Page 108 - The Language of Humour

SPOKEN HUMOUR- TELEVISION AND RADIO 95

There was a great deal of press comment about my jailing twelve
people for life for, er, stealing some toffees.’
‘Yes.’
‘But that was not so much the crime that I jailed them for, it was the
intent beyond the crime.’
‘Yes.’
‘Having stolen some toffees, in my view, though it was never
proved.’
‘Yes.’
‘Having stolen the toffees, they then got into a first class carriage
between Bristol and Plymouth and, er, started smoking.’
‘Has any of this damaged you relationship with your wife at all?’
‘Not really. My wife, as you know, is, er, slightly physically
impaired, er, she had a—she fell off a horse—or was pushed off a
horse. Nobody knows.’
‘But you were there.’
‘I thought she fell, but it’s very hard to tell at that speed, going over
those particular hedges with the barbed wire. But, er, a very nasty fall
and she’s partially paralysed down, down—one side is completely
immobile. So she’s very plucky, but I mean, you know, she can serve
drinks, but not peanuts at the same time.’

Commentary

We hear a mixture of Judge Beauchamp’s actual words and the sub-
text: I am a respectable upper-class judge and completely innocent of
any crime—or at least, unlikely to be caught for one murder and two
attempted murders. I punish the riff-raff—whether they’re innocent or
not doesn’t concern me.
He establishes his position of authority by the use of legal jargon;
formal vocabulary such as ‘deemed’; complex sentence structures and
the use of the passive voice. Because he slips into everyday language
such as ‘specs’, ‘toffees’, ‘peanuts’ within a more formal register, the
effect is odd, and the effect of an authoritative voice slips. He uses a
number of features associated with upper-class speech, such as his
choice of intensifiers: ‘particularly’, ‘extremely’, ‘obviously’. He
sometimes uses the passive voice to avoid naming the agent, i.e.
himself:

a defendant being shot=I shot the defendant or was pushed off a
horse=I pushed her off a horse