Pragmatics L4.2009. Irony Parody

8/12/2019 Pragmatics L4.2009. Irony Parody

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Isabela Ietcu-Fairclough Pragmatics 4: Irony and Parody

From Katie WalesA Dictionary of Stylistics(1989)

Ironyis found when the words actually used appear to mean quite the opposite of the sense actually

required in the context and presumably intended by the speaker:Arent you clever!or What lovelyweather! (when it is raining), etc. Irony is not only erbal, as phrases like the irony of the situationor

tragic ironysuggest. ere, the discrepancy or incongruity is between what appears, or is belieed to

be the case, and what actually is the case. Irony in this sense is often used in plots, e.g. the noels of

ardy and "ames, #hakespeare$s plays (King Lear, Macbeth, etc.). It is quite common for the reader%

iewer to perceie the irony of the situation before the characters do: this is known as dramatic

irony. &ut the double perspectie (of the reader and the characters) applies equally to fiction, e.g.

those noels where an unreliable narratoris used (irony in such cases is at the expense of the

narrator, rather than the characters).

'xample: the unreliable narrator (#teens) in auo Ishiguro$s noel The Remains of the ay

Parodyis a kind of imitation which borrows thestyleand techni"uesof a text or writer$s idiolectand

fits new sub*ect matters to it, often for humorous or satirical purposes. +hat makes parody so

amusing is not simply recogniing what features are being parodied and why, but also appreciating

the parodist$s own creatie talents: fusing creatiity or wit with critique. n the one hand, parody

foregrounds, exposes or makes prominent certain stylistic features of the original text or idiolect. n

the other hand, in its own freedom of sub*ect matter, it promotes its own identity and e#$oses its

difference. -he imitation will not be exact, the new style that is generated will only partly resemble

that of the source. s &akhtin has said, parody is a double%voiced discourse, engaging in a dialogic

relationship, in a sort of collusion or complicity, with its parallel text.

Pastiche: a /pasting together$, a patchwork or medley of borrowed sources. 'xample: the soundtrack

of the filmMoulin Rouge.

From ouglas !obinson ("##$) Performative Pragmatics%

&on'ersational invocature: allusion arahrase anticiatory comletion double-'oicing

(irony arody)

0obinson (1223) argues that it is possible to send implied messages (i.e. implicatures) not *ust by

flouting (4ricean) maxims, but also by reframingold information in new ways through allusion,

paraphrase, the anticipatory completion of someone else$s sentence and /double5oicing$ (e.g.

parody). e calls these implied messages /invocatures: no maxims are broken, but someone re$eatsan expression or an idea that is familiar to eeryone else present, but re$eats it with a twist

(0obinson 1223: 162). -here are many kinds of &conversational' invocature:

(a)*llusion, i.e. inoking some phrase that eeryone knows in some new, slightly altered wording, in

order to gie it a new meaning in the new conersation. -he new meaning is implicit, not spelled out,

therefore it is a form of conersational implicature. &ut it doesn$t work through the flouting of

maxims, but through the transformed use of old, shared knowledge. -he comparison between the old

usage and the new is the key to the listener$s understanding what the speaker means. f course,

listeners%readers may not recognie the allusion, and the allusion is missed.

'xample (from scar +ilde, The (m$ortance of )eing *arnest' lgernon adises "ack of thebenefits of haing an imaginary friend like &unbury as an excuse in any situation:


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"ack: -hat is nonsense. If I marry a charming girl like 4wendolen, and she is the only girl I eer saw

in my life that I would marry, I certainly won$t want to know &unbury.

lgernon: -hen your wife will. 7ou don$t seem to realise that in married life three is company and

two is none.

lgernon is putting here a cleer spin on an old saying, i.e. he is alluding to the proerb /two is

company and three is a crowd$: when two people are in loe, they only want to be with each other,

and any third person is too much. e is cynically reising that proerb for marriage: after romance

has worn off, and the desire to talk with your spouse has more or less disappeared, you hae to hae

a third person, a loer, in order to feel that you hae any company at all. (0obinson 1223: 168)

(b)In arahrasewe reword a phrase that someone else *ust said in order to impose our own

(implicit) interpretation of it:

In the following example (adapted from 0obinson), two sisters, &ianca and atherine, and their

friend 4abrielle, are trying to sneak out to a birthday party undetected by the sisters$ strict father,+alter, but he catches them and asks where they are going:

&ianca: +ell, if you must know, it$s *ust a small study group of friends.

+alter: therwise known as an orgy9

4abrielle: r #tratford, it$s *ust a party!

+alter: nd hell is *ust a sauna!

rgy:party hell:sauna

-he re5wording (hell is *ust a sauna) repeats the same structure as 4abrielle$s /; is *ust an 7$

formula and implies that /*ust a party$ is an euphemism and that a stronger description (/orgy$) would

be more accurate.

(c)*nticiatory comletion

0oses are red%


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(d) ouble-'oicing

@onersational inocature can also be carried through the tone of oice. 7ou repeat some expression

that someone else has used or eeryone else knows as /meaning$ a certain thing, and you /re5oice$ it

or /re5tonalie$ it. 7ou don$t change the erbal construction of the expression, but you gie it a new(implicit) meaning by saying it differently:

'xamples: Irony: ow cleer of you! (said with an ironical tone of oice, it means exactly the

opposite of what is said)

Parody: the oice or tone you add is opposed or contrary to the original tone? or you are using the

original words to cast a contemptuous or ridiculing light on what was originally said. In certain

forms of parody, the new text (speaker) stages or dramaties a perceied connection or parallel

between the new and the old text, and accompanies it by an ealuation of the old text (e.g. the new

text may mock or ridicule the old text). #o there is a re5oicing in the sense of re%tellingof the same

basic story, or imitation of a certain style, but with a difference

'xample : In onty Cython$s /=ife of &rian$, the story that is being parodied is that of the life of

"esus @hrist. #o, there is a clear interte#tualitybetween the two stories. lso, we can say, that then

old story is reconte#tuali-ed in a new context, for a different purpose and audience, and that it is

$ers$ectivi-ed, in the sense that different attitudes or perspecties (different evaluativeattitudes) are

build into the elements of the new story as compared with the old.

From +erber and Wilson (198$)Relevanceand ,laemore (199") Understanding Utterances

+hat loely weather! (+hat dreadful weather!)

ow cleer of you! (ow stupid of you!)

e is a genius. (e is a fool.)

-he >#' % 'D-ID distinction:


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'xamples to discuss:

6. n a rainy day: Aid you remember to water the garden9

1. bout a mutual acquaintance who is thought to be well5read: "ohn is ery well5read. e has een

heard of #hakespeare.

+hat does the traditional theory of irony as saying the opposite of what is intended fail to accountfor9 -hink of all those cases when the proposition that is at stake is not the negatie counterpart of

the explicit utterance. lso, think of situations in which to say the opposite of what you mean would

be totally irrational (e.g. you are helping a drier *oin the main road and you say /-here$s nothing

coming$ when in fact you can see that a truck is coming).

From .eech (198/)Principles of Pragmatics

-he Irony Crinciple: /If you must cause offence, at least do so in a way which doesn$t oertly conflict

with the Coliteness Crinciple, but allows the hearer to arrie at the offensie point of your remark

indirectly, by way of implicature$ (=eech 6FG8: G1).

Irony typically takes the form of being too obiously polite for the occasion:: 4eoff has *ust borrowed your car.

&: +ell, I like --.

-he implicature deried from the Irony Crinciple works roughly as follows: /+hat & says is polite to

4eoff and is clearly not true. -herefore, what & really means is impolite to 4eoff and true.$

In being polite one is often faced with a clash between the @ooperatie Crinciple and the

Coliteness Crinciple, so that one has to choose how far to trade off one against the other. In being

ironic, one exploits the Coliteness Crinciple in order to uphold, at a remoter leel, the @ooperatie

Crinciple. person who is being ironic appears o be deceiing or misleading the hearer, but is in fact

indulging in an /honest$ form of apparent deception, at the expense of politeness.

-';-# H0 D=7#I# DA AI#@>##ID

1%Fry and .aurie% Pri'atisation o0 the Police +etch

=aurie comes into a police station. Hry is a policeman on duty behind a deskJ

=aurie: fficer!

Hry: 4ood morning, sir. +ould you like to take a seat9

=aurie (looks behind him): Is there a queue9

Hry: +ell, you may be more comfortable that way.

=aurie: I$m all right standing, thanks.Hry: y name$s lier, by the way. 'xtends handK 'xcited to know you.

=aurie: h, Ceter Hranks.

Hry: i, Ceter. Ceter, listen, would you like a coffee9 Hilter, espresso, cappuccino. +e offer decaf on

all those.

=aurie: +ell, that$s ery kind. Ao you hae a tea9

Hry: -ea, I don$t think so, Ceter. I$ll *ust check that for you. Aials numberJ ello, abel, my loe.

It$s lier here. =isten, my darling, do we carry a tea machine9... #orry, dearB 7es, I thought not.

any thanks, petB #orry, Ceter, no tea.

=aurie: h, it doesn$t matter. Aon$t worry.

Hry: #o, how may we help you9

=aurie: +ell, this isa police station, isn$t it9Hry: +ell, of course it is, Ceter. 7es.

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=aurie: 7es. /@ause I tried to ring you earlier but you must hae changed your number. ll I got was

music playing in my ear. -he thing is my car$s been stolen.

Hry: 7our car$s been stolen9

=aurie: 7es.

Hry (with sympathy and concern): h, Ceter, I am sorry to hear that. nd you$d like us to do

something about it9=aurie: +ell, yes, please.

Hry: kay, well, hae you had a look at our brochure, Ceter, if you$ll pardon the pun9

=aurie: +hat pun9

Hry: +asn$t there one9 h, I$m sorry. +ell, Ceter, if you$d like to come with me B he stands up: the

trousers of his uniform hae black and siler stripesJB we$ll go through it together. +ould you like

to take a seat9 Dow, Ceter, we offer basically three kinds of stolen car recoery serice. -hat$s the

/#uper$, the /=oely$ and the /4orgeous$. Dow, the /#uper$ is a basic non5priority listing of your car.

-he /=oely$ is a higher priority, and the /4orgeous$ is 6 top priority. +e put all our team onto it,

field and creatie. nd that also includes a full waxing and aleting of your car on recoery.

=aurie: I seeB

Hry: biously, Ceter, the /4orgeous$ is a more expensie serice.=aurie: I beg your pardon9

Hry: Ao you hae an account with us9

=aurie: ccount9 Do.

Hry: h, you$re a shareholder, perhaps.

=aurie: +ell, I$m a citien, if that$s what you mean.

Hry: @itien9 h, you mean client9

=aurie: =ook, I don$t want to sound stupid, but I get back to 'ngland, I find my car$s been stolenB

Hry: Ceter, you$e been away9 Aid you perhaps miss the priatisation of the police force9

=aurie: -he what9

Hry: -his is now a branch office of &rit =aw C=@. +ould you like to fill out a form9

=aurie: Hill outa form9 Hill outa form9 7ou mean fill ina form. as eeryone suddenly turned

merican9

Hry: Dow, Ceter, I shall need your address, I$ll need your place and date of birth, your car registration

number, and we should be able to hae an account erified within 6L days, sub*ect to status.

=aurie (angrily): -his is insane. I$m a taxpayer.

Hry (calmly): Ceter, eerybody had a chance to buy shares at the time of issue. It was all superised

by a reputable merchant bank. +ell, by a merchant bank, anyway.

=aurie: -his is madness. I$m leaing. akes for the doorJ

Hry: Do, Ceter, not that way. Dot that way, Ceter.

=aurie: +hat9

Hry: -hat$s the igh #treet.=aurie: 7es9

Hry: +ell, the igh #treet is owned by > ighroads C=@. +e$re employed by them to make sure

that only those with alid roadway passes use the street.

=aurie: &ut that$s the Mueen$s highway, for goodness sake. #urely I can use that.

Hry: -he Mueen$s highway9 h, you hae shares in the 0oyal Hamily C=@9 -hat would be quite

sufficient.

=aurie: #hares in the B9 Do, of course I haen$t.

Hry: +ell, Ceter, I$m afraid I must ask you to come with me to the restraining bar. Dow, if you$d like

to put your hands on the detention knobB

=aurie: I haen$t done anything.

Hry: Dot the gold member cuffs for youB I$m afraid we$ll hae to use the brone, aster Ceter.=aurie: Do, no, no, absolutely no. Do, I refuse. Do.

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Hry: Dow, Ceter, Ceter. looks at him threateninglyJ

=aurie: +hat9

Hry: punches him in the stomach and handcuffs himJ

=aurie: 7ou haen$t changed thatmuch, hae you.

"%Fry monologue2: I think it was Aonald ackintosh, the great amateur squash player, who

pointed out how loely I was. >ntil that time, I think it is safe to say that I$d neer really been aware

of my own timeless brand of loeliness. &ut his words smote me because, of course, you see, I am

loely in a fluffy moist kind of way, and who would hae it otherwise9 I walk, let$s be splendid about

this, in a lightly scented cloud of gorgeousness that isn$t far short of being, quite simply, terrific. -he

secret of smooth, almost shiny loeliness, of the order of which we$re discussing in this simple,

frank, creamy soft way doesn$t reside in oils, unguents, balms, ointments, creams, astringents, milks,

moisturiers, liniments, lubricants, embrocations or balsams, to be rather diine for *ust one noble

moment. It resides, and I mean this in a pink, slightly special way, in one$s attitude of mind. -o be

gorgeous and high and true and fine and fluffy and moist and sticky and loely, all you hae to do isto believethat one is gorgeous and high and true and fine and fluffy and moist and sticky and loely.

nd I beliee it myself, tremulously at first, and then with mounting heat and passion, because N

stopping off for a second to be super again N I$m so often told it. -hat$s the secret, really.

What ind o0 discourse do you thin is being arodied here3

/% Identi0y tyes o0 seech act and then discuss the tet in terms o0 indirect and 0igurati'e

seech acts (irony)

5han you President ,ush

Paulo &oelho

From the 6orld7s most oular no'elist Paulo &oelho an oen letter o0 raise 0or President

,ush%

11 - #/ - "##/

-hank you, great leader 4eorge +. &ush.

-hank you for showing eeryone what a danger #addam ussein represents. any of us might

otherwise hae forgotten that he used chemical weapons against his own people, against the urds

and against the Iranians. ussein is a bloodthirsty dictator and one of the clearest expressions of eil

in today$s world.

&ut this is not my only reason for thanking you. Auring the first two months of 1228, you hae

shown the world a great many other important things and, therefore, desere my gratitude.

#o, remembering a poem I learned as a child, I want to say thank you.

-hank you for showing eeryone that the -urkish people and their parliament are not for sale, not

een for 13 billion dollars.

-hank you for reealing to the world the gulf that exists between the decisions made by those in

power and the wishes of the people. -hank you for making it clear that neither "osO arPa nar nor

-ony &lair gie the slightest weight to or show the slightest respect for the otes they receied.

3
http://www.opendemocracy.net/author/Paulo_Coelho.jsphttp://www.opendemocracy.net/author/Paulo_Coelho.jsp


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nar is perfectly capable of ignoring the fact that F2Q of #paniards are against the war, and &lair is

unmoed by the largest public demonstration to take place in 'ngland in the last thirty years.

-hank you for making it necessary for -ony &lair to go to the &ritish parliament with a fabricated

dossier written by a student ten years ago, and present this as /damning eidence collected by the

&ritish #ecret #erice$.-hank you for allowing @olin Cowell to make a complete fool of himself by showing the >D

#ecurity @ouncil photos which, one week later, were publicly challenged by ans &lix, the chief

weapons inspector in Iraq.

-hank you for adopting your current position and thus ensuring that, at the plenary session, the

Hrench foreign minister, Aominique de D, following a

speech by Delson andela.

-hank you too, because, after all your efforts to promote war, the normally diided rab nations

were, for the first time, at their meeting in @airo during the last week in Hebruary, unanimous in their

condemnation of any inasion.

-hank you for your rhetoric stating that /the >D now has a chance to demonstrate its releance$, a

statement which made een the most reluctant countries take up a position opposing any attack on

Iraq.

-hank you for your foreign policy which prooked the &ritish foreign secretary, "ack #traw, into

declaring that in the 16st century, /a war can hae a moral *ustification$, thus causing him to lose all

credibility.

-hank you for trying to diide a 'urope that is currently struggling for unification? this was a

warning that will not go unheeded.

-hank you for haing achieed something that ery few hae so far managed to do in this century:

the bringing together of millions of people on all continents to fight for the same idea, een though

that idea is opposed to yours.

-hank you for making us feel once more that though our words may not be heard, they are at least

spoken N this will make us stronger in the future.

-hank you for ignoring us, for marginalising all those who oppose your decision, because the future

of the 'arth belongs to the excluded.

-hank you, because, without you, we would not hae realised our own ability to mobilise. It may

sere no purpose this time, but it will doubtless be useful later on.

Dow that there seems no way of silencing the drums of war, I would like to say, as an ancient

'uropean king said to an inader: /ay your morning be a beautiful one, may the sun shine on your

soldiers$ armour, for in the afternoon, I will defeat you.$

-hank you for allowing us N an army of anonymous people filling the streets in an attempt to stop a

process that is already underway N to know what it feels like to be powerless and to learn to grapple

with that feeling and transform it.

#o, en*oy your morning and whateer glory it may yet bring you.

-hank you for not listening to us and not taking us seriously, but know that we are listening to youand that we will not forget your words.

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-hank you, great leader 4eorge +. &ush.

-hank you ery much.

4%alcolm ,radburys My Strange Quest for Mensonge (198) is a hilarious parody of the

growth of structuralism, poststructuralism and deconstruction. ensonge, the presumed originator

of deconstruction, , about whom nothing really is known and nobody has eer seen, is an utterly

absent absence. is absence is howeer an ontological (or rather anti5ontological) necessity that

saes deconstruction 5 as a philosophy of absence or non5presence 5 from being inconsistent or

incoherent:

/-he fact is that Aeconstruction itself was based on an illogicality ensonge was determined to

refute. nd it is thus we can say that his non5presence is exactly what constitutes his authority, or

rather, precisely, his lack of it. -his is the position he has chosen to make clear, or as clear as he can

in the circumstances of his not being there. #o, as he was to declare in an unsigned essay we take to

be by him, or by some other anonymous person speaking in his name: /7ou must understand that theSfactT of my existence would negate what my text aste#t is saying. (B) /=et it be enough that you

hae the good fortune to hae a text to read. Ao not ask that there be an SIT who wrote it. Hor if there

were an SIT, it could not be an SitT, for it would reconstruct that metaphysics of presence SitT has

determined to destroy. -hus we would hae wasted a good deal of time I am sure both of us, or

neither, could hae spent in far better ways.

-o sum up, ensonge is not absent solely for himself, as a more selfish absentee might

choose to be. Indeed his non5presence is eidence of a profound philosophical heroism. +ould we

could say the same of his later disciples, who, in the same logicasl crisis, hae sought to eade the

problem by arious deices of what they laughingly call a ludic kind, and who hae persisted in

being present een when there is no logical ground for them to do so. Indeed, they are eerywhere,

hanging around campuses, publishing new books, turning up at parties 5 een though thefundamental principles of their own cognition should tell them that in the ery least they should

remain in the priacy of their own homes$. (1L51E)

/n the other hand, as &ob 4eldof was pointing out *ust the other day, what #tructuralism and

Aeconstruction actually mean e$istemologically could do with much further clarification. -his book

proides us with the opportunity for wider understanding. +e must remember, of course, that,

especially gien the way they are designing *eans these days, great thought does not easily fit into

pockets. Dor is it easy to describe by the usual means, language, the essential message of the whole

tendency, which is that we lie in a crisis of Domination 5 which is to say that not only can we no

longer effectiely name things but we cannot een be sure they were here in the first place$. (8)

/#o here, then, are the moements which are to us what @artesianism was to the seenteenth century,

and consciousness5raising and aerobic breathing to the 6FR2s. -hey declare the bankruptcy of our

entire philosophical condition. -hey reeal our fundamental loss of coherence and the disappearance

amongst us of any sense of truth or reality. -hey display our nullity, and our plenitude. -hey also

gie us a ery exciting new way of reading +ordsworth$s The relude +e should not under5

estimate, as in an off5moement we could so easily do, the magnitude of the message of this

philosophical reolution 5 and it is nothing less 5 is bringing us. It is telling us that we are indeed

coming to a terminus of thought, reaching the end of signification It is showing us that *ust as we

can no longer get a competently produced free5range egg or an honest dollar, so we cannot obtain a

$ro$er sign It is proing beyond doubt that we find ourseles in the age of the floating signifier,

when word no longer attaches properly to thing, and no highbonding glues can help us. It discloses to

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us a world of parody and pastiche, query and quotation? and haing shown us all this, it teaches us

how to en*oy it$. (E)

/&ut this +estern, @artesian philosophicalJ tradition depended on a stable concept of the self, and a

reasonably firm notion of a reality out there, dense enough for us to be able at least to drie a nail

into it, and hang up a picture when required. It is nothing less than this entire philosophical traditionthat #tructuralism and Aeconstruction are helping to bring to an end, opening up new but confusing

opportunities. In this, it has been the culmination of a process. arl ark demystified capitalist

ideology, and showed how history worked, if we followed the instructions properly. #igmund Hreud

undermined the rational ego, and showed us how the >nconscious functioned, which was in ways

that surprised some people but quite excited others. lbert 'instein undermined traditional science,

showing that the world was a non5'uclidian four5dimensional space5time continuum, probably one

held together by its railways. Dow #tructuralism and Aeconstruction hae come along to complete

the process, demythologiing, demystifying and deconstructing our entire basis of thought, and

suggesting other ways to use it. -hey hae required us to redefine all our alues and transform all our

epistemologies, or at the ery least to take a two5week holiday in the sun with someone we loe ery

much and work out all future priorities ery carefully. -hey hae dismantled our preconceiedframework of consciousness and perception, remoed all our ideas of the transcendent and the

eerlasting, and dismantled the concept of the /sub*ect$, or, as it used to be known, in the old days,

the person, so making table5setting for a dinner party ery difficult indeed. -hey hae done so by

challenging our sense of essence and reality at its ery root, in language,proing to us that it is not

working 5 or certainly not in the way it was meant to when people in caes started grunting at each

other and thought this would establish quite clearly *ust who would go out and do the shopping.

In brief, #tructuralism and Aeconstruction are and remain important because they hae quite

simply disestablished the entire basis of human discourse (35R)

/Dot for a long time in our human history 5 perhaps not since the 4reeks first looked up from their

ouo and started to speculate about the meaning of the unierse around them 5 has so remarkable

reolution in human thought occurred as the one I hae been describing? and many people are asking

*ust why it should happen now, and to us, though quite a few I meet are for some reason not. (B)

Hor the #witerland of +orld +ar I was the great haen of our modern intellectual reolution.

In frosty Uurich, up the road, "ames "oyce was writing 0lysses, -ristan -ara inenting Aada, and

=enin planning the 0ussian 0eolution, all watched by the then ery young -om #toppard. &ut in

4enea, the book that stopped the trams and caused an intellectual furore was a work of linguistics,

Herdinand de #aussure$s 1ours de linguisti"ue generale, which he published posthumously, since the

author himself had died three years before without actually writing it. -he book was the record of a

course of lectures #aussure had gien to his impressed and often baffled students at the >niersity of

4enea between 6F2R and 6F66, and which were to upturn all ideas of the nature of language.#aussure argued that eery sign had two parts, a langue and a$arole, which could be separated, so

allowing us to understand how language works or, in practice, does not. In the eent, the great proof

of #aussure$s argument came with the publication of his book. #aussure himself haing died before

he wrote it down, its text was retrieed from the arious notes and doodles of his students 5 some of

them a little inconsistent, probably due to people horsing around on the back row. nyone who has

actually seen a student taking notes in a lecture will know how hard it is to connect what is actually

said with what is being written down, and none of us can be sure that the 1ours actually comes near

to recording what #aussure meant 5 indeed we cannot know whether he would actually hae

acknowledged a single langue or$arole of it, or be able to explain where the drawing of the rabbit

actually fits. In fact we may regard the book #aussure /wrote$ 5 which of course he actually did not 5

as the strongest piece of eidence we hae of the argument the book itself makes, about theseparation of the signifier from the signified.

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Hor what #aussure proed 5 or so his students seemed to think 5 was that words were

arbitrary, and hence that in effect eerything had been gien the wrong name, so that horses were

really fish and fish onions. ll signs were actually random, though they had the capacity to make

sense, except possibly at eathrow airport. gap exists between the words we speak, and what

language, behaing like language, actually gets up to when we are not keeping a proper eye on it.

ence there is langue, which is more or less what allows us to talk, and there is also $arole whichexplains why nobody bothers to listen. -o illustrate this, #aussure used as his famous example the

G.1E 4enea5to5Caris 'xpress, which, as he pointed out, retained the same name and was considered

to be the same train eery day, een though its coaches, combination, crew and passengers were

different eery morning, most of the coaches did not go to Caris, and it usually left at 62.82. #o

famous did this example become after #aussure$s book came out in 6F63 that people went down

eery day to the station to check it, only to discoer that the train had been cancelled because of the

war. nd this of course only further proed, or possibly disproed, #aussure$s point 5 that there was

indeed a gap between langue and$arole, and possibly a bigger one than een he had noticed.

Indeed gaps were ery important in the new #aussurian linguistics, as they hae been eer

since. Hor #aussure established that the gap between langue and$arolewas actually based on an

een larger gap, between what he called thesignifier, or thesignifiant, and thesignified, orsignifie.$(G562)

/-he key principles of #tructuralism 5 that thought and culture are not transcendental entities but can

only be understood as structures of power and domination, so requiring that philosophy dispose of its

old interests to some innocent buyer and become a science of signs, and that you cannot trust the

trains 5 were being accepted eerywhere, except possibly in Iran and certain parts of -ennessee. (B)

+hat #aussure had started one day in his study in 4enea was now a worldwide force.

'erywhere it was clear that the old ways of thinking, based on the mind 5 body dichotomy and the

stable foundation of language, would no longer do. -he day of the @artesian cogito was oer, or

certainly getting towards its dusk. It was plain that far from thought being written in language,

language was writing thought, and not doing it well.$ (6L)

/-he undermining of the illusion of presence indeed goes back to the early days of the tendency, and

was famously deeloped by 0oland &arthes in his great essay of 6F3G on the Aeath of the uthor,

/=a ort de l$auteur$B(B) Hor what &arthes asserted was indeed that they booksJ were not

written by anyone at all, or certainly not by their authors? for writers do not write but get written, and

bysomeone outside themselves f course we know this from experience? often it is a wife, an old

aunt, the bank5manager, one$s literary agent, or some new girl at the publishers who, unable to make

head or tale of the stuff, sits down and rewrites it all completely for clarity. &arthes, howeer, argues

more daringly that the responsible party is not another person at all, not being in faour of the

concept. +hat writes books is in fact nothing other than history, culture, or to be more preciselanguage itself Indeed, so effectie is language that it has frequently arried early in the morning,

sat down at the typewriter, and as good as completed half a day$s work before the aerage so5called

author has een showered, dressed, and got through his breakfast croissant (16511)

E.0ead the following passage from a'id .odges ;


11/11

science, religion, poetry, etc. nd by the same token, there is no such thing as an author, that is to

say, one who originates a work of fiction ab nihilo'ery text is a product of intertextuality, a tissue

of allusions to and citations of other texts? and, in the famous words of "acques Aerrida (famous to

people like 0obyn, anyway), /il ny a $as de hors%te#te, there is nothing outside the text. -here are

no origins, there is only production, and we produce our /seles$ in language. Dot /you are what you

eat,but /you are what you s$ea/ or, rather /you are what s$ea/s you, is the axiomatic basis of0obyn$s philosophy, which she would call, if required to gie it a name, /semiotic materialism$. It

might seem a bit bleak, a bit inhuman (/antihumanist, yes? inhuman, no$, she would inter*ect),

somewhat deterministic (/not at all? the truly determined sub*ect is he who is not aware of the

discursie formations that determine him...).$

=+5 W*5&>:

1% onty Python and the >oly ?rail (19@)

"% onty Pytons .i0e o0 ,rian (198/)

5he onty Pythons: Aohn &leese (also starring in ;Fa6lty 5o6ers as ,asil Fa6lty) ichaelPalin Bric Idle 5erry Aones ?raham &haman 5erry ?illiam (grahics and director o0 ;5he

Fisher King ;,raCil etc%)

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Pragmatics L4.2009. Irony Parody