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ELSEVIERJournal of Pragmatics 27 (1997) 719-752]oltrlml~

The pragmatics of verbal parody

Deborah F. Rossen-Knill, Richard Henry

Institute for Research in Cognitive Science. University of PennLLvlvania,3401 Walnut Street. Suite 4c, Philadelphia. PA 19104-6228. USA

Received March 1994; revised version June 1996

Abstract

In this paper, we develop a model of verbal parody based on the view that parody is ahuman behavior. We argue that verbal parody involves a highly situated, intentional and con-ventional expressive made up of four essential acts: (1) the intentional re-presentation of theobject of parody, (2) the flaunting of the verbal re-presentation, (3) the critical act, and (4) thecomic act. To successfully create a verbal parody, a speaker must manipulate all four essen-tial acts with the intent to create parody. In the second section of our paper, we address thepotential scope of parody in real communication. We explain how parody serves to celebratethe object it apparently ridicules, by appealing to politeness theory (Brown and Levinson,1987). We also argue that the object of parody may be anything in the world; that a singleparodic act may have multiple objects; and that the re-presenting verbal expression of theparodic speech act may function as a direct or indirect non-parodic speech act, which may beenhanced or inhibited by the parody.

I. Introduction

For centuries artists have parodied individuals, groups, institutions and theiractions, beliefs, and ideas both to entertain and to offer critical commentary. Con-sider: in

Frogs,

Aristophanes parodies (among other things) Aeschylus's and Euripi-des's style of argumentation; Cervantes pokes fun at medieval romance in his

DonQuixote;

Chaplin challenges Hitler's power by parodying him in

The Little Dictator;

Barth, in a particularly subtle use of parody, apparently forswears and subsequentlyreaffirms values associated with eighteenth-century British imperialism in his novel

The Sot-Weed Factor;

and many a street-mime has mocked capitalistic values byparodying the businessman's walk. Parody has so pervaded Western Society that ithas become the concern of twentieth-century literary theorists. These theorists typi-cally consider parody as an art form (e.g., Stone, 1914; Rose, 1979; Hutcheon,1985) and a genre (e.g., Frye, 1957; Bakhtin, 1981). Together, they identify impor-tant features of parody; however, by confining their investigations to literary texts,they severely limit its scope. Highlighting its critical and imitative features, Stone0378-2166/97/$17.00 © 1997 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved

S0378-2166(96)00054-9

720

D.F. Rossen-Knill. R. Hem 3' /Journal c?/Pragmatics 27 (1997) 719 752

(1914) characterizes parody as high art, while Rose (1979) offers us parody as meta-fiction, portending its most promising future as the literary critic's tool. Hutcheon(1985) recasts literary allusion as iteration and calls it parody. Rose (1979) and Frye(1957) rarefy it into a set of features and call it an art form and a genre, respectively.Also concerned with parody as genre, Bakhtin reduces it to the interaction of "twostyles, two points of view", hence, "two speaking subjects" (1981: 76). Taking adifferent approach, Kuiper (1984), Nash (1985) and Norrick (1989) do investigateparody as a linguistic phenomenon; however, they also limit their investigations toliterary works.We offer a different perspective on parody: we view it as a human behavior whichis enacted in various ways, through gesturing, writing or speaking; and in variouscontexts - e.g., on street corners, in family conversations, and in literature. Our par-ticular interest is in parody in everyday conversation. Whereas many literary criticsanalyze parody in order to understand literature - as, for example, an art form (e.g.,Stone,) or a mode of criticism (Bakhtin, 1981: Rose, 1979, 1993) - we investigatethe structural and pragmatic aspects of parody in order to understand parody, andperhaps through it, something more about indirect speech acts in general.Our primary goal has been (1) to identify which of the features pointed to (and, insome cases, described) by literary theorists are essential to creating a verbal parody,(2) to bring these features together in a formal model, and (3) to explain how theseformal features interact with contextual elements of the relevant speech event(s) ~ toeffect a verbal parody. The emphasis in this research is on production: 2 we investi-gate what a speaker who intends to communicate a verbal parody must do. We doalso discuss some of the conditions necessary for successful interpretation, bothbecause production requires knowledge of comprehension and because parody is acommunicative act - one which depends on the successful interaction between aspeaker and a hearer.To develop our model of verbal parody, we have drawn from the works of lan-guage philosophers and linguists who investigate language use as a human behavior,including Ryle (1971), Wittgenstein (1968), Austin (1975), Grice (1989), Strawson(1970), Searle (1969), and Brown and Levinson (1987). At its most basic level, ourmodel explains how a speaker uses an utterance to communicate a parodic messageto a hearer. Considered in the context of human behavior and society, however, themodel demonstrates how a speaker uses verbal parody as a complex and subtle crit-ical tool. 3With the model established, in 'Extending the analysis' we begin to investigateparody's scope in conversation. This move away from prototypical parody offersinsight into the complexity of verbal parody and, ultimately, its usefulness as a crit-For analysis of the importance of the speech event to the interpretation of speaking strategies, seeBlum-Kulka (1990).2 Kuiper 1984) defines satire (and, indirectly, parody) from the perspective of the perceiver.3 In

'The princess bride

and the parodic impulse: The seduction of

Cinderella',

our model helps toexplain how screenwriter Goldman and film director Reiner employ parody to simultaneously ridiculeand celebrate fairy-tale true love (Henry and Rossen-Knill, in press).

D.F. Rossen-Knill. R. H emy / Journal ~f Pragmatics 27 (1997) 719-752

721ical and social tool. 4 In Section 3.1, 'Extending the analysis', we appeal to Brownand Levinson's politeness theory (1987) to explain how verbal parody - an actwhich we define as essentially critical - can pay tribute to its object. In Sections3.2-3.4, we discuss respectively parody's range in choosing its object, targeting mul-tiple objects, and conveying multiple messages. In Section 3.5, we discuss briefly thetaxonomic limits of our formal definition, particularly in distinguishing verbal par-ody from its close relatives verbal irony and verbal satire. Rather than argue for theexistence of boundaries made clear by formal models, we suggest the need to lookbeyond formal models to a speech act's purpose, the hearer's role in characterizingthe speech act, and the speech event in order to understand why clear boundarieselude us.

2. A pragmatic model of verbal parody

Verbal parody involves a highly situated, intentional, and conventional speech actwhich re-presents the object of parody and flaunts that re-presentation in order tocriticize that object in a humorous way. In using the term

verbal parody,

we mean torefer to any act in which a speaker uses a verbal expression (written or spoken) tocommunicate some parodic meaning to a hearer. This verbal expression may be areferring expression with or without propositional content, and may refer to anything or person in the world. Before describing what makes verbal parody a uniquespeech act, we discuss briefly why it is like all speech acts. Consider first this tradi-tional example of verbal parody from

The Handbook of Literary Terms

(Holman andHarmon, 1986: 360):Example 1 -

original text:

The Soul selects her own Society -Then - shuts the Door - (Dickinson)

the parody:

The Soul selects her own Sorority -Then - shuts the Dorm -Like any speech act, the verbal parody in (1) utilizes those intentions essential incommunication: (a) an informative intention, "to inform the audience of some-thing"; and (b) a communicative intention, "to inform the audience of one's infor-4 In developing our model of prototypical parody, we rely on examples of parody taken from real con-versation. These examples fall into two categories: those taped and subsequently transcribed (2, 3, 4,11), and those recorded in writing after the speech event (5-8, 10, 12-14). In extending the analysis, aswe move away from prototypical parody in order to speculate on the scope of parody in real conversa-tion, we also rely on constructed examples of parody. In this section, examples of parody fall into threecategories: taped and transcribed (19, 21), written down after the speech event (17, 20, 22), and con-structed (16, 18, 23-27).