humor (was Re: SPUD acroetymythology (1927))

[Arnold M. Zwicky]

On Sep 8, 2005, at 6:31 AM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:

> Today's modest proposal is to place warning labels on utterances
> intended as humor so that everyone will know a joke when they see
> one (and can laugh if they so desire), and no one can possibly be
> misinformed later on. Excessively "dry" humor would be available
> only by prescription.

on a number of occasions, readers of the Language Log have mistaken
the intentions of the contributors; parody and irony are especially
likely to be missed.    in some cases, the contributors have felt
obliged to add explanations to their postings, to avoid overly
literal-minded interpretations.

at the moment i'm trying to decide what to do about e-mail following
on my little piece, "Cartoonists on the grammatical front line" --

   http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/002457.html

which reproduced a letter from Byrna Weir to The Key Reporter about
grammatical "mistakes" in the comics.  Weir's advice was: "Creators
could provide a service to readers of all ages if they would have
characters speak correctly."

to this i said:

-----
Correct is correct, no matter what the context.   Correctness trumps
reality.  Novelists please copy: if they come for the cartoonists
today, they may come for you tomorrow.

Many sighs.
-----

i thought this was sufficiently rueful that readers would understand
that "Correct is correct, no matter what the context.  Correctness
trumps reality." was not an expression of my opinion, but a
(sarcastic) restatement of Weir's, though without explicit
attribution.  (certainly, i hope no one's going to start citing me as
a proponent of the position that "correct is correct...")  i thought
that the context would have made this clear, and i thought that
anyone who reads the Language Log even occasionally would have
divined my attitude, and the attitude of fellow bloggers like Geoff
Pullum and Mark Liberman, towards "grammatical sticklers".

but no.  from a reader: "With your closing comment "Correctness
trumps reality," you lend your support to Byrna Weir's appreciation
of Eleanor Gould's pet peeve [about the placement of "only"]..."

i have explained myself in e-mail to this reader, but i wonder if i
should add an explanation to the posting itself.  i just *hate* the
idea of glossing my rhetorical stances -- it's like explaining that
something is a joke, and how the joke is supposed to work, i mean,
where's the artfulness in *that*? -- but i also worry about how
widespread this misreading is.

arnold (zwicky at csli.stanford.edu)