock conversational witticisms, teasing, banter, riddles
or story puns (Dynel, 2008, p. 3). See e.g. Dynel (2009a) for descriptions of these terms.
13 2.1.5 Definition of humour
The beginning of chapter 2.1 left unanswered the question of what in fact is humour. Willibald Ruch (2001), a distinguished humour researcher and a psychologist (Krikmann, 2006), contrasts the contemporary understanding of humour with a historical one from the field of aesthetics. In the past, humour was understood as one element of the comic. The comic was defined as anything that would make one laugh or be amused and apart from humour it also included wit, fun, nonsense, sarcasm, ridicule, satire, and irony (Ruch,
2001, p. 11). Today however, most Anglo-Americans consider humour to include all of the above aspects, essentially being identical to the comic (Ruch, 2001).
Curiously, although this description does indeed include the potential to induce laughter—just as the Longman Dictionary definition—, it contains little else apart from listing various forms humour can take. For the purposes of this thesis, the incongruity or incongruity-resolution approach will be employed when suitable in considering the humorousness of excerpts of Carlin's work.
2.2 Conversational Humour, Pragmatics and Discourse
There are a few more important (if brief) observations to be made. One is regarding the broad category of humour to be analysed. Stand-up comedy can often include a relatively high amount of non-verbal, visual humour. Carlin himself certainly does incorporate a wide array of facial expression and body language in his routines. Since the focus of this thesis is humour about language however, the primary object of analysis falls into the category of
14 verbal humour, that is humour “produced by means of language or text”3 (Dynel
2009a, 1284). Verbal humour is sometimes further split into jokes and conversational humour, which ranges from units as short as “single-word lexemes, phrasemes to whole sentences and even multi-turn exchanges interwoven into non-humorous discourse” (Dynel 2009a, 1284). Analysing stand-up comedy thus generally means analysing conversational humour. For the purposes of this thesis, non-verbal parts of Carlin's act will be excluded.
To appreciate humour, the hearer must be in “the right frame of mind”
(Dynel, 2011; see also Martin, 2007, p. 70). This means that a comprehensive study of humour requires the acknowledgement of the context which the speaker and hearer find themselves in. Commonly, this is the domain of the field of pragmatics, where “the focus is on the utterance in its specific communicative context, and on its relation to the intentions of the speaker and the responses of the listener” (Mair, 2008, p. 109). In actuality, the mood of the audience need not play a big role in the analysis: most of the analysed material will come from live shows to which the audience have come on their own volition, or from audiobooks, hence it appears safe to assume they are generally in a frame of mind responsive to humour. However, it will occasionally be necessary to bring to the foreground the intent of the speaker (Carlin) or the indirect meaning of an utterance, which again is the prerogative of pragmatics,
“the study of how more gets communicated than what is said” (Yule, 1998, p. 3).
3 This is a different definition of verbal humour than one given in e.g. Attardo (1994, p. 54, p.
58 or pp. 95-96) where verbal humour is in opposition to referential; the funniness of the
latter is grounded solely in the meaning of the text, whereas in the former it is grounded both
in the meaning and the phonological realization of the text, and thus highly language-specific
and difficult to translate.
15 Finally, as the scope of the analysed examples goes beyond the sentence, it is appropriate to think of it as of discourse and hence incorporate elements of discourse analysis. As Mair (2008) points out, to some extent pragmatics and discourse analysis overlap (p. 109). The pragmatic perspective of analysing discourse
. . .tends to focus on aspects of what is unsaid or unwritten (yet
communicated) within the discourse being analyzed. In order to do the
pragmatics of discourse, we have to . . . . pay much more attention to
psychological concepts such as background knowledge, beliefs and
expectations. In the pragmatics of discourse, we inevitably explore what
the speaker has in mind. (Yule, 1998, p. 84)
Given that incongruity will play an important role in the analysis, and given that it is perceived when the arrangement of elements is different from the normal or expected one (McGhee, as cited in Attardo, 1994, p. 48), it will be unavoidable to at times discuss both background knowledge and expectations of language users.
2.3 The Term Metalinguistic
Although there could arguably be a lot more said about the word metalinguistic or metalanguage, for the purposes of this thesis the meaning will be narrowed down to the one used by Roman Jakobson. Jakobson's (1960) model of communication is a pragmatic concept which describes different functions a linguistic sign can fulfil, one of which is a metalinguistic one:
A distinction has been made in modern logic between two levels of
language, “object language” speaking of objects and “metalanguage”
16 speaking of language. But metalanguage is not only a necessary
scientific tool utilized by logicians and linguists; it plays an important role
in our everyday language. . . . we practice metalanguage without
realizing the metalingual character of our operations. (p. 356)
Put simply, metalinguistic (or metalingual) in this sense refers to any utterance about language (see also Mair, 2008). Mair (2008) provides an example of a short metalinguistic text: “A verb such as purchase is not used in spoken
English. Replace it by buy” (p. 112). But a metalinguistic statement can be even less explicit and not contain any particular linguistic terms. All “equational” statements of the form “X is Y” qualify as metalinguistic statements, so long as the word is is used to mean means (one of the examples Jakobson, 1960, gives is “To be flunked is to fail an exam.”, p. 356). With respect to the topic at hand then, metalinguistic discourse will mean any discourse which contains a reference to language, codes of language or even words or phrases.
17 3 Stand-Up Comedy and George Carlin
In this chapter, the reader will be familiarised with the object of the analysis. As the focus of the thesis is metalinguistic discourse in George Carlin's work, one of the subchapters is devoted to a brief biography of Carlin. And given that the majority of the excerpts cited here come from Carlin's stand-up shows, an (equally brief) introduction of stand-up comedy is presented as well.
3.1 Stand-Up Comedy
3.1.1 Historical background
Stand-up comedy is type of comedy which involves a comedian performing in front of live audiences. Its origins reach back to the 19th century
United States. Having toured and delivered witty, satirical lectures, Mark Twain is often credited as a precursor to stand-up (Stebbins, 1990, p. 7; Zoglin, 2014).
During the late 19th century, variety shows would include stand-up performances. These would take place in large auditoriums or theatres, later also in nightclubs (Stebbins, 1990). Yet unlike in some later stages of stand-up, in the variety shows the “gags were generic, were largely interchangeable, and could be repeated almost endlessly” (Zoglin, 2014). Importantly, the performances were also impersonal, quick-paced and focused on humour only
(Stebbins, 1990). The comedians often relied on hired writers. This type of stand-up later became the standard in TV variety shows.
But around 1950s, a new wave of comedians began to emerge. These would break the prevalent set-up–punchline structure. Improvisation became more frequent, the jokes were original, the performance became more
18 conversational. These comedians would often talk about their personal experiences and views, often commenting on politics, racial tensions or religion.
The most important of this newer type of comedians were Lenny Bruce and
Mort Sahl (Stebbins, 1990, p. 9). Yet few of these comedians garnered mainstream success.
This new wave lasted until the late 60s, after which it was followed by a group of counter-cultural comedians. George Carlin and Richard Pryor are some of the first of Bruce's successful followers. Like their role model(s), they would often talk about serious topics, such as politics, race, war or middle-class hypocrisy (Zoglin, 2014). Comedy clubs became a new venue for this generation of comedians and experimentation with the format of the stand-up performance became common.
Around the mid 80s and early 90s, the popularity of stand-up began to fade due to two important factors. The first is “overexposure and a dilution of the talent pool” (Zoglin, 2014). The second is the fact that many talented comedians moved away from stand-up to other pursuits, such as sitcoms (Zoglin, 2014).
3.1.2 Description and features
Contemporary stand-up performances nearly always feature only a single comedian at a time; duos or trios are rare (Stebbins, 1990). Although the performance is often embellished by vivid non-verbal communication (gestures, grunts and so on), the core of stand-up comedy lies in its strong, verbal component. The performance has a conversational tone, with the comedian usually talking to the audience in an informal, seemingly spontaneous manner
(Zoglin, 2014). Although the performance is not rigid and there is room for
19 improvisation, majority of it is in fact memorized. It takes the form of a monologue (Stebbins, 1990), sometimes also including interactions with the audience4. Whichever the form, the comedians employ a combination of one- liners, jokes, humorous stories and anecdotes. These may but need not be related to one another; transitions from one piece of material (called a routine or an act) to the next may be smooth or abrupt.
Apart from pure stand-up as described above, Stebbins (1990) distinguishes other, related forms. Mixed stand-up for example contains elements of pure stand-up comedy mixed with other, artistic performances (e.g. music, juggling or magic). Quasi stand-up is more verbal than mixed stand-up and consists of ethical monologues, satire and caricature; these are conventionally recognized as (pure) stand-up, but in fact they “differ in structure and content” (1990, p. 4). Finally, team comedy involves multiple comedians, often relies on props or costumes and unlike pure stand-up, it sometimes contains plot (in the case of sketches). Carlin's performances fall into the category of pure stand-up.
3.2 George Carlin
George Carlin was a comedian, an actor and an author. Born in 1937 in
New York, he began a professional career in radio as a disk jockey in 1956
(George Carlin Estate, 2016; Lentz, 2009, p. 64). Approximately three years later, he met a newsman Jack Burns, with whom he started developing comedy routines. They started performing together in 1960. For two years they
4 A common trope is a comedian asking members of the audience what job they do, usually
followed by a humorous—sometimes mocking—remark, see e.g. Double (2015).
20 performed in mainstream nightclubs; the audiences in such clubs were mostly middle class, yet the duo's routine had “a decidedly anti-establishment, satirical flavor” (George Carlin Estate, 2016). During that time, they appeared on the
Tonight Show with Jack Paar and also recorded an album, Burns & Carlin at the
Playboy Club Tonight. In 1962 they split up so that they could each pursue their own career (Lentz, 2009).
Carlin continued to perform in nightclubs for about a year with little success, until in 1963 he expanded his sphere of activity to coffee houses and folk clubs, where the audience was more progressive and receptive of different material. There he could experiment and combine a mainstream style of comedy with a more strident one. Yet it was during this period of experimentation when he attracted the attention of people in television, the most mainstream of mediums (George Carlin Estate, 2016). He spent the mid to late
60s appearing on TV, but grew progressively dissatisfied with the demands of the medium on the content of his acts.
After brief attempts at acting, he embraced an alternative style of comedy, becoming a “counter-culture rebel” who “revolutionized stand-up comedy in the 1970s” (Lentz, 2009). At this stage of his career, his comedy was targeted at younger audience instead of the middle class. He released several more albums in the early to mid 70s, including Class Clown in 1972, which contained one of the most famous routines of his, the Seven words you can never say on television. In the late 1970s however, Carlin also found new avenue to bring his performance to wide audiences: the cable TV, particularly
Home Box Office (George Carlin Estate, 2016). Since the 90s, he also began writing books based partly on his stand-up routine, partly containing new
21 material, whether it be short essays, witticisms and other commentary. All of the books were also later released as audio books, read by Carlin himself.
Carlin married in the early 60s—during the time he worked with Jack
Burns—to Brenda Hosbrook, with whom he had his only child, daughter Kelly.
He married the second time in 1998 to Sally Wade following his first wife's death. Carlin kept performing until 2008, when he died of heart failure at the age of 71. He taped 14 HBO stand-up comedy specials for which he gained three
Emmy nominations and six CableAce awards (George Carlin Estate, 2016). He wrote three best-selling books which sold over two million copies combined. He released 18 solo stand-up albums for which he won four Grammy awards and got six more nominations (George Carlin Estate, 2016). On top of his career as a comedian, Carlin also acted in several films (such as Dogma in 1999 and
Jersey Girl in 2004) and voice acted in several animated series (among them
Cars, 2006).
As regards Carlin's comedy, as he himself stated in e.g. Brain droppings
(2000), his sources of inspiration were threefold. The first was the English language. The other two sources were what he called “the little world” and “the big world” (Brain droppings, 2000). The former included observational comedy, focusing on experiences often common in stand-up (relationships, sports), often mundane (the human body, driving, pets), but nearly always so commonplace that most people could relate to them. The big world constitutes topics such as religion, politics and death. Notably, the language-related material would often intertwine with both the little world and the big world; for example when talking about the language of the media, politics, the new age movement or advertising. It is, unsurprisingly, this focus on language because of which his
22 work has been chosen as the subject of analysis. The examples cited in the following chapter come primarily from the HBO stand-up specials, with a few excerpts from the audio books.
23 4 Metalinguistic Discourse in Carlin's Work
In this chapter, Carlin's work is analysed. To approach the topic systematically, the texts are analysed by the subject matter of the texts in question. Therefore the analysis is split into subsections, each dealing with a different linguistic topic.
As will be shown below, this classification is rather broad and imprecise.
This is due to the fact that a piece of text can, for example, contain allusions to multiple linguistic phenomena. As such it is difficult—if not impossible—to objectively ascribe only a single linguistic phenomenon as being the core of a routine (and hence the category under which the excerpt should be classified).
Accordingly, in cases of overlaps, there is no attempt made here to make such a distinction. Instead, it seems more fruitful to simply openly state every such ambiguity: as has already been stated, humour itself is multifaceted. Since a broad, complex taxonomy of humorous phenomena is not deemed necessary, it should be equally unnecessary to insist on precise, unequivocal categorization of the humorous content.
The following section presents examples and analyses along the aforementioned axis; afterwards a discussion follows which consolidates and builds up on the findings. The reader is also encouraged to make use of the playlists provided on the DVD to watch the corresponding video excerpts (see also appendix A).
4.1 Classification by Content
Carlin's work contains many acts in which he employs metalinguistic discourse. Many of these feature his complaints about various incongruities in
24 language use, or at least what he claims or implies are incongruities. At any rate, he examines a considerable range of phenomena which span across numerous linguistic disciplines. The topics fall within the purview of lexical semantics, morphology, pragmatics, sociolinguistics and other. Each of the following subsections briefly describes the concept at hand, then presents and discusses examples from Carlin's work.
4.1.1 Morphology
Morphology is the linguistic study of the structure of words. Its main concerns are inflection and word formation. Inflection is a way of creating grammatical forms of lexemes. Word formation is, unsurprisingly, a way of forming new words, the most common strategies of which are compounding and derivation. Metalinguistic discourse pertaining to inflection does not appear to be present in Carlin's acts. Thus all metalinguistic discourse regarding morphology focuses on word formation. Although compounding and derivation are ways of forming new words, word creation (coining) is not a particularly common occurrence. Most discussion of compounds and derivatives is a discussion about extant words that have been created by these processes; it is also important to note that most discourse relevant to word formation is also discourse of (conceptual) meaning. The following two sections thus focus on such words and on the incongruities stemming from meanings that deviate from expectations. The third section of this chapter deals with actually coining new words.
25 DERIVATIVES. Derivation is a form of creating a new word from a free morpheme (i.e. the minimal linguistic unit capable of expressing meaning which can stand on its own, Mair, 2008, pp. 39-40). Such morpheme is called the stem. Derivation is usually done by adding a bound morpheme (called affix) to the stem, or alternatively by simply changing its word class; this is zero derivation, or conversion. Depending on its position relative to the stem, the bound morpheme is either a prefix (standing in front of the stem), suffix / postfix
(behind it), infix (within the stem, dividing it in two) or suprafix (alongside the stem, usually a change in pronunciation, Mair, 2008).
Commonly discussed by Carlin is a situation where the meaning of a resulting compound seems self-contradictory or redundant. One instance includes the prefix self- when he talks about self-help books: “. . . if you're looking for self-help, why would you read a book by somebody else? That's not self-help: that's help! There's no such thing as self-help. You did it yourself, you didn't need help” (Complaints and grievances, 2001). There are at least two more occasions where the topic is the influence an affix has on the meaning of a derivative, both regarding the prefix pre-:
Anyway as part of this boarding process, they say “We would like to
preboard-”. Well what exactly is that anyway? What does it mean to
preboard, to get on before you get on? That's another complaint of mine:
too much use of this prefix pre-. It's all over the language now, pre-this,
pre-that. “Place the turkey in a preheated oven”. It's ridiculous. There are
only two states an oven can possibly exist in: heated or unheated.
Preheated is a meaningless fucking term! It's like prerecorded, “This
programme was prerecorded”. Well of course it was prerecorded! When
26 else you gonna' record it, afterwards?! That's the whole purpose of
recording, to do it beforehand! Otherwise it doesn't really work, does it?
(Jammin' in New York, 1992)
Carlin points out two different discrepancies in the use of these terms. With all three words, the prefix is used to imply that something did or is going to happen before something else. In the last two cases, the intended meaning can be conveyed without using the prefix: if the oven into which the turkey is placed is heated, it follows that it has been heated before it was put there. The opposite order of events is a logical impossibility, hence the prefix is at best redundant, at worst misleading because it may suggest to the hearer that the opposite sequence is actually possible. He voices the former sentiment explicitly in the second relevant excerpt (Brain droppings, 2000): “in nearly all of these cases, you can drop the pre- and not change the meaning of the word”. In the case of preboard, the prefix is meant to signify that a certain group of passengers— those with small children (Jammin' in New York, 1992)—is going to board the plane before the rest. Here the opposite sequence of events is in fact possible.
Carlin's interpretation of this derivative, however, seems to reduce every combination of a verb with the prefix pre- to a self-contradictory impossibility: “to do an activity before one does said activity”. It seems unclear whether this insistence on linguistic purity ad absurdum was employed intentionally for humorous purposes, or whether Carlin's grievance regarding the word was genuine. In practice, the prefix pre- in connection with verbs is used to express doing an activity in advance of something else. Still, in all three cases, Carlin uses the (perceived) discrepancy between the expected, intuitive meanings and the actual ones to make humorous, ironic remarks.
27 COMPOUNDS. Compounds are word formations which consist of two free morphemes. The final word's meaning is not always a composite of literal meanings of the two roots. This sometimes makes it harder to predict.
Nevertheless, there are at least some more or less stable rules for determining the meaning, notably in cases when a noun or an adjective modify a noun (this latter noun, or head, being preceded by the modifier root).
In the famous act sometimes titled Seven words you can never say on television (eg. Roberts, 2009; Lentz, 2009), Carlin talks extensively about a list of words which are dirty under all circumstances. During the act he tells a story of how he had to cross out the word motherfucker off the list because it constituted a duplication of the word fuck (George Carlin: Again!, 1978). Having introduced the reasoning to the audience, he proceeds to examine whether the word cocksucker should not be deleted off the list as well. This he does by considering both roots separately and seeing whether they have non-dirty meanings or not. This part of the act does not contain any incongruity. Carlin points out that the word cock has both non-taboo and taboo meanings (“Cock is in the Bible!”) and also brings the audience's attention to the fact that “Sucker isn't dirty: sucker. . . . [but] it's suggestive as hell” (George Carlin: Again!, 1978).
He concludes that “Even the word cocksucker itself has been twisted out of all of its original meaning, it's been distorted. For some reason—now—
COCKSUCKER! means ‘bad man’. It's a good woman. How did they do that?”
(George Carlin: Again!, 1978). This latter quotation does present the audience with an incongruity between the current meaning of the word and the fact that
Carlin claims that there is a better, more logical one. It is dubious whether this
28 incongruity adds to the humorousness of the act. It would perhaps be better to analyse the humour of the discourse using a psychoanalytical theory, as talking openly about dirty words allows the audience to temporarily relieve tension because of the relaxed social norms surrounding the taboo meanings.
COINING NEW LEXEMES. The previous two sections were concerned with the results of compounding and derivation, i.e. with existing lexemes. The two strategies are the most productive ways of creating new words (Mair, 2008, p.
47). As Marta Dynel (2009b, p. 1286) reminds, lexemes and phrasemes are the shortest possible “humorous chunks”.
There are at least two cases of Carlin making up new words (excluding the non-metalinguistic instances). The first one is a blend, i.e. a word created by merging parts of two words together (Jackson & Amvela, 2007, p. 101). Usually, the original words are still recognizable (Jackson & Amvela, 2007). The word peacock comes from the Middle English pecok, itself a blend of pēa (peafowl) and cok (cock; Peacock, n.d.). Thus when Carlin declares: “You know what a female peacock is? A peacunt”, he is simply replacing one part of the original blend with a word which he for comedic purposes treats as complimentary to cock. The incongruity and resolution are straightforward in this case. The audience know that a peacunt is not a female peacock. The resolution of this incongruity lies in finding a cognitive rule, in this case recognizing that the word cunt stands in a kind of antonymous relationship to the word cock, a relationship similar to that between the words male and female; what is more, both words also happen to be related to the corresponding sex.
29 The second example is one of Carlin playfully rearranging the syllables of a phrase:
Just had that little feeling, do you ever have that funny little–that kind of
feeling of vu jàdé? You know, not déjà vu, this is vu jàdé. This is the
strange feeling that somehow none of this has ever happened before.
(Carlin on campus, 1984)
There is a clear implication that somehow, reversing the order of syllables also reverses its meaning. To a great extent, this is a similar presupposition to that made in Cratylistic theories of language discussed in chapter 4.1.4. The presupposition naturally goes against the audience's knowledge that linguistic signs are not motivated (i.e. they are arbitrary). Thus the resulting description of the meaning is perceived as playful, but ultimately a nonsensical one.
4.1.2 Lexical meaning
Semantics is the study of meaning, in particular, meaning of words and sentences as abstract objects standing outside of any broader, extralinguistic context. Lexical semantics is a subdiscipline of semantics which focuses on the former, i.e. the meaning of individual lexemes (a lexeme subsumes all inflectional forms of a word; Mair, 2008). One approach to the study of semantics espoused by Geoffrey Leech (1981) in his influential work splits meaning in the wide sense into seven different “ingredients” (p. 9). Conceptual meaning is the primary, most integral type of meaning (1981, p. 9). It is stable: it changes slowly and is shared by almost all language users regardless of their culture, social standing or other factors. In contrast, connotative, social, affective, reflected and collocative meaning are what he calls associative types
30 of meaning. These vary across time, culture, social class, and even from individual to individual; they are shaped through speakers' associations between words and their “‘real world’ experience” (1981, pp. 12-13; also pp. 18-
19). The seventh component is thematic meaning. This is the meaning conveyed most often through the ordering of linguistic elements within a sentence. There were no examples of thematic meaning found during the writing of this thesis, hence it is not covered in the following analysis. As Leech
(1981) himself admits, problems sometimes arise in trying to distinguish between the types of meaning, most notably between the central, conceptual component and the more peripheral, associative ones (pp. 20-21). That being said, distinguishing different types of meanings is still useful.
CONCEPTUAL MEANING. Conceptual meaning is concerned with what a lexeme denotes, in other words it is “the ‘objective’ meaning of a word or expression” (Mair, 2008, p. 246). As such it delineates the potential extralinguistic objects or concepts which said lexeme can refer to5. It is what lay speakers commonly understand by the word meaning itself, at least in relation to meaning of words.
As regards Carlin's discourse related to conceptual meaning, two important things are to be said: first, it is the most commonly mentioned type by far. Second, two patterns appear more or less frequently which are discussed elsewhere in the thesis. In both, Carlin exploits the incongruity of what a word means, and what it ought to mean. This oughtness is of two kinds: it comes
5 Perhaps this would be better phrased in the opposite: after all, denotation changes in time,
and this change follows speakers' using an expression to refer to different extra-linguistic
realities.
31 from the idea that the signs in question are either partially or fully motivated (at least according to Carlin). Partial motivation largely consists of cases where the meaning of a word is determined by its morphology (Saussure, as cited in
Attardo, 1994, p. 151). This is a fairly common occurrence in Carlin's work and has been discussed in chapter 4.1.1. The other type of oughtness rests on the
(false) assumption that signs are motivated, i.e. non-arbitrary. Examples of this kind of humour are given in chapter 4.1.4 which deals with Cratylistic theories.
Similar to some of the discourse pertaining to morphology of compounds is Carlin's occasional discussion of certain collocations and what they mean or ought to mean. In Brain droppings (2000), for example, he lists these oxymorons: “mandatory option; mutual differences; non-dairy creamer; open secret; resident alien; silent alarm; sports sedan; wireless cable; mercy killing; lethal assistance; business ethics; friendly fire; genuine veneer; full-time day care; death benefit; holy war”. A good portion of these consist of two words which are in some kind of antonymous relationship or another: what is mandatory cannot be optional (contradictory antonymy), a car can presumably either be a sports car or a sedan (taxonomic sisters). Others are contradictory only vaguely: it is questionable how death can be beneficial. Acute though they may be, majority of these are merely observations. They do contain incongruity, but when considered one by one, it is questionable how much of humorous potential they have. The pair that stands out is business ethics. All the other collocations are oxymorons because of their conceptual meanings being at least somewhat contradictory, but there is nothing in the definition of business that makes it contradictory to ethics. This pair is thus unexpected and the listener has to find the cognitive rule to explain the incongruity of it being
32 included in the list. The resolution appears to lie in the concluding that the antagonistic relation is instead based in a combination of conceptual and connotative meaning: it is Carlin's way of indirectly expressing his own, negative thoughts on business. The same principle applies with another two words that
“don't . . . go together”, those being “military intelligence” (On location, 1977).
Note that proponents of social theories of humour could also posit that the humorousness springs from the disparagement of the business community and the military.
As has been discussed earlier, defining what words mean also constitutes a metalinguistic discourse (Jakobson, 1960, p. 356). Here are two
(partial) definitions Carlin gives: “Tippy was a mixed terrier. You know that word
‘mixed’ that the veterinarian puts on the form when even he don't know what the fuck you got?” (Doin' it again, 1990); and “[n]ames are an interest of mine. Not a hobby, hobbies cost money. Interests are free” (You are all diseased, 1999).
Humorous definitions thus relate to the word's conceptual meaning, often taking the form of witticisms, i.e. short, clever remarks which—unlike jokes and one- liners—always aim to serve communicative purpose as well as to amuse
(Dynel, 2009a, pp. 1287-1288). Witticisms generally occur as part of a conversation (including a non-humorous one; Dynel, 2009a) instead of within a purely humorous contexts only, hence they are suitable to be used in stand-up comedy routines.
In other cases, Carlin makes use of ambiguousness of conceptual meaning. Consider the following example:
Do you ever notice right on the cookies it says ‘open here’? What the
fuck do they think you're gonna' do, move to Hong Kong to open up their
33 cookies?! Of course you're going to open them here: you're going to eat
them here. You almost have to open them here. Thank God it doesn't say
‘open somewhere else’. Shit, I'd be up all night trying to find a good
location. (Carlin at Carnegie, 1982)
The mechanism proposed by Schultz gives an appropriate description: Carlin presents a quick set-up, in which the audience hear the word here and, given the context, assume that it refers to the spot on the cookie wrapping. Carlin's next question would thus be unexpected in a non-humorous context; the audience realize the word here is ambiguous and can also refer to the reader's current location, thus resolving the incongruous continuation of the act. The same kind of principle applies in e.g. Playin' with your head (1986) when talking about a TV programme: “Today they had some swimming that was interesting.
The women's 200 meter breaststroke. Well, I've never seen a woman with two hundred meter breasts. So I was really interested”.
Most cases of conceptual meaning-related humour are of the types mentioned above. An unusual example is in George Carlin: Again! (1978).
Carlin does not exploit incongruity stemming from conceptual meaning of words here. Instead, in discussing the taboo status of the word fuck, he proposes to switch around the conceptual meanings of the words fuck and kill for a year to
“get a new slant on how we feel about these words”. This suggestion is then followed by a few examples of use. The humorousness seems to spring from the playful insertion of a taboo where there normally is none; therefore it also exploits the reflected meaning of the word fuck. Since there is no incongruity as such present in the act, there is also no resolution.
34 CONNOTATIVE MEANING. Connotative meaning is in fact similar to conceptual.
It also relates to what an expression can refer to, but in contrast to conceptual meaning, it bears all the features of associative meaning described above. This is to say that a connotative meaning is not shared universally and is prone to change during individual speakers' lifetimes. So for example, while the definition
(denotation, conceptual meaning) of the word masculinity can be worded as
“the features and qualities considered to be typical of men” (Masculinity, n.d.), different speakers will have different perceptions and ideas as to what those features might be. Whether these are shaped by—or in opposition to—culture, class, religion or individual experiences, it is clear that any particular combination is much less universally accepted than the dictionary definition, and thus these specifics of this word's denotation form its connotative meaning(s).
Carlin makes use of connotative meaning commonly, though not always in a metalinguistic manner. An example in the previous section mentions business ethics. In a different act, Carlin defines what in his opinion constitutes a sport (Playin' with your head, 1986), essentially naming rules that eliminate commonly recognised sports (and relegating them to being games or activities instead). This does create incongruity between the usual and the proposed denotation of sport, but there does not appear to be any resolution. The rules are arbitrary and nonsensical; still, as Ruch, 2001, states, nonsense is a kind of humour in its own right. Carlin makes it explicitly known that he is not giving a universally accepted definition and thus not describing the conceptual meaning of the word: “. . . the only reason I mention baseball, basketball, and football is because to my way of thinking, these are really the only three sports that we
35 have. Nothing else qualifies as a sport according to me” (Playin' with your head,
1986). And in fact he repeats twice that these are “my rules, I make them up”
(Playin' with your head, 1986).
SOCIAL MEANING. Leech (1981) defines social (or stylistic) meaning as pertaining to what linguistic expressions reveal about the social circumstances the speakers find themselves in (p. 14). Thus two expressions with the same or similar conceptual meaning can vary along several socio-stylistic dimensions
(1981, p. 14-15). Thus for example the Czech second person singular pronouns ty and vy can be used to address (refer to) the same person, but the use of vy marks politeness or subordinate social status. Similarly, certain lexemes can be a part of dialects; other terms may belong to various registers (i.e. situation- dependent varieties such as language of the law or medicine); and a frequent use of formal language can indicate higher social class.
As regards Carlin's use of social meaning in his acts, here is one where he complains about a perceived misuse of a word in airline announcements on the plane:
And who made this man a captain, might I ask? Did I sleep through some
sort of an armed forces ceremony or something? Captain? He's a fucking
pilot and let him be happy with that! If those sight-seeing announcements
are any mark of his intellect, he's lucky to be working at all! Tell the
captain air marshal Carlin says “Go fuck yourself!” (Jammin' in New York,
1992)
According to Carlin, the word captain is so strong a part of a military register that it is unsuitable for use in the non-military context of commercial airlines.
36 Hence in the first portion of this act, he sets up the premise that using military ranks outside of the proper setting is wrong (or perhaps even intentionally misleading), then in contrast proceeds to name himself an air marshal. The audience perceive this incongruity and find the cognitive rule: Carlin is being ironic and misuses a similar word in an even more obvious manner to demonstrate the point he made in the set-up to reprimand the people who made the original mistake. Thus the incongruity is resolved and the brief discourse is perceived as humorous. It is however again worth noting that the act can also be seen from psychoanalytical viewpoint (the two instances of the word fuck serving to release tension) and even from social viewpoint (disparaging the airlines or at least the pilots).
AFFECTIVE MEANING. Affective meaning is the component of meaning which serves to communicate speaker's emotions (Leech, 1981). To be sure, this can often be done through other means, for example through conceptual or even connotative meaning of words. But there are also direct and indirect ways of expressing personal attitudes, chief example of the former being interjections, while intonation is an example of the latter (Leech, 1981, p. 16). Thus when a speaker says e.g. “Wow! I am shocked!”, they express their surprise twice: first directly through interjection (affective meaning), then naming their personal feelings explicitly (conceptual meaning). If they place vocal emphasis on the word shocked, this too helps to reflect their emotional state.
Carlin talks about affective meaning rarely. In George Carlin: Again!
(1978) while discussing the “bad reputation” of the word fuck, he laments that
“[w]e put the aggression back into the word”. He demonstrates the expressive
37 nature by yelling multiple expressions containing fuck, accompanied by wild, aggressive gesturing. He concludes: “God! It sounds like combat, man! . . .
There's an awful lot of hostility in the way that word is used. There's an awful lot of aggression going down in the name of fucking”, indicating that the word serves to express one's anger and hostility. This act seems free of any incongruity and would be better explained from the point of view of psychoanalytical theories, allowing the audience to enjoy breaking of the social taboo in yelling the word without restraint.
REFLECTED MEANING. Reflected meaning as defined by Leech (1981) when
“[o]ne sense of a word . . . ‘rub[s] off’ on another sense” (p. 16). This kind of meaning is admittedly less prominent and often less noticeable. Its importance increases with the strength of the associations of the other sense and with its familiarity. Perhaps the strongest cases of reflected meaning include a taboo sense of a word reflected onto another, non-taboo sense of that word (Leech,
1981, p. 16-17). Leech gives examples of “taboo contamination” (p. 17) of words relating to sex—namely ejaculation, intercourse and erection— so powerful that their non-taboo meanings have nearly disappeared. Arguably, this type of reflected meaning is also the most exploitable for purposes of comedy, so long as the comedian does not refrain from using taboo expressions; recall for example Carlin's suggestion to swap the meaning of fuck and kill.
An example where Carlin utilizes reflected meaning comes in (Playin' with your head (1986). Here Carlin discusses what constitutes a sport and claims that hockey cannot qualify as a sport because the only other time one uses the word puck is in reference to urinal pucks, and “any game where the
38 main object is something that came out of a urinal is definitely not a sport”.
Hence somehow, the meaning of the urinal puck reflects so poorly on the hockey puck as to disqualify hockey to claim the title of a sport.
A second example is also related to sports: this time Carlin is comparing football and baseball. He implicitly compares the linguistic and extra-linguistic features of the two games, contrasting the easygoing, relaxed, almost lax nature of baseball with the serious, militaristic mood of football (also reinforcing this notion with intonation). One of the comparisons lies in how the two games determine the winner in the case of a tie and, more importantly, what this solution is called: “Baseball has no time limit: we don't know how long it's gonna' last, we might have extra innings! Football is rigidly timed and it will end even if we have to go to sudden death” (Carlin on campus, 1984). Similarly, “[b]aseball has a seventh inning stretch. Football has a two minute warning” (Carlin on campus, 1984). The relevant terms here are sudden death and warning. Neither are part of military code, hence this is a case of reflected meaning, not a stylistic one. There appears to be no incongruity that would make the hearer re-evaluate the set-up, save perhaps for the juxtaposition of football with actual violence. Be that as it may, Carlin does reinforce the theme of the routine by highlighting the words death and warning. The meanings of the two words in military context imply (the threat of) violence. In the context of football, these words reflect this aggressive meaning even onto the collocations which would otherwise imply no violence at all6, thus strengthening the contrast between the games. Compare also with the conclusion of the act, where Carlin describes the object of the
6 sudden death merely describes the process through which the game is resolved; two minute
warning is the name of a signal which announces the upcoming end of the second and fourth
quarters of the game
39 game, extensively using military-like language of football to colour the audience's impression of the football-related meanings. This is contrasted with how “[i]n baseball the object is to go home”. This similarly reflects the meaning of the word home, but may also be an allusion to a common phrase of “to bring the troops home”, thus highlighting the contrast between the two games even more.
COLLOCATIVE MEANING. Just as reflected meaning, collocative meaning
“involve[s] an interconnection on the lexical level of language” (Leech, 1981. p.
16). In this case, it is a connection between a particular word and other words with which it tends to appear together (or collocate) in texts and discourse. Thus when someone overhears the sentence “Shukov galloped at full speed and won the race” even absent any other context, they are more likely to come to the conclusion that Shukov is a horse or perhaps a jockey than that he is a human runner, because to gallop tends to collocate with horses, rarely with any other animals. Leech (1981) warns that not all co-occurrences are the result of collocative meaning (p. 17): some are explained by sharing stylistic meaning instead.
The closest example of Carlin talking about collocative meaning comes in (When will Jesus, 2004): “Why is it the only time you ever hear the word figment, it's in relation to the imagination? Aren't there any other kinds of figments?”. This short observation can perhaps best be seen as a witticism.
Though in this case it stands alone, not part of a broader discourse, the remark is easy to insert into a conversation (for example, after a speaker uses the collocation). Carlin here exploits the fact that the word figment only collocates
40 with one word, which is a very rare occurrence: there is an incongruity between how most words are used and how this particular one is. The observation is a quick one, and thus it is also sudden, which according to Suls is necessary for it to be humorous (Martin, 2007, p. 64).
4.1.3 Speech acts and performatives
The theory of speech acts is a pragmatic concept conceived by John
Austin (1962, p. v) in the late 30s, later to be delivered in lectures at Oxford and
Harvard Universities and later still to be edited into his classic book How to do things with words. Central to the theory are performative sentences, or sentences which when uttered under the right circumstances perform an action
(1962, p. 6). Such sentences do in some sense inform the hearer of something.
Despite this and the fact that verbs in these utterances are commonly in first person singular indicative, their primary purpose is not to describe or state anything (1962, p. 6, p. 56). Examples of performative utterances include swearing an oath, entering into a marriage (by saying “I do”) or apologies.
Performatives are neither true nor false, although they can be “happy” or
“unhappy”, felicitous or infelicitous (1962, pp. 5-6, p. 14). This depends on certain criteria being met prior, during and / or after the utterance. Some of such criteria are discussed below together with examples.
Carlin discusses various speech acts on at least three occasions. Of those, chronologically first comes an approximately seven minute long monologue, roughly half of which is concerned with different greeting and parting phrases (Playin' with your head, 1986). These are speech acts in their own right, as saying e.g. “goodbye” or “hello” performs the act of parting with of
41 greeting someone. These are often implicit only; Austin's examples of performative verbs which make them explicit are “welcome” (in e.g. “I welcome you”) and “bid you fare well” (1962, p. 159). This is relevant in the second case:
Now we're taxiing in, she says: “Welcome to O'Hare international airport”.
Well how can someone who's just arriving herself possibly welcome me
to a place she isn't even at yet?! Doesn't this–doesn't this violate some
fundamental law of physics? We're only on the ground four seconds,
she's coming on like the fucking mayor's wife! (Jammin' in New York,
1992)
Carlin is exploiting here the discrepancy in the cited use of the word welcome.
Since greeting someone is a speech act, certain conditions need to be met for the act to be felicitous. There are multiple types of such felicity conditions; in this particular case, preparatory conditions are not being honoured. These conditions differ for every kind of speech act and pertain to the extralinguistic reality of the situation (Yule, 1998, pp. 50-51). In case of welcoming, Carlin points out that one must have been at a place for some minimal, unspecified time before they can welcome anyone else at that place. Since this is not true in the situation he describes, it creates a potential for a humorous, sarcastic remark.
The third situation also has Carlin discuss preparatory conditions. The speech act in question is swearing on the Bible in court. This time however,
Carlin questions the point of performing such a speech act to begin with. To undermine the validity of swearing on the Bible, he asks what the role of certain parts of the act is (e.g. raising one's hand) and why they are necessary (It's bad for ya, 2008). Presenting several hypothetical scenarios (such as swearing on a
42 Bible with half the pages missing) to finally ask “At what point does all of this stuff just break down. . .?” (It's bad for ya, 2008). The next two questions extend the topic beyond just swearing on the Bible: “What is the big deal about swearing to God in the first place? Why does swearing to God mean you gonna' tell the truth? Wouldn't affect me” (It's bad for ya, 2008). This calls into question the validity of performing such an act to begin with. Carlin argues that swearing is not binding, it has no effect on the speaker; thus the essential condition of this act cannot be fulfilled. Without it, the whole act cannot be felicitous either. There does not appear to be a strong incongruity, hence the routine would probably be analysed from the social point of view, as Carlin is disparaging towards
Christians or arguably religious people in general.
4.1.4 Cratylistic theories
The question of what is the relation between linguistic signs and the things they represent has been asked ever since at least the ancient times
(Palmer, 1976; Attardo, 1994, pp. 151-153). Today, it is beyond dispute that a vast majority of linguistic signs are a matter of convention, and hence are arbitrary, or unmotivated (e.g. Attardo, 1994, pp. 151-152). There are (or were), however, views contrary to this arguably intuitive consensus. One such view is called realist (Palmer, 1976). It states that “all things called by the same name have some common property” (Palmer, 1976, p. 20), meaning that there is something about, say, every house that justifies it being called a house. As described by Attardo (1994), Cratylistic theories are a subset of realist theories.
The theories derive their name from Cratylus, the eponymous character of one of Plato's dialogues (1994, p. 152). According to Cratylus, signs and meanings
43 are connected together by natural law; in other words, linguistic signs are not arbitrary. Cratylistic theories go one step further than other realist ones, however. According to realist theories, the word cat is used to refer to only those animals that fit certain criteria, but a different word could be used to refer to the same group of animals as well; what is important is that all cats have something in common, a cat-making feature or features. Cratylistic theories claim that the same feature also accounts for the phonetic (or perhaps also orthographic) shape of the sign: thus the same features that bind all cats into the same category also connect them with the word cat; to call a cat something else would be a misnomer under Cratylistic theories7. According to Attardo (1992, p.
169), adopting a Cratylistic theory of language is a form of playful make-believe, various forms of which are common in jokes. Significantly, in the case of puns at least, speakers do so consciously “because puns are metalinguistic” (1992, p.
169).
Considering how specific and rare it is in everyday situations, Carlin makes a relatively frequent use of of Cratylism in his work. The explicitness with which he expresses Cratylistic beliefs varies, and in some cases, it is not quite clear whether they do or do not play a role. For example, when he complains about the euphemistic nature of operational exhaustion8, he claims it “sounds like something that might happen to your car” (Doin' it again, 1990). He does not elaborate on why he gets such an association. It does seems plausible however
7 What is more, this relation also extends to paronyms, words with similar sound realization
(1994, p. 169): thus according to Cratylism, if two words sound similar, they ought to have
similar meaning as well.
8 A former name for post-traumatic stress disorder, a mental disorder developed after
experiencing a traumatic event, for example during war time.
44 that at least in this case, it is not an expression of holding a Cratylistic view, but probably has to do with the conceptual or stylistic meaning of the constituent roots of the compound.
A linguistic phenomenon which is relevant for the discussion is onomatopoeia. Onomatopoeic words are words which sound similar to the object (sound) they denote. They in fact happened to be a counterexample that
Saussure considered (and rejected) as evidence for non-arbitrariness of the sign (Attardo, 1994, p. 151). Onomatopoeic words do differ across languages
(compare for example the English woof with the Czech haf or the German wau), but even so they are considered at least to some extent motivated. In this following example, Carlin explicitly declares an expression to be onomatopoeic:
[They] never mention ball injuries, they don't say the balls were hurt, they
say groin injuries. You had a groin injury. Do you know why we call it a
groin injury? That's the noise you make when you get hit there: GROIN!
(George Carlin: Again!, 1978)
The audience are presented with an incongruity of a kind: they are aware that signs are given by convention, but Carlin implies that this one is not, that it is onomatopoeic. Thomas Schultz's model alone does not appear to be of use here for identifying a possible resolution, since there is no ambiguity as such.
Attardo's hypothesis fills this gap. If the audience are willing to view the
Cratylistic origin of words as a feasible possibility, the word groin may indeed sound like something that could be used as an interjection expressing that one is in pain. Carlin makes sure to reinforce this possibility by tone of voice and body language. This new—if pretended—meaning then coexists with the common one and in essence substitutes an existing ambiguity (the word
45 becomes polysemous or homonymous). The same principles apply in other instances, not necessarily onomatopoeic: “There's another soft name for a boy,
Kyle. Soft names make soft people. I'll bet you anything that ten times out of ten
Nicky, Vinnie and Tony will beat the shit out of Todd, Kyle and Tucker”
(Complaints and grievances, 2001). In this example, Attardo's explanation is even more essential to providing ambiguity to serve as a resolution.
Onomatopoeia is an existing phenomenon people are aware of, while the notion that a name determines what kind of a person someone is is not. The principle
Carlin is implying essentially substitutes the Cratylistic natural law that binds words and concepts. This principle is further removed from reality than onomatopoeia, which favours Attardo's hypothesis of the playful make-believe even more.
4.2 Discussion
From the examples in chapter 4.1, it ought to be clear that Carlin paid much attention to language indeed. A few conclusions can be made based on the analysis. The conclusions are threefold:
1) the range of metalinguistic subject matter Carlin talked about is relatively
wide,
2) it was common for him to include multiple linguistic phenomena within a
single act, and
3) the multifacetedness of humour in general is also present in Carlin's
metalinguistic discourse.
The three points are discussed in more detail one at a time below.
46 4.2.1 The range of subject matter
The provided examples show Carlin commenting on matters which are commonly discussed in lexical semantics (meaning in its various forms), pragmatics (speech acts), sociolinguistics (social meaning) and morphology.
Perhaps the most common was discourse regarding meaning of words. Among the categories of meaning as proposed by Leech (1981), without doubt the most frequently discussed was the conceptual meaning. On the other hand, connotative meaning, which is similar to conceptual, did not feature very prominently in Carlin's work. Discourse on morphology of words included both commenting on existing words and creating new ones. Discourse regarding speech acts pointed out their infelicity, or outright questioned the validity of some speech acts in general. Finally, while exploiting Cratylistic theories of signs is arguably very rare in everyday life, Carlin makes use of it relatively often, sometimes employing onomatopoeia, other times not.
For the sake of completeness, it ought to be stated that there still remains a good amount of subject matter not included in this thesis. Some falls within the purview of the linguistic disciplines mentioned above; other does not.
An example of the latter would be an instance of Carlin briefly commenting on the Brooklyn accent (Carlin on campus, 1984), which could be subject to both sociolinguistic and phonological scrutiny. This is the only instance where
Carlin's comment regards phonological features of language (at least as far as I have been able to notice such commentary); it has therefore been excluded from the analysis due to its rarity. As regards topics which have not been covered in this thesis but fall within the one of the linguistic disciplines listed above, pragmatists could find interest in Carlin's discourse on deictic
47 expressions, whether spatial (see e.g. When will Jesus, 2004), or temporal
(George Carlin: Again!, 1978). Carlin also talked at some length about the language of the media, of politics, business, advertising, and “new age lingo” or
“support group jargon from the human potential movement” (Doin' it again,
1990), all potential subjects of sociolinguistic research. Another very common topic is euphemisms. To be sure, some portion of these falls under stylistic or social meaning covered in chapter 4.1.2. Yet meaning of single lexemes does not cover the instances when Carlin would talk about, for example, people's motivation for using these codes, such as when he declares that “Americans. . . invent[ed] the kind of a soft language to protect themselves from [reality]” (Doin' it again, 1990), or when on multiple occasions he discusses censorship and people trying to control language (e.g. On location, 1977; Life is worth losing,
2005). All these other, more common topics have been excluded mostly for the sake of compactness. Also, large amount of the discourse on euphemisms in particular is not necessarily humorous.
4.2.2 Mixing of linguistic topics
Many examples showed that within a single routine, Carlin would often talk about more than one language-related topic. Particularly prominent was mixing of discourse regarding conceptual meaning and other topics, e.g.
Cratylistic theories or morphology. One example of forming a new word also showed an underlying assumption about how meaning is determined similar to
Cratylistic theories.
Whenever mixing of topics occurs in the examples given in chapter 4.1, it does so within the span of a few utterances, or even a single utterance. Often
48 however, Carlin mixes linguistic topics within whole acts. One example of reflected meaning was part of a routine9 comparing baseball and football. The particular utterances were chosen specifically to show reflected meaning as opposed to social one (recall: they included the words sudden death and warning). Yet the routine also includes a few instances where Carlin does use a word belonging to military code, such as “field general” and “aerial assault”
(Carlin on campus, 1984). Similarly, in the nearly 20 minutes long Seven words you can never say on television routine, the metalinguistic discourse contains allusions to multiple types of meaning as well as to Cratylistic theories (“tits sounds like a friend. It sounds like a nickname, doesn't it? . . . Tits sounds like a snack you know? . . . tits sounds like a thing at a party”, George Carlin: Again!,
1978). And the whole routine, of course, rests on idnetifying vulgar words which do not have non-vulgar meaning, i.e. are not polysemous in the correct way.
4.2.3 Multifacetedness of humour
An attempt has been made to use incongruity or incongruity-resolution theories during the analysis whenever possible. Yet many times in chapter 4.1, it has proven difficult or outright impossible to apply them on metalinguistic discourse, which—one might argue—would appear to be ideally suited to incongruity theories because they are favoured by linguists over psychoanalytical and social theories. Yet Carlin often discusses profanity and taboo language, which nearly always seem to carry with it an aspect of
9 It can at times be difficult to mark the boundaries of an act in a stand-up performance. The
benefit of this particular routine is that Carlin explicitly announces its beginning with “[W]hat
I'd like to do now is something called ‘Baseball and football’” and, conversely, states that he
does not have an ending for the act at the end of it (Carlin on campus, 1984).
49 psychological release. As such, these acts would be well seen from psychoanalytical perspective. In a similar fashion, much discourse is based on disparaging a group of people. Whether it be the military, the religious, politicians, businessmen, advertisers, feminists, men or white people, Carlin often makes jokes at the expense of others. Because of the social or sociolinguistic nature of the discourse, it ought not be surprising that social theories of humour would be useful tools to use in the analysis.
50 5 Conclusion
The focus of the thesis is the examination of metalinguistic discourse of
George Carlin's work. As Carlin was an influential comedian, humorous discourse from his televised stand-up performances as well as audio books are at the centre of attention. The humorous material is divided by content. As has been shown, this is not without ambiguity; many of the examined routines contained allusions to multiple linguistic phenomena. Still, the division allows one to see these routines from different angles and helps to highlight just how broad a range of linguistic topics Carlin discussed in his comedy.
The examples provided in chapter 4.1 are relevant to the fields of lexical semantics, pragmatics, morphology and to some extent also sociolinguistics
(namely chapter 4.1.2: Social meaning). As has been stated in the introduction, humorous discourse regarding social matters is hardly rare in stand-up comedy.
Thus, it is perhaps the other, non-sociolinguistic angles which make Carlin's comedy more unique. Apart from the topics mentioned above, the subsection on
Cratylistic theories examines a more unusual metalinguistic phenomenon present in some of the humorous discourse, and in conjunction with other topics, its presence helps highlight Carlin's versatility. Chapter 4.2 also briefly touches on other subject matter which would fall within the purview of phonology.
Chapter 2 presents the theoretical background to several issues, most importantly humour. It familiarizes the reader with the three main branches of humour research: the psychoanalytical approach, the social approach, and the cognitive approach. The first of these sees humour as a mechanism to release tension in a safe, socially acceptable way. The second approach focuses on the
51 more negative side of humour, the disparagement of social groups to which the speaker and the hearer of the joke do not belong. The cognitive approach observes that comedy involves incongruity between two elements, and that this incongruity is the cause of laughter. Common versions of this theory include another important concept, a resolution of the incongruity, which is often considered necessary to distinguish humorous kinds of incongruities from the non-humorous ones. Both versions of the theory have their proponents today, with incongruity-resolution theories being usually favoured in the studies of verbal humour. The analysis of Carlin's metalinguistic discourse in this thesis utilises the cognitive approach, as it is the one favoured in linguistics (save perhaps for sociolinguistics which sometimes uses the social approach). The approach has proved fruitful in the examination of several of Carlin's routines.
The examples contain both incongruity paired with resolution as well as incongruity alone, without resolution. At the same time its limitations have been far from insignificant. This is partly due to the fact that some of Carlin's metalinguistic acts are concerned with curse words and other kinds of taboo language. The humorousness of these routines appears to spring mostly from the psychological relief and as such, it appears that a decent amount of his comedy is better seen from psychoanalytical perspective. Conversely, just as other comedians, Carlin also includes a lot of social commentary, and many of his metalinguistic routines are concerned with pointing out how various groups use language to serve their purposes; this type of humour would probably benefit from the insights of the social approach.
Finally, it remains to be said that although this thesis has covered a fairly broad range of metalinguistic topics, there remain several which have not been
52 explored. A notable amount of material concerns euphemisms; this side of
Carlin's work is metalinguistic in a very explicit manner, however it is also true that a sizeable portion of it is “serious”, or not funny, and therefore is excluded.
53 Works Cited
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56 Sources
HBO SPECIALS. The primary sources here are listed chronologically. These are Carlin's HBO specials:
On location: George Carlin at USC. (1977).
George Carlin: again! (1978).
Carlin at Carnegie. (1982).
Carlin on campus. (1984).
Playin' with your head. (1986).
What am i doing in New Jersey?. (1988).
Doin' it again. (1990).
Jammin' in New York. (1992).
Back in town. (1996).
George Carlin: 40 years of comedy. (1997).
You are all diseased. (1999).
Complaints and grievances. (2001).
Life is worth losing. (2005).
It's bad for ya. (2008).
AUDIO BOOKS. Carlin has released four audio versions of three of his written books. The print book Napalm and silly putty was released in two abridged audio versions:
Brain droppings. (2000; print version 1997).
Napalm and silly putty. (2001; print version 2001).
More napalm and silly putty. (2002; print version 2001).
When will Jesus bring the pork chops?. (2004; print version 2004).
57 Appendix A: Excerpts (DVD content)
The following is a list of excerpts containing metalinguistic discourse. The
DVD contains playlists of the .xspf format which have been created (and are thus utilised by) the Video Lan Client (VLC) media player. VLC media player is freely available at http://www.videolan.org/vlc/. The folder “playlists\cited examples” contains the examples cited in chapter 4.
The file names consist of three parts separated by underscores: the first is simply the number of the video. The second part identifies the source (year when an HBO special was aired or an audio book published). The third part marks the time in the full video or audio.
Source File name Metalinguistic topics On location: George Carlin at USC (1977) 001__1977__0.51.35 proper nouns; lexical meaning (conceptual); morphology 002__1977__0.54.15 lexical meaning (conceptual); morphology (derivatives; compounds) 003__1977__0.57.58 morphology (derivation); lexical meaning (social)
George Carlin: again! (1978) 004__1978__0.19.20 deictic expressions (temporal); lexical meaning (conceptual, connotative, affective) 005__1978__0.41.04 lexical meaning (social) 006__1978__0.53.15 taboo language 007__1978__0.56.13 taboo language; lexical relations (polysemy); lexical meaning (conceptual) 008__1978__0.58.50 taboo language; lexical relations (polysemy); Cratylistic theories; morphology (compounds); lexical meaning (conceptual) 009__1978__1.05.31 taboo language; lexical relations (polysemy; synonymy) 010__1978__1.08.58 taboo language; Cratylistic theories (onomatopoeia) 011__1978__1.10.12 taboo language; lexical relations (polysemy); Cratylistic theories 012__1978__1.12.14 taboo language; lexical meaning (connotative; affective; collocative)
58 Source File name Metalinguistic topics
Carlin at Carnegie (1982) 013__1982__0.15.10 Cratylistic theories (including onomatopoeia); morphology 014__1982__0.21.15 lexical meaning (conceptual); deictic expressions (spatial) 015__1982__0.45.42 lexical meaning (reflected, conceptual)
Carlin on campus (1984) 016__1984__0.03.23 phonology/sociolinguistics (accents) 017__1984__0.07.42 morphology 018__1984__0.22.38 lexical meaning (conceptual) 019__1984__0.50.35 lexical meaning (conceptual) 020__1984__0.51.44 lexical meaning (connotative; collocative; social)
Playin' with your head (1986) 021__1986__0.07.10 function of language (channel); speech acts; lexical meaning (social); lexical relations (polysemy); sociolinguistics (gender) 022__1986__0.44.10 lexical meaning (conceptual) 023__1986__0.47.20 lexical meaning (connotative; reflected); morphology (compounds)
What am i doing in New Jersey? (1988) 024__1988__0.19.33 lexical meaning (conceptual); lexical relations (polysemy) 025__1988__0.21.01 sociolinguistics (codes)
Doin' it again (1990) 026__1990__0.03.30 taboo language; meaning (social, connotative); lexical relations (synonymy) 027__1990__0.13.37 lexical meaning (conceptual) 028__1990__0.27.55 taboo language; sociolinguistics 029__1990__0.46.25 taboo language; sociolinguistics; pragmatics; 030__1990__0.48.38 taboo language; euphemisms; lexical relations (synonymy)
Jammin' in New York (1992) 031__1992__0.06.40 lexical meaning (conceptual; reflected; social); proper nouns 032__1992__0.16.45 lexical meaning (connotative, social, reflected); morphology (derivatives); lexical relations (synonymy) 033__1992__0.25.21 lexical meaning (connotative, social) 034__1992__0.26.55 lexical meaning (connotative, social) 035__1992__0.28.00 lexical meaning (conceptual, social, reflected)
59 Source File name Metalinguistic topics
Back in town (1996) 036__1996__0.33.04 lexical meaning (conceptual, social, connotative)
George Carlin: 40 years of comedy (1997) 037__1997__0.17.20 lexical meaning (social); sociolinguistics (advertising code) 038__1997__0.27.12 lexical meaning (conceptual, social, connotative, reflected); morphology (compounds, derivatives); sociolinguistics (advertising code) 039__1997__0.41.49 lexical meaning (conceptual); lexical relations (synonymy)
You are all diseased (1999) 040__1999__0.21.12 lexical meaning (social); sociolinguistics (variety) 041__1999__0.39.46 lexical meaning (conceptual); morphology (coining); proper nouns
Complaints and grievances (2001) 042__2001__0.28.19 lexical meaning (conceptual); morphology (derivatives) 043__2001__0.42.49 Cratylistic theories; proper nouns 044__2001__0.45.02 Cratylistic theories; proper nouns
Life is worth losing (2005) 045__2005__0.07.10 lexical meaning (connotative, affective, social)
It's bad for ya (2008) 046__2008__0.02.43 lexical meaning (conceptual) 047__2008__0.08.54 sociolinguistics (politeness); euphemisms 048__2008__0.52.35 speech acts; meaning (conceptual, social) 049__2008__0.58.39 speech acts 050__2008__1.05.28 lexical meaning (conceptual)
Brain droppings (2000) 051__2000__0.09.07 meaning (conceptual, connotative) 052__2000__0.10.46 meaning (conceptual); morphology (compounds) 053__2000__0.21.06 lexical meaning (conceptual, connotative); proper nouns; orthography; sociolinguistics; Cratylistic theories 054__2000__0.25.37 proper nouns; lexical meaning (connotative) 055__2000__1.02.29 lexical meaning (conceptual); lexical relations (polysemy/homophony); morphology (compounds) 056__2000__1.06.16 lexical meaning (conceptual) 057__2000__1.11.35 lexical meaning (social)
60 Source File name Metalinguistic topics 058__2000__1.28.35 sociolinguistics (code); lexical meaning (conceptual, social); grammar; lexical relations (synonymy) 059__2000__1.35.59 lexical meaning (conceptual, connotative); grammar 060__2000__1.43.48 lexical meaning (conceptual); morphology (derivatives) 061__2000__1.51.03 lexical meaning (conceptual, connotative) 062__2000__1.55.51 lexical meaning (conceptual) 063__2000__2.08.11 lexical meaning (connotative, social) 064__2000__2.25.55 lexical meaning (social, reflected); sociolinguistic (code)
Napalm and silly putty (2001) 065__2001__0.50.56 other 066__2001__1.51.48 meaning (conceptual)
More napalm and silly putty (2002) 067__2002__0.53.59 meaning (conceptual) 068__2002__1.35.52 other 069__2002__1.35.59 sociolinguistic (code) 070__2002__1.54.27 meaning (conceptual); morphology (compounds) 071__2002__2.20.27 meaning (conceptual); morphology (compounds)
When will Jesus bring the pork chops? (2004) 072__2004__0.05.51 euphemisms 073__2004__0.57.36 euphemisms 074__2004__1.00.26 lexeme usage 075__2004__1.11.49 sociolinguistics (varieties); phonology 076__2004__1.20.45 lexical meaning (collocative) 077__2004__1.21.32 lexical meaning (conceptual) 078__2004__1.29.42 etymology 079__2004__1.34.12 euphemisms; sociolinguistics (codes) 080__2004__1.46.14 euphemisms; sociolinguistics (codes) 081__2004__1.54.28 deictic expressions (spatial); lexical meaning (conceptual) 082__2004__2.01.08 sociolinguistics (codes) 083__2004__2.10.08 sociolinguistics (codes) 084__2004__2.23.57 euphemisms; sociolinguistics (codes) 085__2004__2.45.13 euphemisms; sociolinguistics (codes); speech acts 086__2004__2.49.49 sociolinguistics (codes) 087__2004__3.16.17 euphemisms; sociolinguistics (codes) 088__2004__3.20.41 sociolinguistics (codes) 089__2004__4.08.32 sociolinguistics (codes); lexical meaning (social, connotative)
61 Source File name Metalinguistic topics 090__2004__4.15.36 sociolinguistics (codes); lexical meaning (social, connotative) 091__2004__4.23.22 sociolinguistics (politeness); lexical meaning (social); speech acts 092__2004__4.38.45 lexical meaning (conceptual) 093__2004__4.48.44 lexical meaning (conceptual); sociolinguistics (codes) 094__2004__4.51.48 sociolinguistics (codes, politeness) 095__2004__5.30.23 euphemisms 096__2004__5.50.18 lexical meaning (conceptual) 097__2004__6.23.55 euphemisms; lexical meaning (conceptual, connotative) 098__2004__6.48.33 morphology (inflection) 099__2004__6.49.19 morphology (compounds); lexical meaning (conceptual) 100__2004__6.56.57 euphemisms 101__2004__7.19.55 sociolinguistics (codes); lexical relations (synonymy) 102__2004__7.26.31 euphemisms
62 Summary
George Carlin is one of the most influential stand-up comedians of the
1960s and the 1970s. Together with Richard Pryor and Lenny Bruce, he can be seen as one of the founders of the particular type of stand-up comedy which is popular today. One area of topics in his performances is concerned with language, sometimes with particular words, other times with different codes and why people use them. This thesis is concerned with examining this kind of metalinguistic discourse.
The thesis provides an introduction to humour research to serve as the theoretical background, while the analysis itself rests on the use of cognitive theories of humour where applicable. These theories see humorousness as springing from a (resolved) incongruity between two ideas contained within a joke or discourse. The analysis itself at times requires the consideration of speaker's intent and of listeners' possible interpretations of what the speaker has said, thus it is pragmatic in nature. The examples show that Carlin covered a fairly broad range of linguistic topics in his work, including semantic, morphological, pragmatical and sociolinguistic observations. In fact, a significant amount of these metalinguistic routines contained allusions to multiple different linguistic phenomena at the same time. Finally, the analysis shows that a considerable portion of the routines is hard to explain using the cognitive theories of humour, indicating that social or psychoanalytical theories would perhaps serve better in at least some cases.
63 Souhrn
Geoge Carlin je jeden z nejvýznamnějších stand-up komiků šedesátých a sedmdesátých let. Společně s komiky Richardem Pryorem a Lenny Brucem ho lze považovat za zakladatele stylu stand-up komedie oblíbeného dodnes.
Jedna z oblastí jeho představení se soustředí na jazyk, někdy na konkrétní slova, jindy na různé kódy a na důvody, proč je lidé užívají. Tato práce zkoumá tento druh metalingvistického diskurzu.
Jakožto teoretické pozadí obsahuje práce úvod do výzkumu humoru.
Samotná analýza využívá poznatků kognitivních teorií humoru. Dle těchto teorií spočívá humor v nesouladu, resp. v rozřešeném nesouladu dvou myšlenek obsažených ve vtipu či humorném diskurzu. Samotná analýza pak vyžaduje vzít v potaz úmysl mluvčího a naopak také to, jak jeho slova interpretují posluchači.
Jedná se tedy o pragmatickou analýzu. Příklady z Carlinových vystoupení a audio knih ukazují, že ve svém díle pokryl poměrně široké spektrum lingvistických témat. Zkoumaný diskurz obsahuje postřehy týkající se sémantiky, morfologie, pragmatiky a sociolingvistiky. Značná část těchto metalingvistických rutin se odkazuje na více než jeden lingvistický fenomén současně. Důležitý poznatek této práce je také, že významnou část těchto metalingvistických úryvků nelze řádně analyzovat z pohledu výše zmíněných kognitivních teorií. Přinejmenším v některých příkladech se ukazuje, že sociální nebo psychoanalytické teorie by k analýze posloužili lépe.
64