Dame Edna

[burciuol]

I found Peter Patrick's analysis of the reference to Spanish in the Barry
Humphries "Dame Edna" item in Vanity Fair 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 Vanity Fair get it?  Probably--  I've read a fair
amount of Vanity Fair 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 College
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