[Corpora-List] Studies of ' as it were' , ' so to speak' and ' in a manner of speaking' ?

[Bill Louw]

Hello Raf and All

It seems to me that Mark is correct. The use is stylistic and bears upon semantic prosody. All three expressions can be used as 'nudge...nudge' flags to indicate that the speaker is being ironiuc or punning. All devices relexicalise (as I have said elsewhere since about 1991), so, the quoted passage begins to invoke Jakobson's metalingual function in which language is used to refer to itself. The humour is embedded within the notion of hedges around uncertainty. In a pre-corpus world one might say that the author is appealing to a classroom understanding of how subjunctives are used to express uncertainty and how odd this sounds if it is contrasted, then and there, with its indicative counterpart. Bill Louw

R.M.Salkie at bton.ac.uk wrote: 
>  Can
> anyone point me to useful literature on any of these expressions? 
>    
>  Does
> the following seem like a normal use of ‘as it were’? 
>    
>  ******** 
>  "The
> tracks!" said Pooh. "A third animal has joined the other two!"
> "Pooh!" cried Piglet "Do you think it is another Woozle?" 
>    
>  "No,"
> said Pooh, "because it makes different marks. It is either Two Woozles and
> one, as it might be, Wizzle, or Two, as it might be, Wizzles and one, if so it
> is, Woozle. Let us continue to follow them." 
>    
>  So
> they went on, feeling just a little anxious now, in case the three animals in
> front of them were of Hostile Intent. And Piglet wished very much that his
> Grandfather T. W. were there, instead of elsewhere, and Pooh thought how nice
> it would be if they met Christopher Robin suddenly but quite accidentally, and
> only because he liked Christopher Robin so much. And then, all of a sudden,
> Winnie-the-Pooh stopped again, and licked the tip of his nose in a cooling
> manner, for he was feeling more hot and anxious than ever in his life before.
> There were four animals in front of them! 
>    
>  "Do
> you see, Piglet? Look at their tracks! Three, as it were, Woozles, and one, as
> it was, Wizzle. Another Woozle has joined them!" 
>    
>  From
> A.A. Milne, ‘In Which Pooh and Piglet Go Hunting and Nearly Catch a
> Woozle’ (Chapter 3 of Winnie the Pooh). 
>    
>  ******** 
>    
>  Thanks.
> – Raf  
>    
>    
>  Professor
> Raphael Salkie,       Tel: (+44) 01273 643335 
>  School
> of
> Humanities,           
> Tel: (+44) 01273 643337 
>  University
> of Brighton           
> Tel: (+44) 01273 600900 
>  Falmer,
> Brighton, BN1 9PH 
>  England. 
>    
>  Fax:
> (+44) 01273 641873 
>  Email:
>  r.m.salkie at brighton.ac.uk  
>    
>  Home page: http://artsresearch.brighton.ac.uk/research/academic/salkie 
>    
>    
>    



      

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