SV: query: taboo against 3 people in picture

[TRUDGILL Peter]

The third person joining another couple is said "to be playing gooseberry". Anybody know why?

(Sorry, David, nothing to do with your question.)

Peter

On 22 Feb 2012, at 15:09, Didier BOTTINEAU wrote:


All this is also remiscent of Diana’s famous 1995 interview

"Well, there were three of us in this marriage, so it was a bit crowded."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/special/politics97/diana/panorama.html

--> in a strictly monogamous culture, it would be tempting to imagine that a picture with three people in it is remiscent of "overcrowded marriages" / "ménage à trois", a rather unpleasant notion for the people in the picture; while four people in the picture are not supposed to evoke one marriage, but two (in French we also occasionally "ménage à quatre", though!), and so make up an unproblematic number. I have no idea if this connection could apply to South-East Asian and Pacific cultures.

_____________________________________________
Peter Trudgill  FBA
Prof. of Sociolinguistics, Agder Univ., N;
Adjunct Prof., RCLT, La Trobe Univ., AU;
Prof. Emeritus of Eng. Linguistics, Fribourg Univ, CH;
Hon. Prof. of Sociolinguistics, UEA, Norwich, UK

New book: Sociolinguistic typology: social determinants of linguistic complexity. OUP. 2011.




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