On meaning construction and usage of catchphrase in communication

PLING199 Dissertation in Linguistics 2012/13 12019229 On meaning construction and usage of catchphrase in communication ∗ 1 Introduction The use of catchphrase in verbal communication, both in spoken and written forms, is a phenomenon that has been observed informally on the Internet and in the mass media in recent years. Catchphrases can originate from a wide variety of sources; they may come from classic works, popular culture and even widespread jokes and stories created by ordinary people. They are sometimes classified as part of “memes” when discussed on the Internet. The use of catchphrase in conversation could be demonstrated in a typical example such as (a): (a). A: How is your time in the science library? B: You know, one does not simply walk into Mordor. In B’s utterance, the sentence “one does not simply walk into Mordor” is a catchphrase; it is a famous line from the 2001 film Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, which is used to describe the difficulty and danger on the way to Mordor, which is crucial for destruction of the Ring. In the given context, by uttering this sentence, B compares her experience in the science library to the journey to Mordor, and she intends to implicate that the science library is so crowded that she cannot even find a place to stay. Several problems emerge then, when we try to connect the sentence spoken by B and the meaning she intends to deliver. B’s utterance “one does not simply walk into Mordor” is a fixed (or “semi-fixed”) expression, and there is no single word that can directly contribute to what is implicated; neither does she mention the crowd and the difficulty of finding a seat, which is the core of the intended meaning, nor “the science library”– the object she is talking about. Instead, what is included in the sentence, like the name of the place “Mordor”, is superficially irrelevant to what is implicated. The implicated meaning created by the speaker is almost dissociated from the literal meaning of the sentence, although the original sentence indicates that one normally encounters difficulties when walking into certain places. In some other cases, the intended meaning can be totally unrelated to any literal interpretation, which is shown in (b), where B uses a catchphrase from the TV cartoon comedy Futurama: ∗ I am grateful to my supervisor Richard Breheny for his detailed comments, continuous support and guidance; I also thank my parents, especially my father who drew my initial attention to this topic. Finally, I wish to thank all my friends in London, Beijing and Hong Kong who have provided their intuitions and encouraged me. 1 PLING199 Dissertation in Linguistics 2012/13 12019229 (b). A: I’ve never been so humiliated. What on earth do you want me to do? B: Nothing else, just bite my shiny, metal ass! Although B forms that utterance, her objective is to simply irritate A, which may not be related to the activity “biting ass” at all. Such situation is similar to another kind of fixed expression – idioms; for idiomatic phrases such as “kick the bucket” and “carry the can”, a purely literal interpretation is also of no use for the hearer to derive its meaning. Like idioms, a catchphrase should be understood and interpreted as a whole; but is it always the case? Furthermore, the sentence itself can be regarded as a truism; it already possesses a fixed meaning as soon as it appears in its origin. It is a fact that the place Mordor in Lord of the Ring is difficult to walk into, and the fact cannot be changed, no matter how the sentence is reproduced in whatever contexts. Imagine the following scene: A also stays in the science library at that time, and unlike B, she successfully finds a seat. Now she wants to refute B’s claim, so what should she say? She can say “the science library is not like Mordor” in order to defend that the library is not that crowded, but a simple negation of the original catchphrase, such as “no you are wrong; one can simply walk into Mordor”, is not adequate. Firstly, it is meaningless to negate a truism; secondly and more importantly, negating the catchphrase is not negating B’s implicated meaning, since the intended meaning is not compositionally associated with the literal meaning of the catchphrase. From this perspective, we can say that B actually says nothing; in Gricean view, “one does not simply walk into Mordor” is not “what is said”, but “what is made as if to say” (Grice, 1989: 34).The source of the implicated meaning, if not from the literal meaning, is a question to be discovered. One significant problem is that the use of catchphrase is “risky” to both speaker and hearer. As discussed before, the wording of B’s utterance is irrelevant to the intended meaning; therefore, it is almost impossible for the hearer to infer the implicated meaning from the literal interpretation, and the hearer must discover another route to catch the meaning. For A to understand the sentence, she should primarily understand that “Mordor is a place full of difficulty and danger” from the catchphrase, which requires her to have the background knowledge about Lord of the Ring; then she needs to link “Mordor” to the contextual information to derive that B is comparing the difficulty of finding a place in the science library to “walking into Mordor”. Only after these two necessary procedures can she reconstruct the intended meaning “the library is too crowded to have a place to stay”; without either procedure, she may fail 2 PLING199 Dissertation in Linguistics 2012/13 12019229 to understand B’s intention. There is a possibility that the hearer fails to retrieve the meaning delivered by a catchphrase, especially when the hearer does not possess enough knowledge about its origin. The speaker, by using a catchphrase, is also likely to be under the risk of being misunderstood. It seems that the use of catchphrase creates an amount of inconvenience in verbal communication; in such situation, the motivation of the use of catchphrase is also an important question. This dissertation aims to provide an initial theoretic analysis of the pragmatics of catchphrase, and I mainly focus on catchphrase in daily verbal communication, that is, the use of catchphrase outside its original background and context. It starts from section 2, a systematic review of the existing theories regarding idioms; provided that traditional study of vocabulary regards catchphrase as a part of idiomatic expressions and that the understanding of catchphrase is somehow like idioms, I intend to discover a possible way to analyse catchphrase by reviewing the research on idioms. Section 3 will discuss the similarities and differences between idiom and catchphrase; despise the fact that both of them are fixed (or semi-fixed) expressions, I will argue by presenting a new form of catchphrase that the syntactic structure of a catchphrase could refer to information to some extent, while idioms does not display a distinct feature on that. Section 4 focuses on the meaning composition of catchphrase. I will adopt Relevance Theory to explain that it is not the case that all the catchphrases have explicature; the meaning of some catchphrases comes from their explicature, while sometimes the implicature will play a more important role. Section 5 is a general discussion about the reason for catchphrase usage, and it will develop from two perspectives: a pragmatic perspective, focusing on reproduction of metarepresentations and activation of different encyclopaedic knowledge, and a perspective beyond pragmatics, which will involve discussion about human cognition and cultural transmission. The dissertation will end with a brief conclusion of the use of catchphrase and its variants, as well as several suggestions about further research on the topic. 2 The nature and comprehension of idiom: a literature review In lexicology and other aspects of vocabulary study, an idiom is a multi-word expression with fixed word combination, restricted collocation and fixed structure (Carter, 1998; Grant & Bauer, 2004). What makes idioms different from other multi-word expressions, according to Carter (1998), is that their meanings are not 3 PLING199 Dissertation in Linguistics 2012/13 12019229 normally the combination of literal meaning of their components. It is regarded traditionally that idioms are more arbitrary than compositional; the meaning of an idiom is assigned to the whole expression rather than derived from the literal meaning of different components, and the lack of compositionality even becomes a sign for idiomaticity (Chomsky, 1980; Fraser, 1970; Katz, 1973). Carter (1998) used the concept “semantic opacity” to illustrate the lack of compositionality in the formation of idioms: an idiom is semantically opaque, since its meaning is not obvious from the surface constituents. It was previously believed that, due to semantic opacity, the components of idioms are normally unchangeable and their syntactic structures are not allowed to be modified. In accordance with such theory, one could not reform “to have cold feet” to “to have chilly feet”, or “to kick the bucket” to “the bucket is kicked”, without changing their idiomatic meaning; this theory, however, is negated in later research. The arbitrariness between the form and the meaning of idioms, as well as the property of semantic opacity, leads to a view that an idiom, though as a multi-word expression, is naturally a single lexical item that cannot be transformed (Carter, 1998; Chomsky, 1980; Cruse, 1986; Fraser, 1970; Katz, 1973); in that way, idioms are not capable of undergoing a linguistic analysis in comprehension, so that they will be accessed directly as a whole in comprehension (Bobrow & Bell, 1973; Swinney & Cutler, 1979). However, it is also discovered that at least some idioms allow some kinds of internal transformation, including insertion, substitution and passivisation; although in these idioms the transformation happens internally and directly affects their constitutions, the meaning of idiom is not affect and is still “idiomatic”, i.e. semantically opaque. This contradicts to the previous assumption that idioms, as lexical items, are not likely to be modified. One fully discussed example of these transformable idioms is “to spill the beans”; from the examples below it could be seen that various kinds of internal modification together with passivisation are possible: (c). Selected variation of “to spill the beans” from Vega-Monero (2007: 147): 1) This is the most interesting episode, the one when the beans are finally spilled. (passive) 2) Despite the torture, he didn’t spill a single bean. (internal modification) 3) …Those beans, I am certain he’ll never spill, not even to me. (focus) In some cases, the modification of idioms may be presented in a more radical form: the change of components, especially change of one or two words with similar 4 PLING199 Dissertation in Linguistics 2012/13 12019229 semantic interpretations. Although less seen, the creation of idiom variants (term used by Glucksberg, 1993; see also Glucksberg, 2001) does appear in stylistic writing and daily uses. Examples includes changing “spill the beans” to “throw the beans” (Greenberg-Concool, 1990) and “break the ice” to “crack the ice” or even “shatter the ice” (Glucksberg, 1993); such reformed versions, however, do not cause difficulty in comprehension, although the canonical forms are quicker to be understood (McGlone, Glucksberg, & Cacciari, 1994). This phenomenon seems to violate the fixedness of idioms in word combination and collocation and indicate that idioms possess certain degree of flexibility. New proposals have emerged when the in-category differences were identified. Nunberg (1978) suggests that idioms cannot be solely seen as single lexical items; instead, they form a continuum of compositionality, from the most restricted idioms which do not allow any kind of modification, such as “to kick the bucket” and “by and large”, to the least restricted idioms which can be derived to various new forms, such as “to spill the beans” and “to break the ice”. Gibbs and his colleagues further developed Nunberg’s proposal of compositionality by providing experimental results on idiom comprehension (Gibbs, Nayak, Bolton, & Keppel, 1989; Gibbs, Nayak, & Cutting, 1989); they have shown that when people reach an idiom, both linguistic analysis and direct access of idiomatic token exist in a parallel fashion. Peterson et al (2001) has examined that the syntactic analysis of idioms does exist and is partly isolated from the semantic computation. In addition to the parallel processing, Cacciari and Tabossi (1988) showed that the direct access would be triggered only when the idiom is recognised as a token with meaning beyond its constituents. The continuum of compositionality, however, does not fully explain why some idioms allow internal modification. The degree of compositionality does not essentially correlate with the possibility of idiom variant; even for idioms with low compositionality like the typical “to kick the bucket”, there is possible use that allows the derivation of variants: (d). George: Did the old man kick the bucket last night? Edward: Nah, he barely nudged it. (Example from Glucksberg, 1993: 8; italic by the author) Although “kick the bucket” should be understood as a whole and cannot be decomposed, the variant “(barely) nudged it” is still able to be interpreted in an idiomatic way by the hearer. Readers of the conversational fragment can also 5 PLING199 Dissertation in Linguistics 2012/13 12019229 understand that it means the old man is far away from dying. The restriction of compositionality does not forbid the emergence of variants; an idiom can be structurally fixed and semantically opaque, but at the same time productive. Another problem about internal modification and lexical substitution is more urgent: why can certain words be replaced while others seem problematic? For the more restricted case “to kick the bucket”, a replacement by “to barely nudge” is acceptable as shown in (d), but it is less sensible if “bucket” is replaced by a synonym “pail”; the hearer could be puzzled because there is less obvious communicative purpose to change that word. Even for the more flexible and compositional idiom “to spill the beans”, the variant “to pour the beans” is understandable while “spill the peas” can lead to confusion. The difference of lexical substitution should be explained, but it is beyond the scope of simply compositionality. Glucksberg (1993, 2001) is one among the firsts who propose the idea of semantic productivity of idioms, which provides a possible explanation for the novel idioms variants. He defined semantic productivity as “the ability of people to create new idiomatic meanings by changing relevant aspects of an idiom’s individual elements” (Glucksberg, 1993: 16), and discussed two situations of idiom variants: without or with communicative intent. In the former situation only lexical flexibility of the original idiom is involved, and synonyms are often used in replacement; such variants, however, may seem odd and are less produced in conversations. In the latter situation, since the speaker intends to deliver a modified meaning of the original idiom and there is a more feasible motivation to transform the idiom, semantic productivity will function and “require an interpretable relation between the original constituent and their substitutes such that a communicative intent can be inferred” (Glucksberg, 1993: 15). Therefore, even for the idioms with low compositionality like “to kick the bucket” and “two left feet”, the production of novel variants is still possible, as long as the substituted constituent could form a pragmatically reasonable relation with the original one. The comprehension of novel variants is also interpretable by forming the relation. In Glucksberg’s theory, compositionality is not the core to determine the productivity of idiom. He explained such insufficiency by identifying a subcategory of idioms, named “Quasi-Metaphorical Idioms”. Such idiom does not represent a single meaning; instead, it is more like a prototype of the idiomatic meaning. For instance, the meaning of “to carry coal to Newcastle”, that is “to do unnecessary and useless 6 PLING199 Dissertation in Linguistics 2012/13 12019229 things”, is an extension of the literal meaning of the semantic composition of the idiom (Cacciari & Glucksberg, 1991; Glucksberg, 1993; Vega-Moreno, 2007). When using the idiom, speaker will refer to its literal meaning as well as the allusional content that the idiom is a suitable illustration of current situation. Glucksberg (1993) pointed out that many idiomatic expressions other than quasi-metaphorical idioms, like citing poetry or song titles, also have allusional content. Allusional content will emerge when an expression could evoke a particular thing or thought in a context, and the hearer must understand the intention of allusion in order to fully capture the meaning of speaker. After the initial exploration of idiom variant and productivity, Vega-Monero (2001, 2005, 2007) has developed a unitary approach to explain the creativity in idiom usage based on the Relevance Theory by Sperber and Wilson (1995). She has focused on two aspects: the first on the adjustment of idiom meaning in individual contexts, and the second on the creation of idiom variation. The recent development of Relevance Theory stresses on lexical pragmatics and believes that lexical items undergo constant adjustments in the context, while she has observed that such adjustment also happens in idiom usage. She proposes that in the interpretation of idiom, especially the more transparent one, the hearer may have access to both concepts encoded in the individual constituents and in the whole idiom, while a pragmatic routine could fill the gap between the two types of concepts; the procedure shares similarity with metaphor understanding (Vega-Moreno, 2005). As for the creation of idiom variants, the modification of idiom is motivated by the accessibility of encoded concepts and their contribution to the meaning of idiom as a whole; the speaker will use a particular variant of an idiom, either when the modification could achieve the same degree of relevance, or when it could lead to a slightly different, or more accessible assumption. The variants of idioms actually share the same comprehension procedure with the idioms in original form, while both transparent and opaque idioms also share the same comprehension procedure. In her view, idioms are more flexible and involve higher degree of creativity, and they are not totally arbitrary in interpretation. The development made by Vega-Monero is the currently adopted interpretation of idioms in Relevance Theory. 3 From idiom to catchphrase: similarities and differences In traditional lexicology and language pedagogy research, catchphrase is considered 7 PLING199 Dissertation in Linguistics 2012/13 12019229 as a subcategory of multi-word expressions, which is parallel to idioms (Alexander, 1984; Carter, 1998; Grant & Bauer, 2004). Catchphrase emerges with an origin of popular cultures; after repeated appearances in a relatively restricted context, i.e. the original work, it has formulated a regulated meaning and then entered into daily communication, which, eventually, is used by ordinary people outside its original context at that time. Due to the nature of multi-word expressions, catchphrase shares a number of similarities with idiom, but it is also marked out because of several distinct differences. This section will mainly differentiate the concept of catchphrase and have a shallow discussion on the usage of catchphrase. Multi-word expressions, according to Carter (1998), usually have a single and concrete meaning in a relatively large constituent. Both idiom and catchphrase present such feature: the idiom “to kick the bucket” should be always interpreted as “to die”, regardless of the context; similarly, the meaning of a catchphrase will not be changed in daily use, even though the mental states of the speaker may change significantly. A pair of examples showing the feature is listed below: (e). A: Wow we won the race! Totally out of my expectation! B: Cool! This is the choice of Steins;Gate! (f). A: I lost my purse. It might be stolen when I was on tube. B: This is the choice of Steins;Gate; you must face it. The sentence “this is the choice of Steins;Gate” in the previous examples is an iconic line in a 2009 Japanese visual novel Steins;Gate; although originally in Japanese, it becomes wide-spread and is translated into both English and Chinese after the popularisation of its television adaptation. The meaning of the sentence is roughly “this is your destiny”, which is determined by the plot of the original novel, even though they have slightly different focuses, the first on the coincidence and the second on the force of the fate. From the examples it can be seen that the meaning does not change drastically, despite the fact that the sentence is used in different contexts and conveying different emotions. As illustrated before, both idioms and catchphrases are primarily multi-word expressions; however, they are different at a primary level. Idioms are stable and highly uniformed. A large proportion of idioms are presented in the form of verb phrase, consisting of a verb and an NP. An idiom could have a history of hundreds of years and it is possible that its origin has been lost and only the formulated meaning is preserved (Vega-Moreno, 2007). They are highly lexicalised, and can be treated as 8 PLING199 Dissertation in Linguistics 2012/13 12019229 “lexical items” and recorded in dictionaries by traditional lexicologists. The lexicalisation of idioms might in return influence its stability of meaning. Catchphrase, on the contrary, is always presented in sentential length, with a complete sentential structure, even in imperative form like the example (b) “bite my shiny, metal ass” in the introductory section. Such structure has determined that it cannot be viewed as “lexical items”; compared with words, it is naturally closer to a normal sentence. The impossibility of lexicalisation has made catchphrases less “frozen” than idioms. Catchphrase emerges and disappears at a relatively high speed, and it has a distinctively shorter life span than idioms; a catchphrase may become popular in a moment and be abandoned by public within a year. Most of the time, the origin of catchphrase can be traced back, especially when the catchphrase is from a published or broadcasted work. The difference of “frozenness” has affected the semantic opacity of the two subcategories. In general, more frozen a multi-word expression is, more semantically opaque it will be. A number of idioms have fixed, even arbitrary collocation; it is difficult to explain why “to kick the bucket” means “to die”, and such idioms are truly idiomatic, which means that they are not able to be decomposed. Catchphrases are not really “idiomatic” and they do not have an arbitrary relationship between their constituents and their meanings; even though “one does not simply walk into Mordor” seems to be semantically opaque in conversation, its original meaning can still be constructed from the semantic meaning of every single constituent – “people cannot get into Mordor easily”. Catchphrases are semantically more transparent, and have the possibility to be decomposed. With the difference in semantic opacity, it is therefore reasonable to argue that the flexibility of the two subcategories is also of obvious differences. We should recognise that idioms do allow certain degree of changeability, which is presented as the productivity of an idiom, as the examples listed in section 2; the possible change, however, is quite restricted to most idioms. One exception is the “quasi-metaphorical idioms”, in which the constituents could be replaced by novel words as long as the “quasi-metaphor” in the original meaning could retain. The flexibility of catchphrase is more distinct, and it shares some similarities with the quasi-metaphorical idioms, but not exactly the same. It is worth noticing that a special use of catchphrase, named “snowclone”, is discovered and informally discussed by Pullum (2003, 2004) in his academic blog Language Log, which marks the difference 9 PLING199 Dissertation in Linguistics 2012/13 12019229 of catchphrase from traditional idiom. The terminology “snowclone” comes from a typical linguistic myth about Eskimo words referring to snow, since a semi-fixed sentence “If Eskimos have N words for snow”, usually followed by “then X have as many for Y”. The reappearance of such sentential structure has made it a catchphrase, but it allows great flexibility since the user can create its own version with referent to its original form; Pullum (2003) concluded such use as “reusable customisable easily-recognised twisted variant of a familiar but non-literary quoted or misquoted saying”. Snowclone serves as a template which is originally derived from a catchphrase; usually the syntactic structure of a catchphrase is preserved in snowclone, while the speaker has the flexibility to fill new words and phrases into it. Some typical examples of different snowclones are demonstrated below: (g). The snowclone of “one does not simply walk into Mordor” A: How is your time in the science library? B: You know, one does not simply walk into the psychology reading room. (h). The snowclone of “I’ve never been so tired; I may not love again” A: I think that you ate too much. B: I’ve never been so full; I may never be hungry again. (i). The snowclone of “you lower the IQ of the whole street” (A is complaining about the coming essay deadline) B: Go write your essay! You lower the IQ of the whole Chandler House! Compared with idiom variants discussed in section 2, it could be discovered that what is more important for snowclone is not the meaning of original catchphrase, but its form. When a novel variant is created, the “interpretable relation” between it and the canonical idiom should always be formed in order to infer the new idiomatic meaning; this, however, seems not to be applicable for snowclone, because the inserted novel constituents can be totally independent from the original context. The snowclone can stand alone; when a new variant of catchphrase is derived from the snowclone, its interpretation always includes the literal meaning of the inserted constituents. The reproduction of idioms does not possess such property, which makes the use of catchphrase stand out from other similar multi-word expressions. In the comprehension of idiom and catchphrase, both of them involve certain degree of non-literalness. However, it should be distinguished that the figurativeness of idiom and catchphrase comes from different source. Idioms like “to break the ice” and “to spill the beans” are figurative when they are formed; some idioms, such as “to 10 PLING199 Dissertation in Linguistics 2012/13 12019229 carry coal to Newcastle” and “to throw the house out of window”, may be literal when they emerge, and then gradually become figurative, but when in use currently, they are figurative in every context (Vega-Moreno, 2007). Catchphrase, on the other hand, has and only has a distinct and fixed literal meaning in its original context. In the case “one does not simply walk into Mordor”, the original sentence is talking factually about Mordor and thus totally literal. Only when it is extracted from the film and put into daily conversation, does it become figurative. A final remark in the similarities and differences between the two comes to the concept of “allusional content”. According to Glucksberg (1993, 2001), the allusional content in idiom usage only appears when the idiom is reproduced in another form; when the idiom is used in its original wording, there is no content for the speaker to allude to. Catchphrase in daily communication holds a totally different situation: it is closed tied to the original context, and when it is used in another context, it always refers to an allusional content, that is, the background in which it first appears. Such property of catchphrase is due to its nature: catchphrase roots in popular culture, and it will become meaningless once separated from its origin. 4 Meaning composition of catchphrase As mentioned the introduction section, problems regarding both literal and implicated meaning of catchphrase have been raised, and an interim conclusion is reached that catchphrase does not have “what is said”, but “what the speaker makes as if to say”. The paradox of catchphrase emerges when we try to discuss its truth condition. It can be truism, like the example in introduction “one does not simply walk into Mordor”, regardless of the contexts in which it is reproduced; or it is blatantly false in the new context, like “this is the decision of Steins;Gate”, since we know that there is actually no such “Steins;Gate” in reality. The truth conditions of catchphrases concluded from their literal form vary in different situations; therefore, we could not derive “what is implicated” directly from the literal meaning, and Gricean pragmatics is not sufficient for us to explain the use of catchphrase in daily conversation. In this section, I adopt Relevance Theory developed by Sperber and Wilson (1995; see also Carston, 2002), to see where the intended meaning of the catchphrase comes from. 4.1 The explicature and implicature of catchphrases Relevance Theory is centred at how the relevance of an utterance could lead to the hearer to understand the speaker’s meaning, and has proposed two Principle of 11 PLING199 Dissertation in Linguistics 2012/13 12019229 Relevance, namely Cognitive and Communicative (Sperber & Wilson, 1995; Wilson & Sperber, 2006). It suggests that it is the nature of human cognition to seek maximised relevance from ostensive stimuli, and the hearer will compute the positive cognitive effects with least effort, until she satisfies her expectations of relevance. Different from the simple division between “what is said” and “what is implicated” in Gricean pragmatics (Grice, 1989), Relevance Theory uses the notion of “explicature” and “implicature” to elaborate different levels of the assumptions that the speaker intends to make in an utterance. The concept “explicature” refers to the assumptions explicitly communicated. It includes both the proposition directly expressed by an utterance and “the result of embedding this proposition under a speech-act or propositional-attitude description” (Wilson, 1993); it is a hybrid of semantic and pragmatics with definite truth condition (Carston, 2000). Explicatures can be divided into several levels; the low-level explicatures, or the “explicated propositional forms”, are the extension of the propositional form of the utterance, while a higher-level explicature could represent speaker’s belief and attitude, and both of them could contribute majorly to the optimal relevance (Carston, 2002). In more recent version of Relevance Theory, the scope of explicature has expanded to cover both propositions built on encoded linguistic meanings and the adjustment based on it (Sperber & Wilson, 1995; Carston, 2002). “Implicature” in Relevance Theory is also different from the original concept proposed by Grice: it is produced by a further development of explicature, with combination of contextual information and lexical adjustment. In Sperber and Wilson’s definition, implicature has two branches: implicated premises, which are some contextual assumptions that can be used in the processing of the utterance, and implicated conclusions, which are the contextual implications (Carston, 2002; Sperber & Wilson, 1995). There are cases in which the utterance does not express any implicature, and cases where the implicature is the major source of relevance (Carston, 2002). Whether explicature or implicature will be the main contributor of maximised relevance is constrained by the expectation of the addressee, especially in the case of question and answer (Carston, 2002). The case of catchphrase is complicated when it comes to judge the contributor of maximal relevance. In the traditional relevance-theoretic account, the proposition expressed by a catchphrase is only a method for the hearer to get access to the assumptions that the speaker intends to communicate. If we review B’s utterance in 12 PLING199 Dissertation in Linguistics 2012/13 12019229 the example (a) in Introduction, we could only get one higher-level explicature, as shown in (j-2): (j). Analysis of (a). 1) A: How is your time in the science library? B: You know, one does not simply walk into Mordor. 2) B says that one does not simply walk into Mordor. At the same time, what is actually communicated in B’s utterance is a number of implicatures about the feeling she has in the science library, and from the catchphrase A could access certain features of the science library which is linked to the properties of Mordor: for instance, the entrance is too crowded that one can hardly get through, the air in it smells awful, there is no seat available, people are noisy and one cannot stay comfortably, etc. These propositions expressed are left for the hearer to infer rather than directly expressed by the speaker, while between the proposition expressed and the propositional form of speaker’s utterance there is some kind of resemblance. One possible approach, considered the new development in lexical adjustment and its influence on explicit meaning, is to suggest that the meaning of catchphrase may share similarity with other figurative uses, such as metaphor. If we compare pure catchphrases, i.e. the original catchphrases without any modification, with the snowclone variants of catchphrases, we could see that the latter variety is more “literal” than the former one, because the latter one always includes some information derived directly from the literal meaning of inserted constituents, while such feature does not appear in pure catchphrase; those constituents like “Mordor” are non-literal, and a valid interpretation should be provided in order to understand the whole catchphrase. The meaning of “non-literal” constituents could be examined based on the literal/non-literal continuum developed by Carston (2002; see also Wilson & Carston, 2007), which is similar to the explanation of loose use and metaphor in lexical pragmatics. The analysis of category extension in lexical pragmatics suggests that a proper name could sometimes denote a range of entities with same or similar features, e.g. “give me a piece of Kleenex” as “give me a piece of disposable tissue” (Wilson, 2004). When used in the way of category extension, the constituent that undergoes lexical adjustment actually becomes a salient member of the intended category, and an ad hoc concept is constructed in comprehension. Category extension requires hearer to have the encyclopaedic knowledge of the mentioned proper name so that she could reach 13 PLING199 Dissertation in Linguistics 2012/13 12019229 the maximised relevance. The “non-literal” constituents in a pure catchphrase, like “Mordor” in “one does not simply walk into Mordor”, could be viewed as a kind of loose use and undergoes lexical adjustment in comprehension. “Mordor” here does not refer to the exact Mordor in the Middle Earth; instead, it becomes a representative of places like Mordor, i.e. places that are difficult for people to walk into. In this case, the meaning of “Mordor” is broadened to a variety of places at first place, and then narrowed to the science library due to the contextual restriction. The process of ad hoc concept generation has endowed the science library with some properties that resemble to Mordor in Lord of the Ring. We could say that this catchphrase has an explicitly communicated proposition “one does not simply walk into MORDOR*”, while it is the basis of further contextual implications, which is demonstrated below: (k). Analysis of “one does not simply walk into Mordor” Explicature: one does not simply walk into MORDOR* Implicature: it is difficult to walk into the science library, which is to some extent similar with Mordor Contextual assumption: if the science library is like Mordor, then B has taken a lot of time to find an available seat Contextual conclusion: B has taken a lot of time to find an available seat in the science library Like the construction of metaphorical meaning, the source of conceptual broadening in these examples comes from the encyclopaedic knowledge related to the catchphrase and its background. In the use of catchphrase, the encyclopaedic knowledge is even more crucial: the catchphrase itself is alluding to that knowledge to hearer, and the hearer must use that knowledge for the lexical adjustment, or she may be puzzled by the whole expression and fail to reach the optimal relevance. Compared with a direct literal expression of the same intended meaning “the science library is too crowded”, when other conditions are equal, the hearer needs to put more effort on the catchphrase to reach the same positive cognitive effect. The speaker should have also realised that problem before she utters the catchphrase. If the speaker insists to use a catchphrase rather than a direct literal expression after considering all the possible consequence, we must believe that she holds the Presumption of Optimal Relevance (Sperber & Wilson, 1995): • The ostensive stimulus is relevant enough to be worth the audience’s 14 PLING199 • Dissertation in Linguistics 2012/13 12019229 processing effort; It is the most relevant one compatible with communicator’s abilities and preferences. Therefore, the speaker should also have some additional information to express by uttering a catchphrase; otherwise, her ostensive behaviour is not reasonable. In fact, there are some other assumptions that the speaker communicates ostensively, or at least tries to communicate ostensively, but beyond the meaning composition level and has entered into a higher level of representation; I will further discuss these mental representations and their functions in later sections. This approach is not universal for all catchphrases, though; it has exception when it comes the catchphrases like “bite my shiny, metal ass” in example (b). Although being a catchphrase and involves an amount of encyclopaedic knowledge, the sentence itself is a variant of a common saying “kiss one’s ass”; its meaning is not from lexical adjustment, but purely from both the basic form it refers to and its background knowledge. When the catchphrase is uttered in conversation, “what is communicated” is only a higher-level explicature which is similar to (j-2), together with a series of implicatures; there is no propositional explicature at all. This is the point where catchphrase is more complicated than metaphor: the assumptions communicated ostensively can come from explicature or implicature; therefore, an interpretation simply based on lexical adjustment at the level of explicature is not valid. In section 5, we can see a more general approach to the use of catchphrase, regardless of the existence of explicature. 4.2 The meaning conveyed by snowclone The snowclone phenomenon in the section 3 can be interpreted by the suggestion that the “meaning” of some catchphrases comes from their explicature. When people produce a variant of catchphrase from a snowclone, they usually fill the new information that fit the context and can be interpreted in a literal way; what is preserved is the form of original catchphrase. These modifications seem to draw a line between the pure catchphrase and snowclone – snowclone can be interpreted literally to some extent, despite the fact that both of them are subcategories of catchphrase in general. After the analysis of lexical adjustment in some of pure catchphrases, however, we see the possibility to analyse these “more literal” snowclones in a similar way. If the “non-literal” constituents in those pure catchphrases are used in a loose manner and 15 PLING199 Dissertation in Linguistics 2012/13 12019229 deliver an adjusted meaning in the explicature, then the novel constituents in snowclone can be interpreted as their literal meanings: the constituents refer to exact entities that are important in the context. This can be illustrated if we analyse example (g) in Section 3, which is demonstrated in (l): (l). The analysis of “one does not simply walk into the psychology reading room” Explicature: one does not simply walk into the psychology reading room Implicature: it is difficult to walk into the psychology reading room, which is to some extent similar with Mordor Contextual assumption: if the psychology reading room is like Mordor, then B has taken a lot of time to find an available seat Contextual conclusion: B has taken a lot of time to find an available seat in the psychology reading room This analysis of snowclone stays in line with the interpretation of pure catchphrase in the last subsection. The most distinct difference between the explicature of snowclone and the explicature of pure catchphrase is that the former one does not undergo any lexical adjustment. The explicature of snowclone is closer to an “explicated propositional forms”; it has a definite truth value, and it is possible for the hearer to directly negate it, in a way of “no, you can simply walk into the psychology reading room and find a place”. This makes the snowclone version more “literal” than the pure catchphrase, because theoretically its explicature corresponds to its surface form more closely, and it is not necessary to generate any ad hoc concept in the process of comprehension. The gap between explicature and implicature, which is marked italic in (l), can be filled if we assume that the snowclone templates contain certain allusional contents. One could argue that the explicature already has sufficient information for the hearer to derive the implicature, so it is possible that the hearer may skip the allusional content. The syntactic structure of snowclone, nevertheless, is more roundabout than a direct answer, which would increase the processing effort of the hearer, so there must be additional reasons for speaker to use it; therefore, the allusional content should be considered as part of the speaker’s intention, which has the same reason with the use of pure catchphrase. Allusional content could also be the source of a series of implications which is relevant to the utterance, for instance, the psychology reading room is the worst place for study, or the room is full of weird students, which makes 16 PLING199 Dissertation in Linguistics 2012/13 12019229 the speaker uneasy, etc.; these implications could not be generated if one assumes that the speaker skips the allusional content. A possible analysis of the catchphrase can be proposed then, regarding the allusional contents triggered when the hearer constructs the implicatures. As mentioned before, linguistic analysis always happens in the comprehension of multi-word expressions like idioms, although the syntactic processing is partly isolated from the semantic processing; the evidence discussed in Section 2 could lead to an assumption that the structure of a multi-word expression could encode some information, and it can be partly decomposed. In the case of snowclone, its syntactic structure can create a contextual environment for the allusional content – the original catchphrase from which the snowclone is derived, as well as the background information of the original catchphrase. Once the snowclone is used, the original catchphrase is referred by the syntactic structure; the process is same to the production and usage of novel idiom variants. The contextually important information, which is crucial for both explicature and implicature, is presented in the “filled blank” of the template; in pure catchphrase, it is constructed as an ad hoc concept after lexical adjustment, while in snowclone it is shown in a literal way. Same as the catchphrase itself, the contribution of snowclone template is at a higher level of representation. 5 Perspectives on the usage of catchphrases In the previous section, I have explained that the meaning of a pure catchphrase in daily conversation contains different levels of representations, and the lower level of representation has been discussed on the basis of Relevance Theory. In this section, I will focus on the higher level of representations and provide several reasons to answer why people use catchphrase. Both pragmatic explanations and more cognitive general explanations will be given to show that there are legitimate reasons for human beings to use catchphrases, despite the fact that they cost more cognitive effort. 5.1 Echoic use: an explanation at the level of pragmatics The theory of echoic use is firstly proposed by Sperber and Wilson (1981) when they develop a theory for irony, while later it has expanded to the discussion of reported speech and quotation. Echoic use is a subtype of attributive use; usually, the echoic utterance has been uttered by other people before, so that the new utterance can “echo” with the previous utterance (Wilson & Sperber, 2012; Wilson, 2006). By uttering a sentence in an echoic manner, the major intention of the speaker is not the content, 17 PLING199 Dissertation in Linguistics 2012/13 12019229 explicature or truth value of the utterance, but her attitude, belief or reaction towards a representation that has been shown previously (Wilson & Sperber, 2012). The speaker can show approval, denial, sarcasm or appreciation to the utterance that is echoed. Echoic use involves a higher representation than most of “plain” utterances; it signals the speaker’s attitude towards a previous utterance or thought, and the hearer need to construct two levels of representations in order to fully understand echoic utterance. The first level is the propositional level, at which only the interpretive meaning of the utterance is needed; the second and higher level is the speaker’s attributive meaning and real intention, which can be totally contradictory to the interpretive meaning, since the speaker could always hold a different attitude towards a representation (Wilson & Sperber, 2012; see also Carston, 2002). The representation being echoed can be abstract, which is a single proposition; or public, as an utterance in certain context that is shared common knowledge in a community; or mental, which can be a piece of thought (Noh, 2000). In the case of irony, the echoed representation is usually the original thought or utterance that is conveyed or produced before, while by echoing with the original thought, the speaker intends to show disapproval and sarcasm to the attributed thought. The use of catchphrase, when its properties are analysed, should also belong to a subcategory of echoic use, because it is echoing to an utterance or thought that already exists. What are used as catchphrases are some public representations that have been popularised alongside with the spread of its original work, so that we can assume that they are shared between the speaker and hearer; therefore, the speaker could use these representations to express her personal attitude. As analysed in section 4.1, some catchphrases do not have a communicated explicature when they are used in daily communication. The speaker does not focus on the truth-condition of the utterance, but on her attitude towards the utterance; the attributed utterance, that is the catchphrase, resembles the thought that the speaker intends to express in content (Wilson & Sperber, 2012). From a relevance-theoretical perspective, in order to understand irony, the hearer needs to identify the attitude of the speaker towards the original representation (Noh, 2000), while an ironic utterance always conveys a negative attitude to the attributed thought (Wilson & Sperber, 2012). Similar to irony, on the way to understand a catchphrase in conversation, the hearer should understand the attitude of speaker towards the iconic lines in popular cultures, and such kind of understanding is 18 PLING199 Dissertation in Linguistics 2012/13 12019229 universal to all the use of catchphrases. Typically, when using a catchphrase, the speaker shows acceptance and agreement to the representation in use; she borrows the representation from its original background and uses it to convey a similar meaning she intends to express in the conversation, and she intends to show that she has an idea that resembles the catchphrase. By uttering “one does not simply walk into Mordor” when asked about the experience in the science library in (a), the speaker tries to echo her personal attitude to the description of Mordor and shows that her feeling to the science library is the same as the general view of Mordor in Lord of the Ring. It is also possible for her to use the catchphrase in an ironic way, but that does not change her acceptance of original sentence; otherwise, she should not use that catchphrase to present her thought. The echoing process in the use of catchphrase is more complicated than that in irony; it also evokes additional information – the allusional content discussed by Glucksberg (1993) – in hearer’s mind. Usually, an echoic utterance will remind the hearer of the thought or utterance it echoes (Kreuz & Glucksberg, 1989; Wilson & Sperber, 2012); in the case of catchphrase, more contents are echoed and activated as well: the original background where it appears, some relevant concepts, implications and other kind of encyclopaedic knowledge, etc. By uttering a catchphrase in conversation, the speaker shows her agreement and acceptance to both the original utterance and the background information; she tries to draw hearer’s attention to that additional information because she believes that the information will benefit hearer’s understanding. In fact, the allusional content is essential to the comprehension of catchphrase: as discussed in section 4, it is the source of lexical adjustment in the derivation of explicature, and also the source of implications at the level of implicature. The hearer should recognise that this particular utterance is echoing to an existing utterance in popular culture before she could get access to the allusional content, while only with the allusional content can she derive precise and complete implicatures of the speaker. What the speaker intends to communicate becomes a combination of several different aspects: the explicatures (if exist), the implicatures – which form the most important part in communication, the speaker’s attitude towards the catchphrase, and allusional content. As discussed by Wilson and Sperber (2012), echoic utterances could convey the attitude of speaker to an immediately preceding utterance, or a more distant utterance; they could attribute to not only individual thoughts and utterances, but also thoughts 19 PLING199 Dissertation in Linguistics 2012/13 12019229 of common wisdom and to general public. The use of catchphrase is a perfect example of distant echoing and echoing to general public. The speaker is endorsing her personal attitude in an existing and widespread representation, so that she could convey her own representation in a relatively “lazy” way; she can “borrow” a ready-made sentence and modify it in accordance to the context, so there is no need for her to make up her own words for her representation. While the speaker puts herself under the risk of being misunderstood, she actually gets the compensation that her brain cells are saved from organisation of new utterances. 5.2 Cultural transmission: beyond the level of pragmatics Catchphrases, as sentences that are widely spread in a community or a cultural subgroup, should be viewed as a part of cultural elements. After the discussion of catchphrase at the level of utterance, it is necessary to examine the phenomenon at a higher level: why do people echo with some representations that are popular in the culture? A possible explanation of the use of catchphrase is about the cognition and cultural transmission of human being, and in this section I intend to provide a more deep-rooted interpretation of this phenomenon. When people use catchphrase, they constantly refer back to their encyclopaedic knowledge, especially the knowledge they consider “shared information”, which are mostly the background information of the original work of the catchphrase. Such encyclopaedic knowledge, as discussed in section 4, is not conveyed in explicature; instead, some of them are integrated at a syntactic level and serve as allusional content, either for a search of identity of “fans of certain works”, or an expression of pun of in-jokes. The shared encyclopaedic knowledge is outside the scope of linguistic knowledge; therefore, the use of catchphrase should be considered beyond pure linguistic or pragmatic level, since it involves the ability to access information from the cultural background. It is necessary to investigate the phenomenon of catchphrase at a higher level. Why do people use certain “unnecessary” information apart from the information they try to deliver? Such usage is due to the transmission and diffusion of culture, while in different theories it is believed that cultural elements are either replicating or mutating themselves in order to survive. Sperber (1985, 1994) has proposed a theory of human cognition, named “the epidemiology of representation”; the theory is based on the assumption that human thought is modular. In his view, humans do not only construct their own mental representation of information, but also “produce information for one another in the 20 PLING199 Dissertation in Linguistics 2012/13 12019229 form of public representation” (Sperber, 1994: 54). During the reproduction of public representations, certain members go further and are distributed widely, while these members form the basic concepts of the so-called “culture”. He argues that the construction of human culture is like a kind of epidemics; what are spread are not bacteria, but certain popular representations, and the information in these representations compete with each other for attention and memory until the winner is stabilised in a culture. Human mind, on the other hand, is susceptible to receive and repeat these representations, and it is ready to store them as everyday empirical knowledge in the encyclopaedic memory (Sperber, 1985). Relevant information, according to Sperber (1994: 55), “the relevance of which is relatively independent from the immediate context, is ceteris paribus, more likely to reach a cultural level of distribution”. If a representation conveys a stable belief, which is barely affected by the context in which it appears, it will become more popular in cultural transmission. The representation in cultural transmission is not fully “frozen”, though; every time when it appears, however, it is a construction of a new representation similar to the original one, rather than a reproduction or replication (Sperber, 1985). This allows the slight change and modification of representation on the basis of the local context. Based on this interpretation of culture, it can be inferred that the use of catchphrases – especially those applied in the daily conversations – is due to two reasons. One of them, which functions as the basis, is the strong or quick influence of its cultural background. As illustrated before, in order to be accepted by both speaker and hearer, catchphrases should enter the scope of “everyday empirical knowledge” and be well-received even before their appearance in conversation; in other words, the language users should be infected by catchphrases before they spread them like epidemics. An epidemic of representation requires the representation – here the catchphrases – to be either strong or quick in order to be success in the competition (Sperber, 1985). Strong background creates a steady channel for people to familiarise themselves with possible catchphrases, as well as a relative stable state for catchphrases to transmit and transform. The wide spread and commercial success of Lord of the Ring series and Steins;Gate more or less contributes to the transmission of two catchphrases “walk into Mordor” and “the choice of Steins;Gate”, while it can also be explained that why quotations from classic literary works are frequently used as the templates of “snowclones”. Quick influence of the background allows a 21 PLING199 Dissertation in Linguistics 2012/13 12019229 catchphrase to draw attention of language users, so that it could have the opportunity to appear in conversation. Internet, as a suitable medium for quick transmission of jokes, puns, quotations and cultural elements in other forms, also plays an important role. The other reason for catchphrase to spread is from its own nature: usually a catchphrase possesses an independent meaning. Such meaning is internalised when it emerges from the original cultural background; when a sentence appears in a book, or a line is spoken in a movie or a joke, it always has an appointed addressee, a rigid context and a fixed syntactic structure, all of which can be hardly modified. When the speaker uses the sentence or line in an echoic manner in conversation, such information will be retrieved by the hearer in order to understand explicature, implicature, as well as allusional content. The stability of the meaning of catchphrase will entertain its convenience when expressing a stable belief shared by different interlocutors. Finally, there is a suggestion regarding the target of use of catchphrase at the level of construction of mental representation. By her communicating activity, the target of a communicator, according to Sperber (1994: 61), is “deliberately and overtly helping her addressee to infer the content of the mental representation she wants him to adopt”, and all the effort that the speaker makes can be regarded as the effort to deliver her mental representation to the addressee. At the end of last subsection, I have discussed that the speaker is “borrowing” a well-constructed sentence for her representation; here we could further develop the argument: the catchphrase is not only an expression for her mental representation, but a part of her mental representation. By using a catchphrase, the speaker intends to demonstrate not only the explicature and implicature of the utterance, but the fact that her experience has evoked some relevant knowledge and reminded her of the catchphrase as well as the background work. In such situation, the allusional content of catchphrase cannot be discarded, because it forms a part of the speaker’s mental state. All these elements are the content of her mental representation and she wants to express them at the same time; therefore, what she intends to mean is more than a direct proposition, and the use of catchphrase becomes crucial for her addressee to fully construct her mental representations, which are listed below: • I think of / have experienced a situation X; 22 PLING199 • • Dissertation in Linguistics 2012/13 X has activated my memory of catchphrase A from background work B; • I would like the hearer to know X; • B; • I would like the hearer to appreciate A and B. • 12019229 I would like the hearer to know that X has activated my memory of A and I would like the hearer to know that I have some knowledge about B; And so on. The set of mental representations will be partly lost if the speaker does not use a catchphrase; in this case, the benefit of catchphrase is high above the risk of being misunderstood, which makes the use of catchphrase legitimate. That is the explanation for the “some other assumptions” mentioned in section 4.1. 6 Conclusion and suggestions of further research The use of catchphrases and their snowclone variants in daily conversation is an extension of the existing research on idioms and multi-word expressions, while it also combines the study of echoic utterances and cultural transmission. In this research, it has been discussed that the “meaning” of catchphrase that makes sense in conversation can come from both explicature and implicature; if the catchphrase does have an explicature, it should undergo pragmatic adjustment, while ad hoc concepts are generated by conceptual broadening and narrowing based on the background knowledge of the catchphrase and contextual information. The phenomenon of snowclone is also of interest to the study of the creativity as well as modularity of the human mind; snowclone, as a template, which only includes the sentential structure, could refer the hearer to the original catchphrase and indicate the appearance of allusional contents. The meaning potentially conveyed in snowclone also stays in line with the evidence of syntactic processing in multi-word expressions. What differentiates the use of catchphrase with the use of idiom is that catchphrases are some existing and widespread representations that can be attributed to, while from this perspective, idioms are more like ordinary words. When a catchphrase is uttered, the speaker does not focus on its meaning; what is emphasised is her agreement and acceptance of the attributed utterance. The speaker focuses more on the resemblance of the catchphrase and her intended thoughts; that makes the use of catchphrase a kind of echoic use and is pragmatically similar to ironical utterance. A more in-depth 23 PLING199 Dissertation in Linguistics 2012/13 12019229 discussion about catchphrase stresses on its cultural property, to which idioms have limited relation. As cultural elements, catchphrases have their own reasons to be successful and repeatedly used out of their original context, and the fact that the speaker has the knowledge of catchphrase is also included in the speaker’s mental representation. This dissertation mainly serves as a theoretical exploration of the use of catchphrase. Several suggestions have been raised in section 4 and 5, while the two sections only provide a possible perspective on the meaning and use of catchphrase. These suggestions and proposals are subject to further tests in experiments. For instance, the degree of syntactic analysis in the composition of catchphrases and snowclone templates is not specified: when using a snowclone, do we always refer to the original catchphrase, or do we analyse the syntactic structure from the very beginning and ignore that it is a snowclone? Regarding the difference of pure catchphrase and snowclone, there are several unresolved problems, including the comprehension pattern, the existence of lexical adjustment, etc. Another important issue to be explored is about unfamiliar and novel catchphrase. As discussed in section 5.2, newly emerged catchphrases appear rapidly on the internet; there are also catchphrases that are limited in a smaller community, and even novel words, like “Bazinga” in the 2008 US sitcom The Big Bang Theory. How the new catchphrases get their meanings in use, and how the hearer identify and comprehend these unfamiliar and new catchphrases when they appear in conversation, are topics worth discussion. 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