[lit-ideas] Re: "You Like Chinese Food"
- From: "Eric Yost" <mr.eric.yost@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 15 Jun 2013 13:29:12 -0400
Eric: the imperative-performative--some would say
self-referential--fortune cookie read, "You are reading a fortune
cookie." It was wrong. I was only imagining it."
JLS: Interesting that E. Yost should mention the performative side to
this. For surely a 'fortune' message should be, pragmatically, a
prediction. So one is expecting, "You will/shall like Chinese food"
Eric: The attempted joke assumed that the cookie was offering the likely
status quo as a prediction. "You like [enjoy] Chinese food" comes as an
empty prediction since one's presence at a Chinese restaurant, combined
with finishing the meal (fortune cookies often arriving with the check),
indicates that no loathing, vomiting, and quick exiting occurred.
Otherwise, one would not have inclination to open and read the fortune
cookie.
----
JLS: The Chinese point is the so-called homogeneity of conation. Surely,
if I say, "I like to go to Oxford", then, I am like going to Oxford.
Eric: Not if "like" is used in the sense of "enjoy." Moreover, since the
original sentence was written in English, as was the imagined fortune
cookie, the Chinese semantic variation on "like" has no significance,
except that it is informative and amusing.
Finally, I suppose we are all like Chinese food. If I had to resemble a
Chinese food, I would pick my favorite, "Little Bit of Everything Soup."
(Do not know if this kind of soup has a linguistic counterpart in other
countries.)
Again, I was only imagining the fortune cookie.
Assuming Peking Duck is not a voyeuristic fowl,
Eric
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