[lit-ideas] Re: Insults Which Are Humourous (Maybe)
- From: Mike Geary <jejunejesuit.geary2@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 8 May 2010 16:21:28 -0500
When I lived in Seattle, (for only 5 years, JL) a fellow worker, a native of
Seattle, kept asking me about what it's like to live in Louisiana. I'd
correct him: "I've told you hundred times, I'm from Memphis. That's in
Tennessee -- that's a totally different state." "Yeah, I know, but it's in
the South, isn't it?" I've found that's not such an unusual reaction by
people who live outside the South.
I am not a defender of the South. The whole region is an embarrassment to
me. The very people who should be molotov-cocktail-carrying Communists are
Reagan Republicans -- voting against their own economic self-interest in
the name of something I've never been able to pin down -- I suspect it's
probably partially a result of being the national butt of jokes, Southerners
(whites especially) hanker after respectability and so self-identify with
the aspirations of rich white men, i.e., Republicans, the epitome of
Respectability. In addition, Southern whites, though they know themselves
to be ridiculed, nonetheless, see themselves as -- at the very least --
being above black people and Mexicans and Asians and do not want to loose
that ego-protective status in their minds. They see the Republican Party as
the party that will continue their social superiority.
Here's a Southern joke that I find funny: Say a man and a woman from
Mississippi get married in Mississippi, but then get divorced in Las Vegas
-- would they still be cousins?
I can't quote from Austin, Grice, Dennet, Davidson, Quine, Chomsky, Searle,
Geach, Putnam, Katz, Strawson, Harman, Fodor, Fillmore, Ziff or Donnellan,
but I know what I mean when I say: "I'm guessing that..." It means "I'm not
positive, but it appears to me that..." at the same time I'm admitting I'm
aware that the I might be wrong.
Interpretation of intention is often just guesswork. But sometimes intent is
blatant. Nevertheless there are tricks of the trade. One African-American
can call another "nigger" in an endearing way. Just try that outside being
an African-American. The denigrated can co-opt the language of the
denigrators and inoculate themselves against the venom of their
terminology. Whites likewise celebrate the word "redneck". We are
astonishingly complex and wondrous creatures.
I wasn't so much insulted by Lawrence's joke as surprised. I've insulted
others in this venue a time or two -- or two hundred. But Lawrence has
always seemed so long-suffering, I can hear him sigh wearily every time he
reads a post of mine. Now, the other Larry, he didn't mind unloading his 38
of insults one bit, but he always missed hitting me (sorry, Larry, but God
love ya, you tried). Mr. Helm, on the otherhand, has always struck me as a
man with a mission -- as much as JL's mission to bring us all to Grice --
Lawrence wants to bring us all into the Marine Corps.
Mike Geary
Memphis
On Sat, May 8, 2010 at 2:26 PM, <jlsperanza@xxxxxxx> wrote:
> My last post today.
>
> Thank you, Larry. I did send my post without checking your reply to Geary.
> I was just reacting to his funny way of posting things, "I guess that´s a
> humorous insult". How can he GUESS that? Surely it´s NOT something _I_ would
> guess. McEvoy makes a good point, but he finds that someone said something
> humorous "if everybody else is cracking up", which I find, if I may say,
> idiotic (not on him, but on me, if I were to act like that). For example,
> Charlie Chaplin is NOT humorous.
>
> So, to the detail of L. Helm´s comments. He should write to my
> griceclub.com, more often. He said he tried once, but they were asking for
> hypertext and failed to submit the post or comment. He is an author there,
> so he should try again. Etc. This in case we want to consider the pragmatics
> of all this in closer detail.
>
> "JL, Your considerations don't exhaust the possibilities".
>
> I´m happy to realise. I was just "linguistic botanising", i.e. considering
> phrases with "guess" (NOT a verb I use! and others). A friend of mine, whose
> English is pretty archaic, was having a chess game on the internet, and he
> asked, "Care for another game?". "Guess not", was the reply. He came to me,
> "How can he GUESS that?"
>
> Helm:
>
>
> "consider: I found it humorous to associate the German man marrying the
> cat. By voicing that humor (found humorous by me) I assumed it would be
> mildly insulting and slightly less humorous (but still somewhat humorous) to
> Mike. Mike seemed to find it more insulting than humorous. There could be
> several reasons for that. The most probable one is that people not from the
> South like to poke fun at the South for its backwardness."
>
> Yes, that IS confusing. I thought he was from Seattle. He lived in Seattle
> for years. So, he should have broadened his horizons. It´s not like "born
> and bred" in the South, or Tennessee. He´s traveled wide. He was in Canada
> during the Vietnam war. His brother lives in Denmark. His son lives in
> Washington DC. It´s not like he is "Burnside", the Local Memphisian. He
> knows. So, the locale of Geary is neither here nor there. He has an
> "international" even metrosexual cyberpersona and he should be ready to
> assume the position.
>
> Helm:
>
>
> "The first "few hundred times" they heard jokes like that they seem
> humorous, but now they are just "old, old, old -- and tiresome --barely
> worth responding to.""
>
> ------ "I'm guessing it is supposed to be a humorous insult,"
>
> "might mean
>
> (2) I've heard humorous insults against the South so often I can no longer
> be sure what they are."
>
> ----- Yes. Mind I didn´t check your source, because I believe people CAN
> marry cats. Grice says cats are good as philosophical tools because you can
> do almost anything with them. His example is the Provost of Oriel College,
> who had this dog, but dogs were not allowed in College, so the Governing
> Body passed a decree that the dog be DEEMED a cat. That´s a short step from
> marrying one, I suppose.
>
> Note that Geary should not be anti-zoophilia like that. After all, he had
> circulated "Economy explained with two sheep" where it referred to the "Deep
> South down Under" -- "they look at the sheep with amicable eyes". "Marriage"
> or civil union is not something that requires "upkate" necessary. Austin was
> confused with this. He thought "uptake" was required. "Do you take this
> woman as your wedded wife?", I do. And you, I do, she says. Then They Are
> Married. There are a lot of things that can go wrong here (vide Priestly,
> When we are married). And I wouldn´t know if the cat got married. Your
> remark was that a man married a cat, but did not mention anything about a
> cat marrying a man.
>
> Helm:
>
> "I found, and still find, such associations (Tennessee with backwardness)
> amusinglargely because my wife's family was from Tennessee."
>
> "was" is well put. Ultimately, I expect she was from Britain. Geary has a
> problem here. He believes that ("Geary" is a well-known Irish surname, or
> English, or Scots), "or else it could be Jewish: Gahrison. The Tennessee has
> nothing to do with anything. Families don´t HAIL from Tennessee. Etc.
>
> Helm:
>
>
> "Her maiden name is McWherter (a relative was once governor of Tennessee)."
>
> You see what I mean? Good Scottish thing. There is a famous historian of
> the English language (African American, I think) that goes by "McWhorter",
> but I may be wrong. I like the Anglo-Saxon of "Wherter". And I take it to be
> Scots because my understanding (cfr. whiskie) is that the Irish spelling
> would be "MacWherter". I suppose she gets often asked, "mc, or m-a-c?"
>
> Helm:
>
> "Also I had a Tennessean working for me at McDonnell Douglas for several
> years who strove hard to shed his association with backwardness and to
> present himself as an intellectual. I don't recall that he found my
> Tennessee-jokes humorous either, but, once again (and something you didn't
> cover) I did."
>
> Yes. But again, note that I was just replying to Geary´s fast comment --
> fresh, even, "I guess I should be insulted by such a bad joke" -- rather
> than your wise reply to it.
>
> Helm:
>
>
> "Which is to disagree with Austin: illucutionary uptake is not essential
> for me to be amused."
>
> That´s very good. Austin thought that only
>
> "I bet"
>
> requires illocutionary uptake.
>
> Colloquially, people do use "I bet my arse it will rain tomorrow", without
> EXPECTING a reply, "OK, bet taken". I suppose people are becoming looser and
> looser talkers.
>
> With "joke" you are terribly right. I get bored, often, though, that people
> fail to detect my ironies, and even, my intention TO GET ironies. I expect
> people to be IRONIC with me, and when, not only they don´t recognise my
> ironies, but reply to them "LITERALLY" bores me to tears. Irony can be
> one-way, and I derive loads of pleasure in displaying irony with people even
> if they fail to recognise it.
>
> Helm:
>
>
> "In fact if I were not amused I would not have presented it to Mike as
> humor."
>
> Right. Perhaps it IS a good joke. A man married a cat. Again, I was not too
> interested in reading. Had the headline read, "A cat married a man" --
> mabbe. But with all the psychos out there, I don´t think that the fact that
> the German was Memphisian would help to bring an interest to the story.
>
> What I did find sarcasticaly great on you was the idea of a "pet theory" by
> Geary, and then go on to display that someone in Tennessee married a felis
> domesticus. Which they may well be separated by now.
>
> Helm:
>
>
> "One of the two of us found humor in it; so if our testimony is important
> in the determination of whether a joke is humorous, my testimony must count
> as much as Mike's, or if not quite as much as the illucutionary uptake, at
> least something."
>
> Yes.
>
> For Austin, the speech act has three levels:
>
> locutionary 1. phatic
> 2 phonic
> 3 rhemic -- sense & reference (meaning)
>
> illocutionary -- uptake (the recognition of the intention). the force.
>
> perlocutionary -- the intention other than illocutionary. The "effect".
> E.g. to amuse.
>
> -----
>
> Helm:
>
>
> "Had this been the first humor ever presented to him about Tennessee, he
> might have been found it amusing."
>
> That´s a good one. Perhaps we can find what was the first joke ever made on
> Tennessee and check if Geary finds it funny.
>
>
> "I find Austin's association of betting with joking humorous. Here we
> have, I suspect, an illucutionary uptake involving humor without the
> intention of humor on Austin's part."
>
> Yes. Recall Austin is not Grice. For Grice, you can be your own audience.
> You can marry yourself, for example. "Surely Austin is wrong in thinking all
> our communicative intentions are addressed to others. When I write, "Dear
> Diary", I mean myself on a future occasion".
>
> Helm:
>
> "Mike ((Geary)) can "refuse to be insulted" implies a serious insult."
>
> Yes. I brought that onto the bargain because it IS a tricky example by
> Grice in his early 1948 essay on Meaning (never meant to be published). He
> is furthering the anti-Austinian line of focusing on the "intention" as
> "response" or "effect" on the part of the addressee. And he wants it to be
> restricted to "belief".
>
> For Grice, what Geary can at most "recover" or infer from your point is,
> "Helm thinks he will amuse me". For Grice, it would be ODD if you intend TO
> amuse Geary. The most you can do is intend to instil on him a piece of
> something out of which he can derive some fun, or some insult, or both.
>
> Helm:
>
>
> "But if jokes about the South are heaped upon it with tiresome frequency,
> refusal is not necessary to avoid being insulted."
>
> Right. Geary, in being brief, failed to communicate with us while he had
> that wild "guessing" -- that it was a humourous insult. The bit about
> "humorous" seems clear enough. He did NOT find it "humourous". For the least
> thing he could have done is add a smiley or something -- There are levels
> here, LOLOTF, etc. The point
> with "offense" is trickier.
>
> "No offence meant, not taken"
>
> is usually anti-Gricean. For Grice, one shouldn´t be more informative than
> required. So, why add, "no offence meant," unless you do MEAN it. Similarly,
> "not taken", means, "I am hurt, but then you should not get the pleasure out
> of it."
>
> The politics of "No offense meant, not taken" run along identical lines
> with "no pun intended". Surely he INTENDED it -- why even bother otherwise.
> The only pun not intended, logically, is the one that goes unmarked.
> Similarly, it´s like saying, "expletive deleted", or "no comments". Silly.
>
> Helm:
>
>
> "Hearing something the thousandth time lacks the poignancy of hearing it
> for the first time."
>
> I think you are hypothesising with some complexity that the Geary case may
> not demand. First, we do not THINK he heard the SAME insult 1,000 times.
> Each insult brings an element of novelty. It is what Austin and Grice call
> the "context of utterance". In this sense, language is NOT like sex. Where
> "the first time" IS given some importance (especially by females). Etc.
>
> Helm:
>
>
> "Note that Mike switch the object of my humor from Tennessee to The South."
>
> Yes. That was terrible. He didn´t even explain or provided a caveat, or a
> justification. He just broadened the scope of your very specific remark
> about this German marrying his poodle in Memphis to something which may
> apply to a Alabama, or who knows where.
>
> Helm:
>
>
> "That is something I would not have done."
>
> Right. It´s very subtle to switch the object of humor, especially when the
> whole point is the locality or ethnicity. There is a lot of regional colour
> here that is otherwise missing. And did you find his reference to many
> famous authors being from the South relevant? He did add, "go figure", i.e.
> "try to work out the implicature for that", so perhaps it was one of his
> riddles -- like "Why is a raven like a writing desk"?. As Borges said when
> he lectured on literature in the South, "All literature starts with New
> England" (He held a visiting professional capacity at UTexas-Austin).
>
> Helm:
>
>
> "Which made me think of how Germany is related to the rest of Europe. If
> the demographic trends we read about continue, and the US gets larger and
> more important while Europe gets smaller and less important, the time may
> come when Germany is treated in Europe similarly to the way Tennessee is
> treated in the US. There are some similarities. Germany produce Hitler;
> while Tennessee produced our most war-like President, Andrew Jackson, who,
> incidentally, was also guilty of genocide. Germans have in the past been
> noted for being especially warlike. That is also true of Tennesseans
> (although there are anomalies like Mike)."
>
> Right. Yes, they are comparable. Note though that I wouldn´t call Hitler a
> German. He was Austrian, right? I make a BIG difference there. I KNOW that
> if I were an Austrian I would HATE to say that my lingo is DEUTSCHE. But the
> Austrians, except perhaps Hitler, are a type of population that are
> apparently easily directed, in thought progresses. I live Austria, and find
> it more civilised than Germany in many aspects. Opera, for example.
> Salzburg. Mozart LOVED Italy. The Italians like Austria. Germany is a
> different country.
>
> Etc.
>
>
> J. L. Speranza
> Buenos Aires, Argentina
>
>
>
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