play malaprops

[Laurence Urdang]

Yes, Arnold,
  You are right: Jane Ace was an extremely intelligent woman, and I occasionally saw her and Goodie lunching at La Grenouille, the restaurant in the Berkshire Hotel across Madison Avenue from my office at Random House. Their son was a mess, though.
  I think that the main humor of the malapropism lies in the "Gotcha!" factor in which the listener can demonstrate that he is just that much smarter than the speaker.
  Larry

  "Arnold M. Zwicky" <zwicky at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU> wrote:
  ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: "Arnold M. Zwicky"
Subject: Re: play malaprops
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On Jun 6, 2007, at 8:52 AM, Larry Urdang wrote:

> I don't think that items like nasturtiums for aspersions are puns,
> either.
> Nor are they really malapropisms.

they are just like classical malapropisms, except for the fact that
they arise from deliberate choice rather than misapprehension.

> In another day, I'd have called them Jane Ace-isms, for Goodman
> Ace's wife Jane into whose mouth he would put things like, You
> could have knocked me over with a fender, Don't just sit there like
> a bum on a log, etc., familiar to old fogies like me who remember
> 1930s' radio.

these are literary malapropisms: a character is represented as having
misapprehended things, and so utters malapropisms. such
characterizations undoubtedly go back before Sheridan's Mrs.
Malaprop, but she's the (fictional) character that lent her name to
the real-life phenomenon.

there was a real Jane Ace, but the Jane Ace we're talking about here
was a character in fiction, a creation of her husband's. who uttered
malapropisms.

there are many such characters. i haven't looked at the phenomenon
systematically, but my impression is that they are mostly women or
people represented as trying to "talk above their station in
life" (or, of course, both). the characters are presented as fools.

arnold

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