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I found Peter Patrick's analysis of the reference to Spanish in the Barry
Humphries "Dame Edna" item in <i>Vanity Fair</i> right on the
mark. As far as I've ever known, Humphries invented the Dame Edna
character as an over-the-top cultural caricature (albeit one he has a
certain fondness for), much of whose schtick (sp?) is based on some
notion of "old-fashioned conservative values." This would
explain the pragmatics framing the linguistic routine. Did
<i>Vanity Fair</i> get it? Probably-- I've read a fair amount
of <i>Vanity Fair</i> and my sense is, its publishers consider themselves
hip, and I suspect they are aware of Dame Edna being a satirical
routine. Should they have published a disclaimer, given the touchy
nature of this area of satire? Maybe. Was it funny? That's a
separate question, and one that relates to a point that I think prompted
the angry responses that hit this and other lists when the magazine first
appeared. It's this: some forms and public venues of satire are
maximally likely to be perceived as satire, such as political position
satirized on Saturday Night Live. These are least likely to be
considered dangerous in the manner explicated by Basso (1979) and
others. Some forms of satire are most likely to be considered
dangerous, generally those which involve explicit reference to race or
gender and so are pretty iffy to perform without lots of disclaimers and
are often avoided in public venues. Then in the middle we have the
peculiar status of language in the U.S., which has become a site of
transfer for racialization-- that is, racialized value judgments that
used to be, and no longer are, attributed to biology now are attributed
to language, the key cultural dynamic being that people are
"supposed" to be able to control their language (a point made
by Silverstein (1987), Zentella (1995), Lippi-Green (1997) and others,
including myself (1996)). As we all know, the general U.S. attitude
toward any form of racial markedness is that those so marked are supposed
to strive to get rid of that marking in order to "prove" their
worth as citizens. So racializing reference to language does not
look racializing to a lot of Americans, which is of course why they are
especially dangerous (a point made by Hill 1998 and elsewhere). And Dame
Edna's comments about Spanish in the Vanity Fair routine do in fact
caricature and reflect that position which, alas, means that even if
Humphries claims satire as illocutionary intent, many readers may
not "really" read it as satire and their reading may indeed
reinforce racialized cultural presuppositions. But we don't
get to police perlocutionary outcome, all we get to do is see it and
analyze it. I suspect it's all those dynamics in one lump that
angered so many linguists. If anyone thinks they can explain it to
either Barrie Humphries or Vanity Fair, have fun. I don't get
anywhere explaining it to some other academics I've known and if I can
get the point across to students by the end of a semester-long course
about exactly that point I count myself lucky and hope the student can
hold onto that as s/he goes along. --Bonnie Urciuoli, Hamilton
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