Talk Is Cheap: Sarcasm, Alienation, and the Evolution of Language

231 Pages·1998·13.59 MB·English

by  John Haiman

Talk Is Cheap
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Talk Is Cheap
Sarcasm, Alienation,
and the Evolution of Language
JOHN HAIMAN
Oxford University Press
Oxford New York
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Copyright © 1998 by John Haiman
Published by Oxford University Press, Inc.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Haiman, John.
Talk is cheap : sarcasm, alienation, and the evolution of language
/ John Haiman.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-19-511524-4; ISBN 0-19-511525-2 (pbk.)
1. Language and languages—Philosophy. 2. Semantics.
3. Pragmatics. 4. Irony. I. Title.
P106.H2885 1997
401—dc21 96-40140
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
For Claire and Nina
with sweet memories, fond hopes,
and lots of love
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Acknowledgments
I would like to thank the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation for having "vali-
dated" the unconventional project of a study of sarcasm with a fellowship in
1989; and Joan Bybee, director of the Linguistic Society of America Linguis-
tic Institute in Albuquerque, for having invited me to present the ideas which
arose in the course of pursuing this project in the summer of 1995. My thanks
to Joan, the late Dwight Bolinger (philosopher, linguist, poet), Penelope Brown,
Arthur Danto, Ellis Dye, Michele Emanatian, Suzanne Fleischman, Ivan
Fonagy, Paul Friedrich, Talmy Givon, Bernd Heine, Dell Hymes, Ronald
Langacker, Rachel May, Jeff Nash, Alan Rumsey, Frederick Schauer, Satoko
Suzuki, Sandra A. Thompson, Anna Wierzbicka, and H. C. Wolfart for having
done me the honor of reading and responding to earlier versions of portions of
this work. I owe particular gratitude to Noam Chomsky for the ultimate pro-
fessional courtesy of responding to portions of this manuscript which are criti-
cal of his theories, thereby engaging with ideas he vehemently disagrees with
and could very easily ignore. I wish to acknowledge as well a number of lively
and stimulating discussions with students and colleagues at the institute. For
beautiful data on sarcasm in Mandarin, my thanks to Xiao Hong and Cheng
Luo, formerly of the University of Manitoba, for as yet unpublished work; for
data on sarcasm in German and Japanese, thanks to Anders Jonsson and
Takanori Adachi, for two wonderful honors theses at Macalester College; for
data on the ritualization of stress in English, thanks to LeAnn Sipple for a beau-
tifully thought out and elegant independent project, also at Macalester.
viii Acknowledgments
Finally, I would like to personally acknowledge the influence of three deep
thinkers who are already cited massively in the references but who merit more
recognition here for the impact they have had on me. Ivan Fonagy has for de-
cades been investigating the relationship between culture and personality in
human language. His profound and suggestive studies on the phonetics of irony
and cliche, on creative repetition, and on the iconicity of style represent only
the most visible portion of a lifetime devoted to the study of the very subject
matter of this book. Jorge Luis Borges is for my money the greatest philoso-
pher of language—I suppose I should say "since Plato"—but since this is a
personal and idiosyncratic tribute, I will say simply: Borges is the greatest
philosopher of language that I know. Dave Barry is as brilliant and perceptive
a social critic and philosopher as any of the American "public intellectuals"
whose demise Russell Jacoby so eloquently and myopically mourns in his re-
cent book The Last Intellectuals: he belongs (for me) in the company of Dwight
MacDonald, Philip Rahv, Erving Goffman, and Susan Sontag—and my great
countryman, Frigyes Karinthy.
St. Paul, Minnesota J. H.
November 1996
Contents
Introduction: The Cheapness of Talk 3
1 Sarcasm and the Postmodern Sensibility 12
2 Sarcasm and Its Neighbors 18
3 The Metamessage "I Don't Mean This" 28
4 Alienation and the Divided Self 61
5 Reflexives as Grammatical Signs of the Divided Self 67
6 Un-Plain Speaking 80
7 The Thing in Itself 100
8 Zen Semantics 128
9 Nonlinguistic Ritualization 138
10 Ritualization in Language 147
11 Metalinguistic Ritualization 173
12 Reification and Innateness 186
Postscript 190
Appendix: Questionnaire for Eliciting Sarcasm 193
References 195
Index 213