Page 107 - The Language of Humour

94 SPOKEN HUMOUR—TELEVISION AND RADIO
Activity with text
Read the Peter Cook extract below. He is in character as Sir James
Beauchamp, a High Court judge, being interviewed by Clive Anderson.
First assess this created character. How would you describe Sir James,
in terms of age, social background, personality? Now analyse his
language—or rather the way his speech is scripted. What features of
speech mark out his class and the formality of his profession? How does
he trivialise his comments on the law, crimes etc.? How does he detach
himself from the three deaths or accidents he mentions?
Look at the following markers of formality and informality: legal
jargon versus colloquialisms; the choice of intensifiers (adverbs like
‘very’); the use of the passive voice; and his inclusion of inappropriate
details.

‘Well, er, it’s good to see you, judge. I say ‘judge’, because you’re
actually suspended at the moment, aren’t you?’
‘Yes, I’m temporarily, er, suspended for some mistake, er, judicial
mistake, apparently I was deemed to have made.’
‘Yes, being considered by an enquiry.’
‘By—by—being considered by my peers and we should get the
result very soon.’
‘Yes.’
‘It was an incident arising from a defendant being shot.’
‘Yes.’
‘In court’
‘By you.’
‘By myself. It was a particularly unpleasant woman with specs, who
was up on a charge of shoplifting.’
‘Yes.’
‘And I really became extremely irritated with her, because her
testimony was obviously full of holes and completely untrue.’
‘Yes.’
‘And momentarily losing patience, I just vaulted over the dock and
got her straight through the heart with a little Derringer I always carry
with me in this pocket’
‘You’ve always had a strong sense of right and wrong.’
‘I hanged a boy at school for, er, it was really dumb insolence, er, he
was looking at me in that particular way, you know, irritating look and,
er, when I say I hung him—or is it hanged—I never know which, well
I strung him up.’