Page 37 - The Language of Humour

24 ‘I SAY, I SAY, I SAY’
further type of ambiguity—of pronoun reference—which will be
grouped under syntax. Notice, however, that these confusions are also
caused by the joke-creator being deliberately awkward and refusing to
pick the most likely sense of the comment. This lack of ‘co-operation’
in language use is discussed further in the next unit.
Deixis comes from a Greek word meaning ‘finger’. It describes the
function of certain words in a language to point, or refer, to something.
Pronouns like ‘it’, ‘he’, ‘she’, ‘they’ are deictic terms, as you need the
context in order to understand their reference. (They refer back or
forwards: anaphoric and cataphoric reference, respectively.) This
feature of language is used to create ambiguity, as in the joke question:

The Mississippi is the longest river in the USA. Can you spell it?
(IT spells ‘it’.)

The questioner is deliberately misleading and alters the stress and
intonation in order to suggest that ‘it’ refers to the word ‘Mississippi’.
Although there is great potential for ambiguity in language, the context
normally makes it clear, so there would be no real confusion about the
intended meaning of this teacher’s comment:

All eyes on the blackboard and watch me run through it.

‘It’ refers not to the blackboard but to the exercise the teacher had
presumably referred to earlier.

Activity with text
Analyse the following to show the two possible interpretations of the
syntax. Group them under the headings of phrase structure, clause
structure, deixis. Either use the labels for phrase and clause analysis or
show the ambiguity by re-phrasing in two ways.

1 I have read your book and much like it. (Moses Hadas)
2 The students are revolting.
3 Dr Livingstone I Presume—the full name of Doctor
Presume
4 Yoko Ono will talk about her husband John Lennon who
was killed in an interview with Barbara Walters.