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Speech Play and Verbal Art (review)
- Journal of American Folklore
- University of Illinois Press
- Volume 117, Number 464, Spring 2004
- pp. 207-209
- 10.1353/jaf.2004.0055
- Review
- Additional Information
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Journal of American Folklore 117.464 (2004) 207-209
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Joel Sherzer identifies a number of points he hopes his book will illustrate: that speech play flirts with the boundaries of the linguistically possible; that the fit between the components of a linguistic system is loose, giving endless possibilities for play; that play aspects of language [End Page 207] can be foregrounded or minimized; that speech play and verbal art function socially, metacommunicatively, and poetically; and that play is a major source of aesthetic creativity and innovation in oral and written literature. This is to say, however, that there is room in language for play; that it may or may not be employed in particular instances; and that it has social, communicative, and poetic effects. None of these points can be said to be new or surprising, and it is not clear that the innumerable examples organized in only slightly more numerable categories and subcategories in this book are really required to evidence the claims.
In chapter 3, on "Forms of Speech Play in Context," for example, we are led through examples of play languages, puns, riddle jokes, narrative jokes, political jokes, interethnic jokes, dirty jokes, Jewish jokes, metajokes, joke performances, trickster behavior and tales, proverbs, riddles, and verbal dueling. In chapter 5, "Contexts for Speech Play," we are introduced to play and games, television and radio, everyday conversation and interaction, transactions, airplane humor, and greetings. Sherzer sees these juxtapositions of categories and examples as "contributions to the aesthetics as well as the politics of play" and believes they will produce a "postmodern experience" (p. 10). My postmodern sensibilities may be insufficiently developed. I mainly found the juxtapositions annoying.
Reading Speech Play and Verbal Art is something like reading Evan Esar's 1952 work The Humor of Humor rewritten by a linguist, only with less lively examples. That is not quite fair, because Sherzer does provide examples drawn from a number of different languages and cultures—North American, Latin American, Native American, French, and Balinese—and some of these are interesting, particularly those of the Kuna among whom he has done considerable fieldwork. But when an interesting question does arise in the course of a discussion, it is an aside. Why, for instance, have puns lost the status that they once had in the English-speaking world, yet maintain such a prominent place in contemporary advertising (p. 34)? Why do Athapaskan language speakers manipulate shape-form classifiers for humorous effect while the Kuna only see such manipulation as linguistic error (p. 90)? These seem worthy questions in a book singularly short of questions.
Remarkably, the distinction between speech play and verbal art in this book is unclear. It is certain that Sherzer considers them different, but the distinction is elusive. Sometimes it seems as though speech play refers to those techniques from which extraordinary forms of speech are constructed—punning, repetition, parallelism, metaphor, truncation, code switching—while verbal art refers to what is constructed. But jokes, riddles, and verbal duels appear in the chapter on forms of speech play. When Sherzer gives examples of verbal art, he seems to privilege certain song lyrics, poems, and chants thus giving the impression that they—rather than jokes, riddles, or verbal duels—deserve the "art" imprimatur. In other words, he seems to drag subjective notions of quality and worth into the conceptualization of verbal art. Even if he did not intend to do this, I think many readers will be left with the impression that he did.
When the last chapter of a book opens with "I propose a final argument for the importance of speech play and verbal art more generally" (p. 123), it suggests that the book has no real direction. Concluding observations, even when true, are so general and contingent as to be empty. To say that speech play and verbal art are central to individual and group identity (p. 155) means little without specific and detailed examples that show how. To say that...