2 The nature of play and its place in the second language classroom
2.3 The playful potential in language
2.3.3 The contextual dimension to the figurative use of language
Raskin's (1985) book on language humour significantly has the word 'semantic' in its title. Although this is not the place to air the long-standing debate on the distinction between semantic and pragmatic meaning, it is telling that much of his data comes from joke books, language which is essentially divorced from a particular interactional context of use. However, it is important, when considering its potential for playfulness, to remember that language does not exist in a vacuum. It both shapes and is shaped by its use in our interactions. Mikhail Bakhtin (1981) roots language firmly in its socio- cultural milieu. He sees it as heteroglossic – many voiced - in nature, its meanings forged and altered by usage, so that words carry within them previous intentions, connotations and contextual flavours.
The idea of words evoking previous usages and settings is an important one and takes us back to the figurative nature of language alluded to in the last two sections. In play among native speakers at least, it is not only language's metaphorical nature which is important with regard to play, but also its
metonymic dimension. To quote Chandler (2002: 130):
While metaphor is based on apparent unrelatedness, metonymy is a function which involves using one signified to stand for another signified which is directly related to it or closely associated with it in some way. (author's italics)
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To illustrate this, Chandler gives various examples including 'Number 10' where the place stands for the person, that is, the place where the Prime Minister officially resides is used to refer to the Prime Minister him or herself. Similarly, when we indulge in play with friends, we often evoke an episode or scenario from our shared history with a word or phrase which is associated with that moment and which comes to stand for it. Although it may not usually be thought of as such, I would maintain that such usage is
metonymic and, therefore, figurative in nature. The language used comes to mean something beyond its mere denotation but represents the whole of which it was originally just a part. An example illustrates the point. Below is a snippet from a long-running and popular BBC radio programme Just a
Minute where contestants have to speak on a subject allocated to them for a
minute without hesitation or deviation. In the following extract, Nicholas Parsons, the host of the show, is about to read out the points totals to his guests who include the comedian, Paul Merton:
Nicholas Parsons: What a fair result! Paul Merton: What did Will get?
(Audience laughter and applause)
(BBC R4 Just a Minute, first broadcast 22nd November 2010)
On the face of it, there is nothing funny about Merton’s line at all. In fact, it makes no sense to someone tuning into the programme at that moment. In order to understand the significance of what Merton has said, you would need to listen to the broadcast from the beginning. In fact, the thread which
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he exploits had started early in the game with an unsolicited intervention from a member of the audience (Will). This is then referred to and played with by members of the game panel on various occasions throughout the show. By the end, the name of Will not only refers to a member of the audience but also metonymically stands for a collective experience. The pleasure and humour here seems to come from two characteristics of the exchanges: firstly, the references are shared and inclusive; secondly, there is an incongruity that lies in the fact that an unsanctioned intervention is treated as an official contribution to the game. These themes of
inclusiveness and incongruity are revisited in the analysis of the research data. Although, in this case, the particular significance of Will's name is fleeting and dies with the end of the radio broadcast, such play can provide an important social glue which contributes to the building of an in-group culture, and can be related to Bakhtin's notion of the dialogical nature of language. Utterances both respond to and are infused with previous meanings, as well as anticipating responses to come. In his own words:
[t]he living utterance [...] can not fail to brush up against thousands of living dialogic threads (1981: 276-7).
The ideological and dialogical nature of language can partly be explained by the struggle between forces of authority attempting to unify the language – the centripetal – and those which are pushing it apart – the centrifugal (Bakhtin, 1981: 270-2). Grammar books, for instance, could be seen as the embodiment of the former: they provide and (consciously or not) promote a 'standard' of the language, resisting change. In contrast, an example of the centrifugal might be the talk that characterises particular subcultures which
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deliberately mark themselves out from the mainstream through their language as well as through other forms of expression, such as dress or music. Bakhtin sees the tension between the centripetal and centrifugal as a natural state of being for any living language. It seems obvious that learners will aspire to a recognised standard of the TL. Yet, given that play is a
disruptive influence on the normal flow of activity (Section 2.2) and, as will be discussed in Section 2.5.4, is potentially subversive in nature, the degree to which learners attempt to adhere to or undermine native-speaker standards is far from clear.
The metonymic and centripetal/centrifugal dimensions of language are crucial for play, as will be seen later, because they lend themselves to expressing both its incremental and subversive nature.