Antisphexishness

--- by J. L. S.
------- for the GC.

WHILE KRAMER THINKS OF IRONY in terms of what he calls 'communicative behaviours' which are not necessarily linguistic I reflect on insects.

Mind: this is not related, but it may.

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Prevarication and irony in gestures.

While Kramer speaks of Pointlish, there's the general 'nonverbal' thing --. We do need a rubric for that that is less negative than 'nonverbal'. But if Tim W. uses 'noverbal' in his newish "Pragmatics and nonverbal communication" perhaps this is just as well.

I am happy enough with using 'x' and "X" -- as Grice does -- for any 'communication vehicle' as he calls them (uglily).

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Prevarication is different, but not so different. Any student of linguist (I'm not one -- but some of my friends were), who opens Lyons, "Introduction to Linguistics", and other elementary tracts, will face a list of 'universals' of language -- so-called. These are BOUND to confuse the Grice-ian amongst us, so skip those. But Lyons says, 'prevarication'.

He wants to say that bees don't have a language (and I would follow him there -- flowers don't have a language there, and I'm sure I don't share Kramer's overt idiolect when he says that a bandaged leg 'says', "My leg is bad").

And Lyons says they don't have a language, because, as most critters bound with sphexishness, a bee doesn't have a free will. It's a collective, selfish gene, or something. So, a bee cannot lie.

This relates to the famous 'bee dance'. As von Frisch failed to see, the bees don't really 'dance'. There's nothing VISUAL about it --. The bees's vision leaves a lot to be desired. It's more like a 'smelly' piece of behaviour, etc.

But von Frisch was working with a Kuhnian paradigm that disallowed him to be 'challenging' about things.

But a man can lie -- a 'person', generally, can lie. For 'antisphexishness' (I owe this to Kramer) is 'free will to the nth power'.

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Now, how does this connect with 'irony' in nonverbal communication?

Imagine Sexton Newman.

Wanted to be ironic, he displayed TWO lanthorns, when what he saw was the Brits coming by land.

"I'm going to test this smartass, Revere: I want him to reason as follows."

"The brits are coming by land; but this idiot Newman is displaying TWO lanthorns, which was, it was our understanding and agreement, to be displayed only if the brits were coming by 'water'. Newman cannot possibly intend me to think that he is an idiot. He is, therefore, being ironic".

Something in that scenario don't (sic) click.

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Similarly, I ask you where "Old North Church" (in Boston) is:

You point, with your arm, towards the left. But you are being ironic. So what you mean is that the Old North Church is on the right.

While I would be tolerant of such an ironic display of ingenuity, I'm not sure my mother would.

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In Spain, if you mean 'yes', you move your cranium from the up to the low, repeatedly (This is an old Iberian costume, unknown to the Romans). Similarly, 'no' is indicated by moving your cranium, repeatedly, sideways (This is a Greek Hellenism -- lots of Greek settlement in the sunny plains of Spain).

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But surely one should be able to signal 'yes' by moving the cranium sideways. E.g. A father displays a big icecream dessert to a child (his child, as it happens), with the query, 'you like this, don't you?'. The child, knowing that this is before dinner time and that he is not supposed to be having such a big icecream BEFORE his dinner, knows that what its father -- I follow Grice in treating a child as a thing -- expects it (i.e. the child) to do, he (or it, the child) moves his (or its, the child's) cranium sideways. But AS HE DOES THIS, he prepares his spoon, and is otherwise very expressive and enthusiastic that he is about to devour the icecream.

So, I would take the sideways movement (conventionally associated with the meaning, 'no') to be used, ironically, in this case, by the child to mean 'yes'.

This of course is NOT to say that he is changing the idiom of the code, or the code of the idiom. The whole point of irony is to keep using the sign with the previous established 'sense'.

Similarly, when people say, "I didn't mean that you were an arsehole-arsehole. I meant to say that you were an idiot". I would argue that the ONLY way a so-called metaphor works is by accepting that NO change of sense occurs. FOR: if a change of sense occurs (in an ad hoc way, to cover this new collocation) then it is NOT a metaphor.

If a homosexual calls himself a 'queen', there are various reasons. Some think he may have a monarchical self-esteem about his self. I disagree. I think it's just a solecism for the older spelling, 'quean'. Ackerley, for example, in "My Father and Myself" recalls how he would be disgusted to see "all those queans in the bars". This use is recognised by the OED, for 'quean' to mean, well, quean. (I recall an old polemic with P. Daniels on this).

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Same with 'funny-haha' and 'funny-peculiar'.

Consider (adapted from Goodfellas -- courtesy of Kramer -- or gratia Krameri, if you must):

HILL. You are a pistol. You are really funny, you are.

DeVito. What do you mean that I am funny?

HILL. Funny, you know. Funny: you are some funny guy. [he laughs]

DeVito: What do you mean? You mean, perchance, the way I talk? You said, 'a pistol'.

HILL. It's just, you know. You're just funny. It's ... just funny. Everything, really -- about you.

DeVito: [starting to lose his temper] But funny how? What is funny about me? You're one big boy and you know what you said. What did ya say? Funny. But funny how?

Hill: Just funny. No implicature attached.

DeVito: What?

Hill. No implicature attached. Gricean stuff -- and stuff.

DeVito: I know what the f*ck you's talking about. You think I'm funny, eh?

Hill: You are. You are funny.

DeVito: OK. Let me straighten this out, with the aid of your Grice. You mean, let me understand this cause, ya know, mabbe it's just me. I'm a little fucked up maybe, but I'm funny -- how? I mean funny like -- I'm a clown? I amuse you? I make you laugh, I'm here to fuckin' amuse you? What do you mean funny, funny -- "how"? How am I funny?

Hill: You are a hoax. You are peculiar. You are counterfeited.

(DeVitto shoots Hill).

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So the explanation is easy:

At one point (1727, records tell us) a man, in England, laughed at 'funny money': he found that if something was peculiar as per a hoax -- a 'fon' in Middle English --, it was, by necessity, also 'amusing'. But it's not.

"Funny" NEVER means 'amusing'. It only means 'counterfeit'. Some people (Johnson DOES say it's a low cant word anyway --) would still use 'funny', not just to mean the more appropriate, 'hoax', or 'counterfeit' but to mean things that this gentleman in 1727 found he was amused by.

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Can we display that one finds something 'funny' 'gesturally'?

I expect so. We laugh.

You may object that 'laughter' is a sign that you find something funny-haha only. It would be difficult to express, without a previous understanding (people have become very illiterate), by laughter, that you find something to be counterfeit, a hoax.

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Occam says, "risus significat naturaliter interiorem laetitiam" (I had to make some sense of those silly passages from his "Summa Totius Logicae" that I was reading for a seminar given by M. Costa). But that's Latin, and they don't have 'funny' in Latin.

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So, let's just concentrate on 'laughter' as a gestural display of 'inner joy' (laetitia interioris) -- similarly, Occam notes that, similarly, a tear (lacrima) signifies, naturally, interior pain -- rather than more superficial, epidermic, one.

Can one be ironic, and signify interior pain by laughing? My mother does (frequently).

Can one be ironic and signify interior joy by crying? My mother does (frequently).

Go figure, please.

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Gestures are ubiquitous -- especially in Italy. So, it would be beneficial, evolutionarily, if one would allow polysemy here (I'm echoing Kramer's points, not that I agree with them), and have one single gesture be used ironically.

The middle finger. Can one use 'the middle finger', ironically, to mean, "I love you"? (In fact, a case can be made that "(I) f*ck you" MEANS "I love you" -- but let that be).

When Witters was in that famous train, with the Italian Count, the Count made a rough Neapolitan gesture. Witters recounts the count's moment of illumination:

"I then found out, as per a miracle, that
all I was saying about a proposition
being a picture of reality was shattered
to the ground. For the Count said, in his
dulcet accented tones: "What is the
logical form of THIS?" as he moved his
elbow towards his chest in ways that only
very ill-mannered people do in Naples. The
fact that he was a Count made for the
irony of it all. Because he was not
insulting me. He was, by way of irony,
letting me know, in his Italian way, that
I was an idiot".

Etc.