Multiple Perspectives on Language Play

Nancy Bell

• Publisher: De Gruyter Mouton
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9781501503962
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Teaching Language Arts
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Interest in language play and linguistic creativity has increased in recent years, and the topic has been taken up from a variety of perspectives. In this book, disparate approaches to the topic are brought together, demonstrating that a number of phenomena whose similarities might not have been immediately recognized, have an academic home under the umbrella of language play and linguistic creativity. The contributions to this collection illustrate the variety of questions that can be asked regarding the social, cognitive, emotional, political, and cultural mechanisms and significance of innovative linguistic practices and point to new directions of inquiry. Furthermore, the work exemplifies a variety of ways in which this research can be carried out, as well as the range of contexts in which it might be investigated, including second language classrooms, online settings, and workplaces. Taken together, the chapters serve to illustrate the range of work that we will be accepting in the Language Play and Creativity series; viewed individually, each makes a unique contribution to some aspect of our understanding of creative language use.

Neal R. Norrick

1Language play in conversation

Abstract: Language play has been understood in two contrastive ways, giving rise to two separate, but partly complementary research traditions: first, play with language as its object, and second, play with language as its medium. Language is clearly the object of play in games like crosswords, anagrams and punning, where metalingual focus (Jakobson 1960) on the forms of language replaces the coherence of ordinary discourse. This sort of play with language may become serious business, for instance in the creation of concrete poetry and advertising slogans (see Crystal 1998). But language may also be the medium of play in teasing a friend or exchanging embarrassing personal anecdotes, where a play frame (Bateson 1953, Fry 1963) or a non-serious key (Hymes 1972) holds sway. Properly framed, even pointedly negative remarks can come across as playful sarcasm rather than serious aggression (see Boxer and Cortés-Conde 1997). But within the playful interaction, language may retain its literal meaning, as when friends flirtatiously pay each other compliments. The two types fall together when conversationalists non-seriously frame their interaction as play and also transform the means and routines of everyday talk, as when the flirtatious compliments become obviously exaggerated, allusive or punning (see Straehle 1993): Hence the complementary overlap between the two research paradigms on language play. My chapter will illustrate both sorts of language play and their convergence with examples from everyday conversation, and present ways of analyzing such interactions, particularly with regard to their significance for the organization of conversation, for our understanding of the forms of everyday talk, and for interpersonal relationships, especially concerning the interplay of humor and aggression.

1Introduction

Language play has been understood in two contrastive ways: first, language games with language as their object, and second, play with language as its medium. Language is clearly the object of play in games like crosswords, Scrabble and punning, where metalingual focus (Jakobson 1960) on the forms of language replaces the coherence of ordinary discourse. These language games may become serious business, for instance in the creation of concrete poetry and advertising slogans (see Crystal 1998). But language may also be the medium of play in teasing a friend or exchanging embarrassing personal anecdotes, where a play frame (Bateson 1953, Fry 1963) or a non-serious key (Hymes 1972) holds sway. Tannen speaks of talk framed by the meta-message ‘this is play’, parallel to the joking manner employed to ameliorate face threatening acts (Goffman 1955; cf. framing in Goffman 1974). Properly framed, even pointedly negative remarks can come across as playful sarcasm rather than serious aggression (see Boxer and Cortés-Conde 1997). But within the playful interaction, language may retain its literal meaning, as when friends flirtatiously pay each other compliments. Language play may include language games as such when conversationalists nonseriously frame their interaction as play and also transform the means and routines of everyday talk, as when the flirtatious compliments become obviously exaggerated, allusive or punning (see Straehle 1993).

Both language games and the use of language within a play frame are recurrent features of everyday interaction, and complete description of conversation should take both into account. Inasmuch as conversation is the natural home of punning and allusion, we understand these forms of humor only if we can explain their integration into everyday talk and their functioning in it. Consequently, an understanding of language games and language play in everyday conversation is a prerequisite for a complete account of verbal humor. This essay will begin with a survey of language games, then move into a consideration of language in a play frame with examples from genuine conversation to illustrate how the two coalesce and reinforce one another.

Language games and humor in everyday talk are based in interaction, demanding participation by the listener/recipient. They often involve gestures, playacting, and imitations of voices and dialects. Conversational language play often works from patterns of spoken interaction, taking the form of proverbial phrases, clichés, one-liners, allusions, stock responses and puns for recurrent situations which we pick up from and weave back into conversation; instead of initiating a conversation with a simple and humorless hello, we may choose from a repository of standard formulas such as we can’t go on meeting like this under appropriate circumstances. Again in taking leave, we may pass over the uncolored goodbye in favor of jocular stock phrases like see you in the funny papers. Besides these formulas for greetings and closings, conversationalists store and recycle humorous phrases tailored to bridge an uncomfortable pause or to wrap up an old topic and to segue into a new one like cat got your tongue? We have special formulas for effecting the transition from a joke or period of non-serious talk into a new topic, namely but seriously, folks and but all kidding aside.

Discourse and conversation analysis as well as linguistic pragmatics have contributed much to our understanding of how conversationalists fit jokes and puns into their ongoing talk, and how recipients react to them. Sacks (1973) discusses fortuitous puns in conversation. Sherzer (1978, 1985) extends Sacks in his investigation of both intentional, unnoticed and unintentional, purposeful puns. Norrick (1993) provided the first full-length study of conversational joking, including punning, teasing and narrative forms. Schegloff (1987) discussed a pervasive ‘joke-first practice’ in conversation, while Straehle (1993) explored teasing in conversation (cf. Boxer and Cortés-Conde 1997), Carter (2000) approached overstatement, punning and so on in conversation in terms of their creativity, Lytra (2009) has described teasing in the classroom, and Tsakona (2013) provides a look at word play in parliamentary speech. By contrast, research on language games proper has usually been based on written data, with few exceptions such as Opie and Opie (1959), the classic folkloristic study of children’s language games, and Cook’s (2000) treatment of children’s language games as competition and collaboration. Norrick (1984) explored formulaic conversational humor pragmatically, and there is significant work on language games from literary sources (e.g. Redfern 1984), specifically riddles (Dienhart 1999), puns in the press (e.g. Bucaria 2004) and on the internet (e.g. Seewoester 2011), while the study of actual practices of language games in natural conversation is largely anecdotal, but see Norrick (1988) on binomials and McCarthy and Carter (2004) and Norrick (2009) on hyperbole.

This chapter will illustrate both language games proper and creative language play and their convergence with examples from everyday conversation, and present ways of analyzing such interactions, particularly with regard to their significance for the organization of conversation, for our understanding of the forms of everyday talk, and for interpersonal relationships, especially concerning the interplay of humor and aggression. Section two just below begins with general ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• 1 Language play in conversation
• 2 Playing with turns, playing with action? A social-interactionist perspective
• 3 The shape of tweets to come: Automating language play in social networks
• 4 “This system’s so slow”: Negotiating sequences of laughter and laughables in call-centre interaction
• 5 Laughter as a “serious business”: Clients’ laughter in prenatal screening for Down’s syndrome
• 6 Jocular language play, social action and (dis)affiliation in conversational interaction
• 7 “Everything he says to me it’s like he stabs me in the face”: Frontstage and backstage reactions to teasing
• 8 Cities, conviviality and double-edged language play
• 9 Building rapport and a sense of communal identity through play in a second language classroom
• 10 The first English (EFL) lesson: Initial settings or the emergence of a playful classroom culture
• 11 The emergence of creativity in L2 English: A usage-based case-study
• 12 Teaching language learners how to understand sarcasm in L2 English
• 13 Anti-language: Linguistic innovation, identity construction, and group affiliation among emerging speech communities
• 14 Celebrations of a satirical song: Ideologies of anti-racism in the media
• Index