Page 52 - The Language of Humour

THE SHOCK OF THE NEW 39
understand the meaning of the word ‘box’ and that Pandora is a girl’s
name; you have to be familiar with the myth about Pandora opening a
box freeing ill-omens, to understand this cartoon by Gary Larson:

(Cartoon of teacher facing class with gift box on table) And the
note says, ‘Dear classmates and Ms Kilgore: Now that my family
have moved away, I feel bad that I whined so much about being
mistreated. Hope the contents of this box will set things right.
Love, Pandora.’… How sweet.

There is also an important distinction between the sense and force of an
utterance. ‘You make great coffee’, taken in isolation, can be seen as
imparting some information. This is its ‘sense’. In context it can be used
to convey a variety of messages—its ‘force’ is different in each case.

1 Do I make good coffee? You make great coffee.
2 Do you think I’m a good cook? You make great coffee.
3 It’s your turn to make the coffee. You make great coffee.

The philosopher of language J.L.Austin moved away from asking ‘what
do sentences mean?’ to ‘what sort of act do we perform in uttering a
sentence?’ This area is referred to as speech act theory. There are
possibilities for ambiguity of meaning when there is a gap between the
sense and force of the utterance. Misunderstandings happen when a
person concentrates on the structural form of the utterance, rather than
being aware that it can have various functions. Billy Connolly points
out the strange way that parents frame their complaints, refusals and
threats:

That’s right, leave your clothes all over the floor.
I’ll give you bike.
111 make you smile on the other side of your face.

Another possible cause of ambiguity lies in the indirect way that
English speakers frame utterances to make them more polite: ‘I wonder
if you would shut the door?’ ‘Do you? Let me know if you work it out’
The question might be: How do people know which interpretation to
make of an utterance? The philosopher H.P.Grice suggests ways of
explaining the relation between sense and force in his cooperative
principle of conversation: that is to say we assume that people in
conversation are cooperative and follow these maxims: