Stylistics routledge English Language Introductions

parties in interaction.
136
E X P L O R A T I O N
C9
✪
Activity

---

(iii) what sorts of terms of address or politeness tactics would characterise
this sort of interaction.
(iv) what sorts of topics of discourse would be considered suitable in this
interactive context.
On the basis of your responses to (i-iv) write down a short piece of dialogue that
would be typical in this sort of interactive context.
The fragment of dialogue below is the opening of Monty Python’s famous ‘Nudge
Nudge’ sketch, first broadcast on BBC2 in 1971. For ease of reference in the transcript,
the anonymous characters have been named metonymically through slight differ-
ences in their dress, the first man as CRAVAT and the second as TIE. Throughout
the interaction, CRAVAT embellishes each of his utterances with highly exaggerated
nonverbal gestures that include nudging his interlocutor with his elbow at appro-
priate cues in his speech. CRAVAT also uses an exclusively sexual nonverbal gesture
brought about by crossing his forearms and rapidly raising and lowering one fist. As
you read the extract, think about the extent to which your predictions about dialogue
and context are fulfilled:
CRAVAT:
Is your wife a . . . goer . . . eh? Know what I mean? Know what I mean?
Nudge nudge. Nudge nudge. Know what I mean? Say no more . . . know
what I mean?
TIE:
I beg your pardon?
CRAVAT:
Your wife . . . does she, er, does she ‘go’ – eh? eh? eh? Know what I mean,
know what I mean? Nudge nudge. Say no more.
TIE:
She sometimes goes, yes.
CRAVAT:
I bet she does. I bet she does. I bet she does. Know what I mean. Nudge
nudge.
TIE:
I’m sorry, I don’t quite follow you.
CRAVAT:
Follow me! 
Follow
me! I like that. That’s good. A nod’s as good as a wink
to a blind bat, eh?
TIE:
Are you trying to sell something?
(
Monty Python’s Flying Circus
1971)
Commentary: incongruity in discourse
In its day, the Monty Python series marked a radically new comic genre, although
their sometimes surreal and dark humour was not to everyone’s taste. The ‘Nudge
Nudge’ sketch is archetypally Pythonesque in its design, although, like much of the
team’s output, its sexism can make it feel uncomfortable by today’s standards. That
said, it does offer an illuminating example of how to create humour through a simple
mismatch between context and utterance. Your own analysis, which was effectively
based on the exploration of your communicative competence, may have already gone
some way towards explaining the oddity of TIE and CRAVAT’s interaction. There
are for example very strong interactive constraints on what can be said at the begin-
ning of a conversation between two people who don’t know each other, and I imagine
11
111
11
111
E X P L O R I N G D I A L O G U E
137

---

that your responses to questions (i) to (iv) above would have predicted a fairly
narrowly circumscribed set of utterance types. The sorts of utterances used for
conversational openings – what linguists refer to as 
phatic communion
– are expected
to be neutral and uncontroversial. Thus, interactively ‘safe’ gambits in the context
established in the sketch would include references to the weather (‘Nice day’) or
comments on the shared physical context (‘About time someone cleared these
glasses’). What is manifestly 
not
cued by the context is the interrogation of the inter-
locutor about his private life. While the marital status of a stranger is obviously a
delicate subject, topics concerning sexual behaviour are even more taboo. CRAVAT’s
thinly veiled insinuations about the sexual behaviour of his interlocutor’s wife (about
which TIE is perversely slow on the uptake) are thoroughly incongruous in this sort
of discourse context.
Of many other discoursal features of stylistic interest, it is worth noting how TIE’s
apparent bewilderment at CRAVAT’s questions impacts on the development of the
structure of 
exchanges
(see A9 and B9). CRAVAT’s initiations tend to be followed by
requests for restarts from TIE. TIE’s seeming inability to take up CRAVAT’s sexual
references creates an impasse which leads to repeated loops in discourse structure,
and this is further compacted by CRAVAT’s single-minded pursuit of the same basic
innuendo even beyond those phrases conventionally used as sexual double-entendres
(‘
Follow
me! I like that’). And it is only after thirty more lines of the same cyclical
pattern of discourse that TIE eventually begins to grasp the point when finally, in a
comment that summarises the sketch’s entire topical drift, he says ‘Look, are you
insinuating something?’
Summary
Although not drama dialogue 
per se
, the Python sketch can be placed, as can many
other types of non-dramatic dialogue, in Short’s layered interactive schema (see A9).
This is particularly useful for interpreting the comic effect of the dialogue. The
viewer/reader positioned at the higher interactive level occupies the position of a kind
of discoursal ‘on-looker’. The communicative competence that organises everyday
interaction for the on-looker acts as a frame for interpreting the incongruity of the
displayed interaction down at the character level. The greater part of the humour of
this Python sketch arguably stems from the mismatch between character speech and
the discourse context in which it is embedded within the text. As noted earlier,
analysing unusual talk implicitly draws attention to the canonical and the everyday
in interaction. Indeed, it may be possible to read this text as, amongst other things,
a skit on the repressively mundane trivia that often passes for conversation between
non-familiar interactants.
The intersection between style and humour is further addressed in two units, A12
and D12, where additional types of comic language are explored. In the following
unit, a variety of practical activities are developed, some of which involve the analysis
of play dialogue with some attention to humour. However, the methods developed
there mark a new perspective, which is altogether more cognitive than discoursal in
orientation.
138
E X P L O R A T I O N

---

COGNITIVE STYLISTICS AT WORK
This unit offers an opportunity to apply a number of the constructs developed across
this strand to different types of literary text. Although no more than a snapshot of
the range of methods currently available in cognitive poetics, it should nonetheless
signal the type of direction such an analysis might take. A more comprehensive
analysis is provided in the reading that accompanies this unit (D10), where Margaret
Freeman explores from a cognitive stylistic perspective a special kind of grammat-
ical pattern in the poems of Emily Dickinson.
Schemas in literary discourse: that restaurant again
Schank and Abelson’s ‘restaurant script’ was touched upon in B10, and given the
fame, not to say notoriety, their illustration has acquired over the years, we should
probably undertake a stylistic activity that explores this very scenario. As noted,
Schank and Abelson build the idea of temporal progression into a script by defining
it as a 
stereotyped sequence of actions
that define a well-known situation. This ties in
well with models of discourse (see C9) which take account of our assumptions about
how certain routines of discourse should progress.
Read through the following two extracts from Steven Berkoff ’s play 
Greek
(the
extracts are separated by around forty lines of dialogue, which includes interaction
between characters other than the two featured here):
(1)
Cafe. Chorus of kitchen cafe menu sounds and phrases.
EDDY:
One coffee please and croissant and butter.
WAITRESS:
Right. Cream?
EDDY:
Please.
(. . .)
(2)
EDDY:
Where’s my fucking coffee? I’ve nearly finished this cheese-
cake and then my whole purpose in life at this particular
moment will be lost. I’ll be drinking hot coffee with nothing
to wash it down with.
WAITRESS:
Here you are, sorry I forgot you!
EDDY:
About fucking time!
WAITRESS:
Oh shut your mouth, you complaining heap of rat’s shit.
(Berkoff 1983: 35f)
With respect to the obvious transition in discourse strategies that occur in (2), try
to highlight any features of discourse that challenge your understanding of the natural
progression of this familiar service encounter. To what extent is Berkoff ’s dialogue
an example of 
schema disruption
as described in B10? And to what extent can our
predictions about the development of a script (in this case the progression of 
the restaurant script) be aligned with our predictions about discourse and dialogue
(especially politeness strategies)?
11
111
11
111
C O G N I T I V E S T Y L I S T I C S A T W O R K
139
C10