Abstract
In this paper, we develop a model of verbal parody based on the view that parody is a
human behavior. We argue that verbal parody involves a highly situated, intentional and con-
ventional expressive made up of four essential acts: (1) the intentional re-presentation of the
object of parody, (2) the flaunting of the verbal re-presentation, (3) the critical act, and (4) the
comic act. To successfully create a verbal parody, a speaker must manipulate all four essen-
tial acts with the intent to create parody. In the second section of our paper, we address the
potential scope of parody in real communication. We explain how parody serves to celebrate
the object it apparently ridicules, by appealing to politeness theory (Brown and Levinson,
1987). We also argue that the object of parody may be anything in the world; that a single
parodic act may have multiple objects; and that the re-presenting verbal expression of the
parodic speech act may function as a direct or indirect non-parodic speech act, which may be
enhanced or inhibited by the parody.
I. Introduction
For centuries artists have parodied individuals, groups, institutions and their
actions, beliefs, and ideas both to entertain and to offer critical commentary. Con-
sider: in Frogs, Aristophanes parodies (among other things) Aeschylus's and Euripi-
des's style of argumentation; Cervantes pokes fun at medieval romance in his Don
Quixote; Chaplin challenges Hitler's power by parodying him in The Little Dictator;
Barth, in a particularly subtle use of parody, apparently forswears and subsequently
reaffirms values associated with eighteenth-century British imperialism in his novel
The S o t - W e e d Factor; and many a street-mime has mocked capitalistic values by
parodying the businessman's walk. Parody has so pervaded Western Society that it
has become the concern of twentieth-century literary theorists. These theorists typi-
cally consider parody as an art form (e.g., Stone, 1914; Rose, 1979; Hutcheon,
1985) and a genre (e.g., Frye, 1957; Bakhtin, 1981). Together, they identify impor-
tant features of parody; however, by confining their investigations to literary texts,
they severely limit its scope. Highlighting its critical and imitative features, Stone
(1914) characterizes parody as high art, while Rose (1979) offers us parody as meta-
fiction, portending its most promising future as the literary critic's tool. Hutcheon
(1985) recasts literary allusion as iteration and calls it parody. Rose (1979) and Frye
(1957) rarefy it into a set of features and call it an art form and a genre, respectively.
Also concerned with parody as genre, Bakhtin reduces it to the interaction of "two
styles, two points of view", hence, "two speaking subjects" (1981: 76). Taking a
different approach, Kuiper (1984), Nash (1985) and Norrick (1989) do investigate
parody as a linguistic phenomenon; however, they also limit their investigations to
literary works.
We offer a different perspective on parody: we view it as a human behavior which
is enacted in various ways, through gesturing, writing or speaking; and in various
contexts - e.g., on street corners, in family conversations, and in literature. Our par-
ticular interest is in parody in everyday conversation. Whereas many literary critics
analyze parody in order to understand literature - as, for example, an art form (e.g.,
Stone,) or a mode of criticism (Bakhtin, 1981: Rose, 1979, 1993) - we investigate
the structural and pragmatic aspects of parody in order to understand parody, and
perhaps through it, something more about indirect speech acts in general.
Our primary goal has been (1) to identify which of the features pointed to (and, in
some cases, described) by literary theorists are essential to creating a verbal parody,
(2) to bring these features together in a formal model, and (3) to explain how these
formal features interact with contextual elements of the relevant speech event(s) ~ to
effect a verbal parody. The emphasis in this research is on production: 2 we investi-
gate what a speaker who intends to communicate a verbal parody must do. We do
also discuss some of the conditions necessary for successful interpretation, both
because production requires knowledge of comprehension and because parody is a
communicative act - one which depends on the successful interaction between a
speaker and a hearer.
To develop our model of verbal parody, we have drawn from the works of lan-
guage philosophers and linguists who investigate language use as a human behavior,
including Ryle (1971), Wittgenstein (1968), Austin (1975), Grice (1989), Strawson
(1970), Searle (1969), and Brown and Levinson (1987). At its most basic level, our
model explains how a speaker uses an utterance to communicate a parodic message
to a hearer. Considered in the context of human behavior and society, however, the
model demonstrates how a speaker uses verbal parody as a complex and subtle crit-
ical tool. 3
With the model established, in 'Extending the analysis' we begin to investigate
parody's scope in conversation. This move away from prototypical parody offers
insight into the complexity of verbal parody and, ultimately, its usefulness as a crit-
For analysis of the importance of the speech event to the interpretation of speaking strategies, see
Blum-Kulka (1990).
2 Kuiper(1984) defines satire (and, indirectly, parody) from the perspective of the perceiver.
3 In 'The princess bride and the parodic impulse: The seduction of Cinderella', our model helps to
explain how screenwriter Goldman and film director Reiner employ parody to simultaneously ridicule
and celebrate fairy-tale true love (Henry and Rossen-Knill, in press).
D.F. Rossen-Knill. R. H emy / Journal ~f Pragmatics 27 (1997) 719-752 721
ical and social tool. 4 In Section 3.1, 'Extending the analysis', we appeal to Brown
and L e v i n s o n ' s politeness theory (1987) to explain how verbal parody - an act
which we define as essentially critical - can pay tribute to its object. In Sections
3.2-3.4, we discuss respectively p a r o d y ' s range in choosing its object, targeting mul-
tiple objects, and conveying multiple messages. In Section 3.5, we discuss briefly the
taxonomic limits of our formal definition, particularly in distinguishing verbal par-
ody from its close relatives verbal irony and verbal satire. Rather than argue for the
existence o f boundaries made clear by formal models, we suggest the need to look
beyond formal models to a speech act's purpose, the hearer's role in characterizing
the speech act, and the speech event in order to understand why clear boundaries
elude us.
Verbal parody involves a highly situated, intentional, and conventional speech act
which re-presents the object of parody and flaunts that re-presentation in order to
criticize that object in a humorous way. In using the term verbal parody, we mean to
refer to any act in which a speaker uses a verbal expression (written or spoken) to
communicate some parodic meaning to a hearer. This verbal expression may be a
referring expression with or without propositional content, and may refer to any
thing or person in the world. Before describing what makes verbal parody a unique
speech act, we discuss briefly why it is like all speech acts. Consider first this tradi-
tional example of verbal parody from The Handbook of Literary Terms (Holman and
Harmon, 1986: 360):
the parody:
The Soul selects her o w n Sorority -
Then - shuts the D o r m -
Like any speech act, the verbal parody in (1) utilizes those intentions essential in
communication: (a) an informative intention, "to inform the audience of some-
thing"; and (b) a communicative intention, "to inform the audience of o n e ' s infor-
4 In developing our model of prototypical parody, we rely on examples of parody taken from real con-
versation. These examples fall into two categories: those taped and subsequently transcribed (2, 3, 4,
11), and those recorded in writing after the speech event (5-8, 10, 12-14). In extending the analysis, as
we move away from prototypical parody in order to speculate on the scope of parody in real conversa-
tion, we also rely on constructed examples of parody. In this section, examples of parody fall into three
categories: taped and transcribed (19, 21), written down after the speech event (17, 20, 22), and con-
structed (16, 18, 23-27).
722 D.F. Rossen-Knill, R. Hem'y / Journal of Pragmatics 27 (1997) 719-752
mative intention" (Sperber and Wilson, 1986: 29). Accordingly, Holman and Har-
mon intend (a) to inform the reader that Dickinson's couplet is to be made fun of,
perhaps because its use of dashes and capitals feels too dramatic; and (b) to inform
the reader of their informative intention, both by writing to a reader and, more obvi-
ously, by publishing that writing (Pratt, 1977:116). In Austin's (1975) terms, in pro-
ducing and by producing the verbal parody in (1), the parodists act in and on the
world; specifically, they critique an object in the world - Dickinson's text.
As (1) demonstrates and numerous theorists have noted (e.g., Bakhtin, 1981:
75-76; Rose, 1979: 59), the nature of the information conveyed through parody is,
at minimum, a criticism of some objectJ This leads us to argue that the parodic
speech act is an expressive, with some revisions to the category. Searle explains,
"The illocutionary point of this class is to express the psychological state specified
in the sincerity condition about a state of affairs specified in the propositional con-
tent" (1979: 15). In parody, the speaker produces a verbal expression to convey
some critical attitude (the psychological state) about the object of parody. As we've
already said, the authors of the parody in (1) ridicule Dickinson's style, perhaps for
its melodramatic use of dashes and capitals. So far, Searle's definition pertains.
Non-propositional examples of verbal parody do, however, point to an interesting
problem for Searle's definition, which requires that the expressive have proposi-
tional content. In apparent disregard for his recognition that non-propositional utter-
ances can function as illocutionary acts (Searle, 1969: 30), Searle's definition
excludes utterances which express some psychological state about some state of
affairs, yet lack propositional content. Consider the following parody:
our labeling verbal parody as an expressive belies the complexity of the instantiation
of verbal parody in the parodic utterance, as our model and extended analysis will
demonstrate.
the parody:
Brandon: A lot of what he was after in some of these films, was this concern
about America. And what was going on in the world, and about the
little guy, and the depression, and -
Ned: I understand that.
Brandon: Y'know.
Ned: I'm in favor of the depression. I think you can
[do that -]
Brandon: [Haha] (h)I'm injavor of the depression
[hahahehehe.]
6 The discussion of re-presentation which appears in this paper has appeared in a somewhatdifferent
form in Rossen-Knill(1995).
724 D,F. Rossen-Knill. R. Hemw /Journal ~)/Pragmatics 27 (1997) 719-752
N ed: [Hhaw.] I'm in favor of the little guy, especially in times like the
depression. (Norrick, 1993: 87, Norrick's italics)
Brandon's verbal expression 'I'm inJavor of the depression' in (3) is intended to re-
present Ned's serious speech act in the preceding turn in order to parody it. Through
the parody, Brandon criticizes Ned's imprecise use of language, a criticism Ned
receives well, judging by his good-humored self-correction, '[Hhaw] I'm in favor of
the little guy, especially in times like the depression'. In this example, the re-presen-
tation involves Brandon's repetition of Ned's locutionary act combined with inten-
tional alteration of it by means of emphasis on 'fav' in 'favor' and 'pres' in 'depres-
sion'. Together, the intentional repetition and alteration point to Ned's previous
speech act, the object of parody.
For the re-presentation to enable the hearer to recall its antecedent, it need not
replicate it, as in (3). The re-presentation need only be distinctly like the action
being parodied, a quality which depends on the speaker's and hearer's knowledge
about the parodied object and its context. Consider this next example from Hay
(1995):
the parody."
P: we'd finished watching a couple of movies on sky and then that came on
and they had um
([untranscribable text])
P: it was [high voice]: oh hi how are you oh i'm not bad how are you oh good
let's take our clothes off:
C: yeah
B: [ha ha]
A: [high voice] and let's prance around saying silly little things:
All: [laugh]
In re-presenting the scenes from the Playboy Channel, P and A recall it through ver-
bal expressions which are enough like the scenes to make them recognizable to the
audience. That the audience recognizes the re-presentation is evidenced most obvi-
ously by A's ability to add to P's re-presentation, as well as by everyone's laughter.
So far, we have said that re-presentation is essential to parody. More than this, re-
presentation is central to the parodist's meaning precisely because the speaker
intends it to be central. This differs from the iteration extant in all language use
(Derrida, 1988), which is not typically central to a speaker's meaning. For Brandon's
'I'm in favor of the depression' (example 3) to function as verbal parody, his inten-
tion to re-present must accompany his utterance. To understand the distinction
between intentional re-presentation and iteration, consider that a speaker can acci-
dentally/unconsciously iterate another's behavior, but cannot accidentally or uncon-
sciously re-present it to create a parody:
D.F. Rossen-Knill, R. HenJ3' /Journal of Pragmatics 27 (1997) 719--752 725
iteration: Son answers the phone with the same sort of 'Eee-yello'.
When it was pointed out to the son that he answered the phone with the same sort
of 'Eee-yello' as his father, he responded with surprise and agreement, suggesting
that he had not intentionally done so. Clearly, 'Eee-yello' in (5) does not constitute
parody, though as it is said by the son, it does constitute iteration: it is an uncon-
scious iteration of the father's utterance. Despite the fact that the son intentionally
utters 'Eee-yello' to open communication and greet the caller, he does not intend
for his utterance to re-present that utterance as said by his father. In speech act
terms, when the son says, 'Eee-yello,' both the informative and communicative
intentions remain in place, though the intention to quote some previous action is
absent. 7
Although intentional re-presentation is necessary to verbal parody, it is not suffi-
cient to it. Consider this next e~.ample:
Child A takes a train from child B. Child B begins crying. A teacher intervenes,
saying to child B, 'Tell him, "I don't like that" ' (said forcefully).
intentional re-presentation: Child B says to child A, 'I don't like that. Give it
back' (said forcefully).
In (6), child B intentionally re-presents his teacher's utterance. The child has no-
intention to parody the teacher or call attention to the teacher in any way. Rather, the
intention seems to be to get the train back and, perhaps, to express in words feelings
which correspond to the crying. This is not verbal parody.
So far we have said that intentional re-presentation is essential and central to pro-
ducing a parody but not sufficient to it. Before discussing three other essential acts
of parody, we'd like to characterize intentional re-presentation further. Our under-
standing of the act owes much to Sperber's (1984) echoic mention theory of irony
and Clark and Gerrig's (1990)I:heory of quotations as demonstrations.
According to echoic mention theory, a speaker mentions a meaning via a linguis-
tic expression in order to echo a thought (imaginary or real) for the purpose of com-
7 For further discussion of the difference between intentional re-presentation and iteration, see Rossen-
Knill (1995).
726 D.F. Rossen-Knill, R. Henry / Journal of Pragmatics 27 (1997) 719-752
menting on (usually deriding) that thought (Sperber, 1984: 132). 8 On first inspec-
tion, echoic mention may seem to account for allusion in parody; 9 however, the lin-
guistic boundaries historically associated with mention/use theory prohibit it from
accounting for parody's intentional re-presentation of its object when that object is
something other than a linguistic representation. As Sperber and Wilson point out
and Kreuz and Glucksberg (1989) emphasize, "Mention is a self-referential or self-
representational use of language: it requires full linguistic or logical identity
between representation and original" (Sperber and Wilson, 1986: 264; cited in part
in Kreuz and Glucksberg, 1989: 383). Neither irony nor parody abide by this con-
straint. Irony involves 'mentions of meaning' (Sperber, 1984) and mentions of
objects not referred to explicitly (Kreuz and Glucksberg, 1989: 375). Verbal parody
may involve re-presentations at any level - the phonetic, stylistic, semantic and prag-
matic levels, or some combinations of these - to parody any object/act in the world
(see Sections 3.2 and 3.3 for detailed discussion of parody's potential objects). Con-
sider the following examples of verbal parody:
in a similar theory of irony, Kreuz and Glucksberg(1989) revise and subsume echoic mention theory
for a number of reasons. First, as they say, they want to emphasize the "reminder function" in satiric
irony (1989: 375). Second,they argue that echoic remindertheory, unlike echoic interpretation,accounts
for cases of irony which depend on the hearer's recognition of social norms, that is, cases of irony in
which the object is not referred to explicitly (1989: 375). Third, 'mention' involveslinguistic constraints
which are too limited to account for irony's allusions to non-linguisticentities.
9 For discussion of allusion in parody, see Nash (1985).
D.F. Rossen-Knill, R. Henry / Journal of Pragmatics 27 (1997) 719-752 727
(Rose, 1979: 51). Parody, however, employs two codes (Rose, 1979: 51), the repre-
senting voice and the represented voice (Bakhtin, 1981), each of which corresponds
to distinct speech events. In recalling the object of parody, intentional re-presenta-
tion does more than 'mention' (Sperber, 1984) or 'remind' (Kreuz and Glucksberg,
1989) the speaker of its object; it requires the hearer to reconstruct a mental repre-
sentation of the action being parodied, as Kreuz and Roberts point out (1993: 14). In
addition, whereas the echoic mention, echoic interpretation, and reminder theories of
irony allow for implicit allusion to such abstract objects as thoughts or societal
norms, parody requires an identifiable re-presentation of the parodied object in the
parody itself (Rose, 1993: 51). A thought or societal norm must have been enacted
if it is to be re-presented in the parody.
More akin to re-presentations than mentions or reminders - and quite useful in
defining them - are quotations, as defined by Clark and Gerrig (1990). Clark and
Gerrig argue that quotations are 'demonstrations', not 'indications' or 'descriptions'.
They distinguish these three means of communication with the help of an example:
(1) Alice can INDICATE, or point at an actual serve by [tennis star] McEnroe ....
Ben grasps what she means by recognizing her intention to locate the serve ....
(2) Alice can DESCRIBE the serve .... Ben grasps what she means by recogniz-
ing her intentions in uttering what she did (Grice, 1957, 1968).
(3) Alice can DEMONSTRATE the serve .... She would perform certain actions
like those that McEnroe ... perform[s]. This time Ben grasps what she means
by recognizing her intenlion to depict certain aspects of the serve .... (1990:
765)
~0 Becauseboth involve demonstration, direct quotations, like re-presentations (and unlike mentions),
can take on any level of linguistic representation and depict any object in the world, linguistic or non-
linguistic (see Clark and Gerrig, 1990, for a detailed discussion of quotations' potential forms and
objects).
728 D.F. Rossen-Knill, R. Henry / Journal f~f Pragmatics 27 (1997) 719-752
without ever having interacted with John. In re-presentation, however, the hearer
must be aware of the original action and be directed to it. This enables him/her to
reconstruct the original act, hold it up next to the parodying version, and work out
the parodist's commentary on the original. The hearer unfamiliar with Dickinson's
poetry would, for example, have a difficult (if not impossible) time developing a
mental representation of the text parodied by Holman and Harmon (example 1). As
Kreuz and Roberts explain (also with reference to Dickinson), "If the reader recog-
nizes the resemblance between the parody and the original work, then the parody can
succeed for that r e a d e r [our emphasis]" (1993: 103, see also Nash's discussion of
parody and allusion, 1985).
Of course, it is not enough for the hearer to have knowledge of the re-presented
object. The hearer may be familiar with Dickinson's poetry, but unable to pick it out
as the object of parody due to insufficient direction in the re-presenting act. It is the
speaker's job to produce a re-presentation which is sufficiently like its target and, at
the same time, sufficiently distinct from the group of objects whose members are
somehow like the target. Imagine, for example, that the hearer has of late been read-
ing a great deal of poetry which makes use of dashes and capitals. In this case, the
re-presentation in (1) may not seem distinctly like Dickinson's poetry, rather a gen-
eral characteristic of much poetry. As a result, the intentional re-presentation might
be interpreted as an original work or, perhaps, as a part of a parody aimed at a gen-
eral trend to use dashes and capitals for poetic effect.
In direct quotation (a kind of demonstration), the speaker generally produces an
utterance from the perspective of the original speaker/agent. Clark and Gerrig
explain, "In demonstrations of a person's actions, the demonstrator usually takes
that person's role, and the recipients experience them as if they were experiencing
that new person" (1990: 768). Certainly the meaning becomes transformed by being
used by a new speaker in a new context (Goffman, 1974; Derrida, 1988; Clark and
Gerrig, 1990), but this transformation is dominated by the authority of its origin. In
parody, however, the parodist never takes on the original speaker's role (or fairly
presents his or her point of view); instead, the parodist transforms the original text
in order to subordinate the parodied point of view and any corresponding role
(Bakhtin, 1981; Norrick, 1989: 131; for discussion of 'refunctioning' the parodied
text for the parodist's purpose, see Rose. 1979, 1993). Put differently, the parodist
highlights the differences between the parodying and parodied voice, that is,
between two codes (Rose, 1979, 1993), thereby actively distancing him/herself from
the parodied point of view. In example (1), Holman and Harmon do not take on
Dickinson's point of view or role as poet: rather, they recall it to subordinate it to
their own poetic sensibilities, which is realized through their parody.
As we have so far discussed, intentional re-presentation is similar to 'echoic men-
tion' (Sperber, 1984) inasmuch as it depends on the object to which it alludes. How-
ever, whereas echoic mention (as well as its offshoots 'echoic interpretation' and
'reminder theory') employs one code to refer to its antecedent, intentional re-presen-
tation involves two, making it more closely related to 'quotation' (Clark and Gerrig,
1990). Both re-presentations and quotations make use of two codes in order to
'depict' some object, which may be any thing/act in the world. Intentional re-pre-
D.F. Rossen-Knill, R. Henry / Journal of Pragmatics 27 (1997) 719-752 729
sentation differs from quotation in that it must 'indicate' its object so that the hearer
can construct a mental representation of it. Furthermore, in quotation, the speaker
adopts the hearer's perspective, thus maintaining the authority of the quoted text (at
least during the act of quotation). In re-presentation, the speaker need not adopt the
perspective corresponding to the re-presented object and, in parody, actively subor-
dinates it (Bakhtin, 1981; Norrick, 1989: 131).
Characterizing intentional re-presentation in terms of echoic mention and quota-
tion highlights its parasitic nature, thereby locating it in "a family of nonserious
actions that includes practicing, playing, acting, and pretending" (Clark and Gerrig,
1990: 766). This does not mean that the parodic act is itself nonserious; rather its
serious message - its commentary on the object of parody - relies in part on the par-
asitic act of re-presentation. As Clark and Gerrig explain, "Demonstrations are per-
formed as parts of serious activilies" (1990: 766). If the re-presentation of the object
of parody is a nonserious act which is employed by the serious parodic act, then a
recognizable boundary must exist between the two for the parody to succeed. Clark
and Gerrig have done much to characterize this boundary by identifying the 'depic-
tive', 'supportive', 'annotative', and 'incidental aspects' of demonstrations:
Clark and Gerrig refer to the depictive aspects as the "demonstration proper"
(1990: 769); the supportive aspects seem to involve the tools necessary to construct
the depiction. These two aspects are the heart of intentional re-presentation. The
incidental aspects, as the name suggests, are non-intentional aspects of the commu-
nication, and may occur inside or outside the demonstration proper. We locate the
annotative aspects outside the demonstration proper, since in parody, they make up
the serious commentary on the re-presented text. Clark and Gerrig have also given a
name to the demonstrator's intention for the hearer to recognize these different
aspects: the "decoupling principle" (1990: 268). In parody, flaunting activates the
decoupling principle.
2.1.2. Flaunting
In verbal parody, the speaker flaunts the intentional re-presentation in some verbal
expression in order to communicate to the hearer that he/she (1) intends for the re-
presentation to recall the previous act or event being parodied, and (2) intends for the
730 D.F. Rossen-Knill. R. Henry / Journal ~)/Pragmatics 27 (1997) 719-752
hearer to recognize (1). This act of flaunting is key to the hearer(s) ability to recog-
nize that the speaker intends to parody. In example 3, Brandon must somehow flaunt
the intentional re-presentation of 'I'm in favor of the depression', so that Ned recog-
nizes it as something more than an assertion of Brandon's beliefs. Somehow, Bran-
don's 'I'm in favor of the depression' must be performed in a way which helps Ned
interpret it as a parody.
The flaunting in (3) is performed in at least two ways - by laughter and by
exploitation of two Gricean maxims. ~ Brandon flaunts his re-presentation by prefac-
ing it with laughter. In addition, he employs a stylistic exploitation of Grice's maxim
of manner, "Be perspicuous" (1989: 27), as well as an exploitation of the maxim of
relation, which requires that "a partner's contribution ... be appropriate to the imme-
diate needs at each stage of the transaction" (1989: 28). Rather than respond to (or
even wait for completion of) Ned's arguments against Capra's film direction, Bran-
don interrupts in order to offer a stylistic variant of Ned's assertion in order to parody
it. He emphasizes 'fav' in 'favor' and 'pres' in 'depression', thus highlighting the
offending juxtaposition of incompatible ideas (being in favor of something as
deplorable as the depression). It's probably some parodists' penchant for stylistic
exploitations of this sort that accounts in part for theorists' emphasis on stylistic imi-
tations and incongruities when discussing parody (e.g., Bakhtin, 1981; Rose, 1979).
In fact, flaunting in parody need not rely on stylistic variations of the re-presented
object. Consider this next conversation between Brandon and Ned. Norrick explains
the context as follows: "Visiting at the home of their parents, Brandon and Ned fall
back into patterns of talk developed when they were young: they laugh about their
mother's habits of unreflected speech and at each other's verbal slips ..." (1993: 30).
Lydia: We had such a nice day today, so you hurry and get rested. Because
you're gonna have a big nice
[day tomorrow.]
Brandon: [Hurry and get] rested.
Ned: Uhhuhhuhhuhhuhhuh hehe. (1993: 30)
In example l l, Brandon exploits Grice's maxim of relation in order to flaunt the re-
presentation of Lydia's manner of speaking. Rather than use stylistic variations to
signal, 'I mean something more than the propositional content', Brandon relies on
the apparent irrelevance of the repetition, supported by mutual speaker-hearer
knowledge. Given that they have a well-established pattern of word play and, more
than that, of playing at the expense of their mother's use of language, Brandon's
mere repetition of Lydia's 'hurry and get rested' enables Ned to recognize that Bran-
don intends (1) for his 'hurry and get rested' to recall Lydia's 'hurry and get rested',
(2) for Ned to recognize it, and (3) for Ned to recognize its purpose in parodying
Lydia's style of speech.
1. D o n ' t ask questions you don't want the answer to; don't ask questions you
know the answer to.
2. Don't ask questions you have no reason to ask; don't ask questions you don't
believe the listener can answer. (1977: 9)
Cooper's revision can be characterized with the help of Searle's sincerity and
preparatory conditions (1969), an approach which can be generalized to form max-
ims of quality for all speech acts. Searle's sincerity condition for questions reads, "S
wants this information" (1969: 67). The negation of this sincerity condition forms
the basis for the first part of Cooper's first maxim ( ' D o n ' t ask questions you don't
want the answer to'). The remaining maxims emerge from Searle's preparatory con-
ditions.
The negation of Searle's first preparatory condition forms the basis for the second
part of Cooper's first maxim, ' D o n ' t ask questions you know the answer to'. The
negation of Searle's second preparatory condition is fundamental to part of Cooper's
second maxim, ' D o n ' t ask questions you have no reason to ask'. In order to gener-
ate the remaining part of Cooper's second maxim, ' D o n ' t ask questions you don't
believe the listener can answer', we need only expand Searle's preparatory condi-
tions for questions by appealing to the first of his preparatory conditions for
requests: 'H is able to do A ' (1!)69: 66).
~2 Brown argues that this sort of exploitation is central to irony: "To perform an ironic speech act one
must: (1) utter a token of a sentence which, by virtue of its grammatical structure, has the potential for
use in a speech act with a necessary associated psychological state; (2) insure that the hearer knows that
the act is being performed with the psychological state requirement intentionally unfulfilled" (1980: 20).
13 Searle adds this clarification: "There are two kinds of questions, (a) real questions, (b) exam ques-
tions. In real questions S wants to know (find out) the answer; in exam questions, S wants to know if H
knows" (1969: 66).
732 D.F. Rossen-Knill, R. Henry /Journal ~)/Pragmatics 27 (1997) 719-752
the parody:
sister: Let's just call everyone 'girl'.
brother: [laughter] That's a good one.
In (12), the sister blatantly exploits Grice's maxim of quality by intentionally issuing
a directive which is obviously insincere and easily understood as such for two rea-
sons: (1) both know that the sister dislikes the use of 'girl' to refer to women and so
would not want to be called a 'girl'; (2) both know that (all theory aside) the brother
dislikes being thought of as feminine and, owing to this, would not want to be called
a 'girl'. As a result, the exploitation of the quality maxim flaunts the sister's re-pre-
sentation of her brother's frequent use of 'girl' in order to parody his demeaning use
of the word, his quick-fix to a complex social problem, and, more generally, his male
chauvinism. In this example, the exploitation of the quality maxim is essential to the
D.F. Rossen-Knill. R. Henry / Journal of Pragmatics 27 (1997) 719-752 733
speaker's ability to flaunt the re-presentation of 'girl' in that it is the only apparent
means of flaunting.
While many parodies do involve some exploitation of the quality maxim, as we
note earlier, not all do. In this next affectionate parody, the grandson relies exten-
sively on shared knowledge between the speaker and hearers in order to issue a
serious speech act sincerely and, through that same speech act, parody his grand-
mother:
The parody: At the grandmother's funeral, the grandson speaks to the audience
about the grandmother's practical (but fun-loving) approach to life. He tells a
story about remembering her often used wise words - 'Go make vee vee' - as he
returns to his house to follow her directive, and then, in better spirits embarks on
his trip.
The conversation:
husband: Who called?
wife: Sal Kobokalski. (pause) Painter. (pause) Paper hanger.
husband: What did he want?
wife: No, I was making fun of him. You know, how he says it so dramat-
ically.
734 D.F. Rossen-Knill, R. Henry / Journal of Pragmatics 27 (1997) 719-752
In (14), the husband fails to recognize his wife's utterance as an intentional re-pre-
sentation of the painter's introduction of himself. The pauses are an insufficient
means of flaunting. While the utterance might be taken for an intentional iteration of
Sal's message to indicate who called or an utterance of her making for the same pur-
pose, in either case, the husband merely interprets it seriously.
Without sufficient knowledge of the actual text, the hearer may also fail to recog-
nize the flaunting (and thus the parody) (Nash, 1985: 92). If those at the funeral
were unaware of the grandmother's frequent directive 'Go make vee vee, darling'
(example 13) and/or other such directives which exemplify her penchant for direct-
ing the fulfillment of others' needs, they might well have found humor in the speech,
but not likely parody. If, for another example, the hearer were not familiar enough
with Dickinson to know that she makes great use of dashes and capitals, then he/she
might not recognize Holman and Harmon's use of these (example 1) to say some-
thing like, 'I mean for my re-presentation of Dickinson's stylistic quirks to commu-
nicate something more than what the actual presentation communicates, and I mean
for you to recognize this communicative intention'. On the other hand, the
hearer/reader may recognize the flaunting in ( 1) by virtue of the seemingly excessive
use of dashes and capitals but, lacking knowledge of Dickinson's poetry, remain
unable to work out the parody. In this case, the flaunting has done its job, but the
parody has failed due to lack of hearer knowledge.
Unfamiliarity with the parodist might also hinder recognition of the act of
flaunting, thereby causing the parody to fail (Nash, 1985: 92). If Holman and Har-
mon's parody of Dickinson had appeared in a stack of papers from an introductory
creative writing course, the instructor, assuming the writer to be inexperienced,
might well have taken it for a sincere attempt to adopt Dickinson's style. In this
case, it is not the flaunting per se which fails, but the recognition of it due to the
hearer's lack of knowledge about the speaker/writer, and confounding contextual
cues.
While the parodist can never guarantee that the hearer will recognize the act of
flaunting, he/she can choose the method j4 and degree of flaunting to maximize the
possibility. As important as it is to flaunt the re-presentation loudly enough for the
hearer to be able to distinguish it from the actual presentation and recognize the
speaker's intention to point to the re-presentation, it is equally important that the
flaunting not be overdone. The risk here is that the hearer will attend too much to the
flaunting and the re-presentation at the expense of the critical act (and, perhaps, the
comic act). Put differently, the hearer may interpret the flaunting of the intentional
re-presentation as mere mimicry, as flaunting for the art of flaunting, or for humor's
sake. If humor for humor's sake relates to the communication exchange, then the
hearer, having determined a suitable meaning for the communication, may not work
any further toward the recognition of the parody (see Sperber and Wilson, 1986, for
an explanation of contextually optimal interpretations and relative strengths of inter-
pretations).
Example 15 - background: A senator known for taking bribes from the construc-
tion industry attends a series of fund-raising dinners hosted by special interest
groups. He concludes each speech with what has become his trademark: 'We all
know that development means gold for America'.
the non-parody: One diner whispers snidely to another: 'We all know that gold
means a new building permit'.
In (15), the diner intentionally flaunts his intentional re-presentation of the Senator's
slogan to convey his contempt for this politician. In saying 'We all know that gold
means a new building permk', the diner intentionally re-presents the Senator's
speech act by repeating the structure and select words of that speech act. The diner
intentionally flaunts this intentional re-presentation by emphasizing gold and build-
ing permit to echo gold and development in the senator's speech act. Using this
intentional re-presentation and intentional flaunting of this re-presentation, the diner
performs the critical act of repudiating the Senator's speech act. In short, the speaker
successfully uses parodic features 1-3, but he does not parody. What (15) lacks is
the comic act.
This explanation leaves open a daunting question: how must the acts be constrained
to create the comic act? According to humor researchers, the acts must be manipu-
lated to create some incongruity (see e.g., Norrick, 1993; Rose, 1993; Attardo,
1994). This incongruity may be generated primarily through the interaction of the
acts of intentional re-presentation and flaunting, through the critical act (itself a
product of intentional re-presentation and flaunting), or through both of these simul-
taneously. Looking just at the act of re-presentation, we have seen that the parod-
ist's verbal expression can involve representations at any level, phonetic, stylistic,
semantic, or pragmatic (examples 7-10). From this it follows that the incongruity
may occur at any level of representation. Reviewing examples 7-10 supports this
point:
Example 7 involves an incongruity between the parodist's speaking style and her
rendering of her friend's phonetic vocalization of dog as 'dawg', as well as the
incongruity between the parodist's rendition of 'dog' and the parodied version.
Example 8 highlights a stylistic incongruity between comedian Little's speaking
style and his amusing version of Nixon's speech style, as well as the incongruity
D.F. Rossen-Knill, R. Henry /Journal of Pragmatics 27 (1997) 719-752 737
'between Little's parodying version and Nixon's actual speech style. Example 9
points to two semantic incongruities: one between the speaker's use of language,
which could and typically does involve semantic content, and the parodying version,
which highlights the lack of such content; another between the parodying version,
which, again, highlights a lack of semantic content, and the content of the parodied
utterance. 15 Example 10 also involves two incongruities, this time at the pragmatic
level. There is the disparity between the literal and implicated meaning of the wife's
speech act, the first corresponding to 'you have a great sense of direction'; ~6the sec-
ond to 'you're lost'. There also exists a disparity between the intended meaning of
the wife's speech act - roughly, you're lost - and the intended meaning of that
speech act as uttered previously by the husband - roughly, I have a great sense of
direction.
The humorous incongruity leading to the comic act may also result simultaneously
from the flaunting of the intentional re-presentation and from the critical act. In (4),
the parodists create one humorc,us incongruity by means of flaunting the re-presen-
tation of the object of parody and another by producing the critical act, resulting in
two comic acts. First, both P and A flaunt the re-presentation of scenes from the
Playboy Channel by using a style of speech which is distinctly like the television
characters' and distinctly unlike their own. The humor here comes from the stylistic
incongruity between the parodists' imitative style and their own speaking voices.
The second incongruity emerge,; from the critical act: in order to ridicule the stupid-
ity of the characters and scenes, the parodists issue speech acts whose propositional
contents reduce interpersonal relationships (both physical and emotional) to undif-
ferentiated verbal drivel, including such mock interchanges as, 'oh hi how are you
oh i'm not bad how are you oh good let's take our clothes off' (Hay, 1995). In this
case, the incongruity between more meaningful human interchanges and the re-pre-
sented encounters serves both a critical and comic function.
Whereas it's possible to attribute the humorous incongruities in (4) either to the
act of flaunting or the critical act, such is not the case with the incongruity in (1).
Here, producing the comic act involves integrating the first three essential acts of
parody in a way which results in a humorous incongruity. To produce the comic act,
the parodists create a humorous, incongruity between style and content by juxtapos-
ing Dickinson's dramatic use of dashes and capitals with the relatively trivial dis-
cussion of 'Sorority' and 'Donn'. This incongruity simultaneously serves to flaunt
the text's role as a re-presentation of Dickinson's poetry and to criticize its melodra-
matic qualities in a humorous way.
~5 Given that many find slapstick humorous, it's possible that the comic act in parody grows out of the
act of flaunting alone. At this point, we have not encountered an example that isolates the comic act in
the act of flaunting, probably because the flaunting is typically used to highlight the incongruity which
is fundamental to the recognition of the intentional re-presentation and the critical act.
16 Without the re-presenting act (with only one code (Rose, 1979: 51)), I know this town like the back
of my hand functions as irony. With re-presentation (which employs two codes (Rose, 1979:51)), the
utterance functions as a parody. The parody may be called an ironic parody, owing to the irony produced
by the first incongruity.
738 D.F. Rossen-Knill. R. Henry / Journal of Pragmatics 27 (1997) 719-752
The model helps to explain some of the components underlying the humorous
incongruities responsible for the comic act. However, to understand what makes an
incongruity humorous to an individual or group of individuals, we must refer to soci-
ology and psychology (for reviews of theories of humor, see Norrick, 1993; Attardo,
1994). Importantly, incongruity alone cannot account for humor, as evidenced by its
use for non-humorous purposes (see example 15). Most can recall instances during
which some one or group has re-presented and flaunted another's action for the sake
of cruelty, not humor. Indeed, Kuiper formally identifies a class of critical acts
which potentially includes such cruelties, specifically, "the class of unhumorous
didactic imitations" (1984: 469). Of course, that incongruity can be used to produce
both comic acts and humorless critical acts is expected. As researchers in pragmatics
have made clear, one structure has the ability to perform numerous functions, not the
least of which include flaunting, criticizing, and humoring.
Our model indicates that verbal parody recalls some object for ridicule and so sug-
gests that the output of our model will always be, among other things, a kind of
insult. If this is true, and we believe it is, we must be able to reconcile the apparent
contradiction between the model's output and that type of parody which, by conven-
tion, is used to pay tribute, celebrate and/or show affection for its object. We find the
answer to this problem in politeness theory (Brown and Levinson, 1987; Brown and
Gilman, 1989).
Like any speech act, the parodic speech act is chosen for its appropriateness to the
context, which includes the social situation motivating and surrounding the speech
act. According to Brown and Levinson, "If S [speaker] is too polite ... he may insult
[H] (or simply wound his feelings) by implying that D [the social distance between
S and HI or P(H) [the power of the hearer] is greater than it is" (1987: 230). 'Too
polite' here means that the speaker has 'overestimat[ed]' the threat of his intended
message and, as a result, communicates his message in an inappropriately polite
manner. Returning to verbal parody, we believe that it is used to pay tribute to its
D.F. Rossen-Knill, R. Henry / Journal of Pragmatics 27 (1997) 719-752 739
object precisely when a direct expression of tribute or affection would prove too
threatening to the speaker or he~.rer. Consider this example:
the parody: Don's friend Sal offers his rendition of the clumsy, soon-to-be hon-
eymooner: he looks at his foot, exclaims, 'Better watch out for that! ', and then
stumbles over it.
Although Sal makes fun of Don's absent-mindedness, his purpose is not to ridicule
Don; his purpose is to celebrate Don, but the social context does not allow for a
direct means of extolling him. There's much room for speculation on why apparent
insults serve best to pay tribute here. We could argue that for Western males, any
expression of affection imposes on the speaker's and hearer's negative face wants,
which involve the desire to be left alone (Brown and Levinson, 1987: 62). We might
also argue that a direct compliment among a group of close friends would impose on
the speaker's and hearer's positive face wants, which involve the desire to be part of
the group. In other words, a direct compliment would express that which 'shouldn't'
need expressing among close friends and which would therefore be too polite to the
point of insult. Moreover, we might argue that Sal's purpose here is not to offer a
mild compliment, but to hold Don up for celebration. The greater the compliment,
the more likely it would be to pose a threat in either of the two ways suggested
above, and the more likely the speaker would be to employ some disavowable means
of flattery.
Consider a second example:
the parody: Don's ex-girlfriend, Sue, offers her rendition of the forgetful, soon-to-
be husband: she jerks around, slaps her head and exclaims, 'Oops, I forgot'.
(Laughter follows.)
Although Sue makes fun of Don's absent-mindedness, again, her ultimate purpose is
not to ridicule him, but to celebrate him and, perhaps, to show affection for him. In
this case, however, the social context does not easily allow for a direct means for an
ex-girlfriend to celebrate or express affection for the husband-to-be in front of the
wife-to-be. By virtue of its indirectness and its ability to recall shared experiences,
the parody serves here (and in (13) and (16)) to communicate deep affection, yet
without displaying potentially threatening emotions. 17
Because of its comic act, parody, only one of the many ways humans offer crit-
icism, serves particularly well to pay tribute when avowable tribute is inappropri-
ate. The humor contributes to the celebratory nature central to tributes. Though
17 Norrick (1993) discusses the role of jokes (humor and allusion) in establishing common ground,
thereby building rapport (either among new acquaintances or old friends).
740 D.F. Rossen-Knill. R. Hemw / Journal of Pragmatics 27 (1997) 719-752
we haven't investigated this point, we suspect that when verbal parody does pay
tribute to its object, its comic act is frequently heightened, and its critical act
subdued.
the parody: Mrs. Coleman pokes Mr. Coleman's stomach and says, mockingly,
'Bm-rup'.
In (18), Mrs. Coleman parodies her husband's unintentional burp. More specifically,
she re-presents his unintentional burp in the verbal expression 'Brrrrup' and flaunts
the re-presentation by poking him in the stomach and using an imitative, non-propo-
sitional verbal expression. Mrs. Coleman does this in order to criticize Mr. Cole-
man's burp - and perhaps his table manners in general - in a humorous way. Though
we have been able to construct examples in which non-intentional actions are paro-
died, we suspect that parody most often targets intentional actions.
Example (4) demonstrates that an intentional act other than a speech act can be
parodied: speakers P and A use silly speaking styles (most obviously, high voices)
to flaunt their re-presentations of scenes from the Playboy Channel, and so parody
acts within the scenes, as well as the scenes as a whole. Of course, it might be argued
that the parodied actions are limited to the speech acts of individual characters. For
the sake of clarification, we offer this next parody, which targets the birth of Rachel
Hunter's child. Hay provides the following background: "[T]he media was saying
D.F. Rossen-Knill. R. Henry / Journal of Pragmatics 27 (1997) 719-752 741
that Rachel Hunter - a model now married to Rod Stewart, was going to have ... [the]
birth filmed live" (1995).
In this example, participants cooperatively parody a future act: the film version of
the birth of Hunter's baby. The speakers re-present their perception of the future
birth and, in a comic way, flaunt their enactment of it by excessive reference to the
glamour of the event - an unlikely characteristic of childbirth, to say the least. As a
result, we recognize the group's critical attitude toward the movie-stars' intent to
film the birth.
Verbal parody also targets beliefs, whether attributed to or expressed verbally or
non-verbally by an individual or collective. To function as an object of parody, the
belief (attitude, thought) must have some manifestation in the world which is identi-
fiable by the parodist and the audience. An individual's belief may be intentionally
or unintentionally conveyed through some behavior, or the parodist may falsely
attribute the belief to an individual based on that individual's behavior. Whether or
not the individual holds a belief is irrelevant to the success or failure of the verbal
parody; what is essential is the parodist's and the audience's view that the individ-
ual holds that belief.
In (20), a husband who believes that his wife lacks confidence in his ability to
watch out for their child's safety parodies this lack of confidence.
the parody:
Wife: [calls from another room] Is everything okay?
Husband: Is it okay if his head is in the water?
Wife: [laughter] No.
742 D.F. Rossen-Knill. R. Henry / Journal of Pragmatics 27 (1997) 719-752
The husband re-presents the wife's belief in a verbal expression which feigns stu-
pidity: the husband's question, if interpreted literally, suggests that he does not even
understand that his child is likely drowning. To flaunt the re-presentation of the
wife's lack of confidence, the husband relies on context information and the
exploitation of Grice's maxim of quality, as modified by Cooper to account for
requests: "Don't ask questions you know the answer to" (1977: 9). The husband
counts on his wife's knowing that he isn't so oblivious as to allow his three-year-
old's head to go under water. Having implicated that his speech act functions to
recall his wife's belief, the husband enables her to work out the resulting critical act,
which is something like 'Your level of distrust of my ability to watch our son is
ridiculous', and the comic act (resulting from the incongruity between the husband's
actual awareness of danger and the remarkably low level of awareness indicated by
his question), which conveys the message that the wife's belief is to be made fun of.
Much as we can parody an individual's beliefs, we can parody the beliefs (atti-
tudes, thoughts) of a group of individuals, whether institutionalized or not. To
demonstrate this point quickly, (20) might be reimagined so that it is a group of peo-
ple - the wife's family, for example, or women in general - which believes in the
husband's limited ability to care safely for his child. In this case, the husband's par-
ody, 'Is it okay if his head is in the water?', would serve equally well to ridicule this
group belief in a comic way.
As individuals are conglomerates of beliefs and behaviors, a parody may embrace
an entire individual, and not simply any one of those beliefs or behaviors. The indi-
vidual or group becomes the object of parody by association with some behavior or
belief associated with that individual or group. Consider this next example, which
involves a "parody presentation of a squabbling couple" (Norrick, 1993: 64):
Example 21 - background: Claire and Ned are discussing the care of their car.
the parody:
Claire: You never check it.
Ned: I check them so often
Claire: Because I'm on his back. "Don't you think we (h)hafta che(he)ck the oil
and the coolant. Nahneh nahneh".
Ned: I check the oil about every say fifteen or twe(hehe)nty (h )minutes.
Claire: [I wish you'd show me how to] do it.
Brad: [Huh heh heh heh. Huh huh huh huh. Huh (h)l just
che(he)ck - (Norrick, 1993: 64)
and Claire are able to offer critical commentary on the other's position through a bit
of self-parody.
By claiming that a single p~trodic speech act can parody a behavior and an
individual (examples 19 and 20), or a belief and a collective (example 21), we
have begun to answer the next question to be addressed: how many objects can
be parodied through one act of verbal parody? We offer two answers, the first, a
theoretical answer: a single parodic speech act can parody an infinite number of
objects.
We suspect that a single parodic speech parodies multiple objects in two ways: (1)
the flaunted verbal re-presentation recalls the object of parody and those objects
associated with it; (2) the flaunted verbal re-presentation recalls two or more objects
simultaneously.
According to the first of these ways, the objects of a parodic speech act may be
defined as the object pointed to by the re-presenting verbal expression, what we call
the first object of parody, as well as the object(s) associated with the first object.
Reconsider the parody of the filmed birth of Rachel Hunter and Rod Stewart's baby
(example 19). When speaker G says, 'STOP stop my hair ...', he/she is clearly paro-
dying Rachel Hunter in her roles as model and movie star. By association, the par-
ody may also be meant to targe! movie stars in general and, by further association,
all of Hollywood culture. Quite likely, it is parody's ability to reverberate through
multiple associations that makes it so attractive (and technically difficult) as an artis-
tic tool and so useful as a metafictional device (Rose, 1979).
Returning to example 12, we can observe the use of parody to target more than
one object simultaneously. When the sister says, 'Let's call everyone "girl" ', she
simultaneously re-presents the brother's suggestion to call everyone by one name,
and the brother's frequent use of 'girl' to refer to women. This double re-presenta-
tion leads directly to two targets: the brother's solution to the problem of inequality
between men and women, and the brother's inappropriate use of 'girl'.
In the next example, the speaker employs a single parodic speech act to simulta-
neously re-present and so parody two acts (or one type of act manifested in two dis-
tinct speech events).
Example 22 - background 1: Sarah and John's mother frequently tells other peo-
ple what to do, based solely on her own feelings. When a chill reaches her, for
example, she often says to her children, 'Put your sweater on, I'm cold'. Sarah has
picked up this habit.
background 2: John visits Sarah, who hands him a drink and says 'Drink this. I'm
thirsty'.
the parody: Mimicking his mother's sing-song voice, John responds, 'Put a
sweater on. I'm cold'.
744 D.F. Rossen-Knill, R. Henry /Journal of Prugmatics 27 (1997) 719-752
To re-present his sister's utterance, John retains both the syntax and the type of
speech act issued (directive), making it clear that his utterance is distinctly like hers.
He flaunts this re-presentation by mimicking his mother's voice and by flouting
Grice's maxim of relation, "Be relevant" (1989: 27): John's 'Put a sweater on. I'm
cold' does not apparently relate to Sarah's directive, which instructs John to drink
something; an apparently relevant response would indicate some level of acceptance
and/or rejection of the drink. John's statement, which recalls his mother's habit of
telling others what to do based on her own feelings, serves to highlight and ridicule
this same feature of Sarah's statement.
John's statement in (22) also parodies his mother's tendency to direct others based
on her own needs, not theirs. He re-presents this tendency by repeating a speech act
of his mother's which typifies this behavior and flaunts this re-presentation by mim-
icking his mother's voice. As a result of these first two acts, he ridicules this ten-
dency of his mother, and, if his manipulation of the first three acts of parody is suc-
cessful, he does so in a comic way (i.e., he also produces the comic act).
As we have demonstrated, a single parodic speech act can parody two objects
simultaneously. Only a slight revision to (22) would result in a single parodic act
which targets three objects. Imagine, for example, that Sarah and John's grand-
mother, as well as their mother, habitually says, 'Put a sweater on. I'm cold'. Given
that the family history of this speech act is mutually manifest to both Sarah and John,
John's 'Put a sweater on. l'm cold' might well serve to parody Sarah's speech act,
his mother's behavior and his grandmother's behavior.
As is true with multiple objects generated by association, in theory, an infinite
number of objects may be recalled simultaneously by a single parodic speech act.
Practically, the number of objects is constrained by physical properties of the world
and cognitive capabilities of individuals, including such things as time, background
knowledge of the speaker and hearer, and an individual's ability to activate, main-
tain, and process multiple representations of the world simultaneously.
Example 23 (indirect directive) - background: Every garbage day for the past
year, John has said to Mary: 'It's your turn to take out the garbage'.
the Parody: Tired of taking out the garbage, Mary says to John in playful mock-
ery, ' "It's your turn to take out the garbage" '.
Mary's speech act parodies John's indirect request for her to take out the garbage
(see Searle for generalizations on producing indirect requests (1979: 45)). It also
D.F. Rossen-Knill, R. Henry / Journal of Pragmatics 27 (1997) 719-752 745
functions as an indirect request for John to take out the garbage, much as John's
request has served to get Mary 1:o take out the garbage for the past year. However,
Mary's request is considerably ,;tronger than John's: it is enhanced by the parodic
act, which recalls not only John's speech act, but the many times Mary has taken out
the garbage in response to John's request, thus amplifying the reasons why John
should perform the action specified in the request.
The re-presenting verbal expression of a parodic speech act may also function as
an assertive, commissive, expressive, or declarative, as the following examples
demonstrate.
the parody: As they walk to a Fourth of July picnic, Paul and Peter notice a bank
thermometer reading 55 degrees F. Paul teases, 'Time to buy yourself a fur coat'.
In (24), Paul parodies Peter's tendency to complain about the cold and simultane-
ously uses the parodic utterance as an indirect assertive to indicate that for summer,
it is indeed cold. In this case, lhe parody enhances the assertive: it recalls all the
times Peter complained about (:old weather when, according to Paul, the weather
wasn't cold, and so establishes Peter's higher tolerance for cold weather. As a result,
when Peter communicates the message that it is cold, his assertive is strengthened by
being next to the parody, which emphasizes his high tolerance to cold.
In the next example, the speaker uses a parodic speech act both to parody and
make a promise.
In (25), Marcia parodies Sally's unmet (and indirect) promises to attend her parties.
In addition, she uses the re-presentation of Sally's 'I'11 be on time. I'll be on time' to
promise to attend the party. If Marcia is a reliable person, then the parody will
enhance her promise: it holds up all Sally's unmet promises next to Marcia's sincere
promise and, by result of the comparison, emphasizes the sincerity of Marcia's
promises. If, on the other hand, Marcia is as unreliable as Sally, the parody is likely
~ Thank you to an a n o n y m o u s reviewer for suggesting this more intuitively satisfying version of
example 25.
746 D.F. Rossen-Knill, R. Henry /Journal of Pragmatics 27 (1997) 719-752
to weaken the promise: it recalls Sally's unmet promises next to Marcia's promise
and, coupled with Marcia's unreliability, serves as concrete proof of the likelihood
of the promise not being fulfilled.
In (26), the speaker uses a single speech act in order to parody numerous insincere
apologies and to issue a sincere apology.
the parody: Martin's employee Bob runs into Martin's office with news of a big
sale. He accidentally bumps into Martin and knocks a stack of papers onto the
floor. Imitating Martin's hang-dog apologies, Martin looks down at the mess and
half-mumbles and half-chuckles, 'Sorry. Sorry. I'm really sorry'.
Bob's 'Sorry. Sorry. I'm really sorry' parodies Martin's embarrassed apologies and,
by association, his clumsiness; it also serves as an avowable, direct apology. By
pointing to the many times Martin has bumped into people, apologized and, presum-
ably, been forgiven, Bob's parody potentially strengthens his apology. The associa-
tion between Bob's current situation and Martin's past mishaps may pressure Martin
to be as forgiving toward Bob as Bob and others have been toward him. Addition-
ally, the association may highlight Martin's and Bob's common experience, thereby
drawing Martin closer to Bob and making him more emotionally inclined to forgive
him. However, the parody in (26) also has the potential to undermine the sincere
apology: the comic and critical acts may weaken the seriousness/sincerity of the
apology. For this reason, the parody must be somewhat muted by the speaker to
allow for the communication of a sincere apology. Not incidentally, this muting
enables a speaker to convey different messages to different audiences at the same
time. In this case, Bob might have intended for Martin to recognize his sincere apol-
ogy, not the parody, which might have been directed at nearby co-workers.
In (27), the speaker uses a parodic speech act both to parody and to issue a decla-
ration.
the parody: Sally arrives late outside John's school. She explains that her teacher
kept her after for hitting another girl, but that it wasn't her fault since the other girl
was obnoxious. John pretends to don a judge's robe and declares with feigned
sternness, 'Guilty as charged!'
D.F. Rossen-Knill, R. Henry / Journal of Pragmatics 27 (1997) 719-752 747
In this example, John parodies Sally's frequent pronouncements of his guilt and
directly declares her guilt. He re-presents Sally's 'Guilty as charged' and flaunts that
re-presentation through gesture and tone in order to criticize her repeated judgments
(perhaps false) of his guilt in a comic way. At the same time, he declares her guilty,
responding to the immediate discourse expectation that he make a judgment in sup-
port of or against her. Again, the parody may either strengthen or weaken the serious
speech act. By association with John's guilt, the parody is likely to strengthen John's
judgment of his sister's guilt. However, by pointing to John's many infractions in a
comic way, the parody highlights John's lack of concern for being innocent, and so
lightens the impact of his guilty judgment.
In examples 23-27, the parodists have left themselves an out: a parodist chal-
lenged to account for the parodic message can appeal to the non-parodic message to
disavow the parody. If Peter were to accuse Paul of ridiculing him (example 24),
Paul might respond, 'No, really, I didn't mean to make fun of you. I meant to say
that it is cold'. Similarly, a speaker challenged to account for the non-parodic mes-
sage can disavow it by appealing to the parody, though this could be risky since it
makes the critical act avowable. Returning to (24), we can imagine Peter saying
'Cold? I thought you were a native Minnesotan' in order to make fun of Paul's past
displays of his great Minnesotan tolerance for cold weather. To defend himself, Paul
could appeal to parody by saying, 'Are you kidding? I don't think it's cold; I was
making fun of you'. Not all messages of the parodic speech act are equally dis-
avowable. It seems that the more foregrounded the comic act, the more difficult the
task of disavowing the parodic message; and the more subdued the comic act, the
more difficult the task of disavowing the non-parodic message.
Properly locating the boundary between parody and irony and satire - assuming
for a moment that one exists - has been the subject of extensive discussion. That our
own understanding of verbal paJrody in general and the act of re-presentation in par-
ticular has been informed by literature on irony suggests that at least an abridged
review is in order to differentiate at least these two close relatives.
Like verbal parody, verbal irony involves at minimum a central incongruity, two
perspectives, and a derisive attitude toward its subject (see for example Grice, 1989;
Culler, 1975; Clark and Gerrig, 1984; Williams, 1984; Sperber, 1984; Chen and
Houlette, 1990; Holman and Harmon, 1986). Despite these claims about similarities,
the literature on both parody and irony does provide examples which intuitively
qualify as either irony or parody, but not both, predisposing us to believe that there
is a difference. This example from Grice seems to exemplify irony, but not parody:
"X, with whom A has been on close terms until now, has betrayed a secret of A's to
a business rival. A and his audience both know this. A says X is a fine friend"
(1989: 34). Conversely, as Wenstrom points out (1993: 3), Holman and Harmon's
parody of Dickinson (example ] ) functions as parody, but not irony.
In keeping with our intuition that parody and irony are distinct actions, theorists
have suggested various distinguishing characteristics. According to Culler, for exam-
748 D.F. Rossen-Knill. R. Hem3, / Journal of Pragmatics 27 (1997) 719-752
pie, parody and irony may be distinguished by the means they employ to effect their
respective messages: parody relies on "formal features"; irony, on "semantic"
effects (1975: 154). Rose's distinction seems akin to Culler's and, unless we misin-
terpret Culler, a nice clarification of it: parody makes use of two codes - the paro-
dist's and that of the parodied text - to convey one message about the parodied text.
Irony employs one code - the ironist's - to communicate two messages, "the mes-
sage of the ironist to his 'initiated' audience, and the 'ironically meant' decoy mes-
sage" (1979: 51). Hutcheon describes the formal difference between parody (the
genre) and irony (the trope) much as Rose, but adds a comment on their respective
uses. While irony is limited to deriding its victim, parody may be 'neutral', 'respect-
ful', or 'deflating' and, in modem parody, often makes an ally of the parodied text
in order to criticize some current text (1985: 52-68). Attending to the speaker's
stance, Sperber claims, "The parodist, of course, does pretend to be someone else",
but the ironist does not (1984: 135). For Kreuz and Roberts, pretense is essential to
irony (as it is for Grice, 1989) and satire, but not to parody, which employs echoic
mention instead (1993:101).~9 Taking a somewhat different approach than those so
far discussed, Booth subsumes parody under irony, characterizing it as a type of
irony "revealed through style" (1974: 73).
While theorists differ in the way they distinguish parody and irony (to the point of
contradiction), the consensus is that the two acts can typically be distinguished. No
such consensus can be inferred from literature on the relationship between parody
and satire. Indeed, they share key characteristics: they both require their audience to
maintain multiple representations, and they both ridicule their object (Kreuz and
Roberts, 1993). According to Kuiper, for both parody and satire, the hearer perceives
(1) a "similarity of form" between the parodying/satirizing text and its object, and
(2) humor (1984: 463). The similarities between parody and satire have even led
some to reduce them to one class, though only in particular cases. Kreuz and Roberts
claim that "parody is only satiric when the target extends beyond one person or
style"; when parody becomes "satiric parody", then parody and satire become one
and the same (1993: 104). Kuiper offers another explanation for an area of overlap
based on the absence or presence of his first condition for satire: "a is satirical if P
thinks on perceiving a that the author (s)he infers to have created a ... intends P's
perception of a to change P's view of some state of affairs S to a negative one"
(1984: 463). Parody which abides by Kuiper's condition (1), such that P's view of
the antecedent is the object of the parody, and which involves "a formal resemblance
between the parody and some antecedent and ... is funny", is considered a type of
satire (1984: 470).
Despite claimed similarities and areas of overlap, Kreuz and Roberts (1993) and
Kuiper (1984) do identify types of parody and of satire which are distinguishable.
Kreuz and Roberts claim that parody and satire differ in their reach: whereas parody
targets "the creator of the original work or the style of the work" (1993: 104), satire
reaches beyond this to ridicule society (ibid.). Kuiper identifies a type of parody
~9 For discussion of pretending and its relation to meaning, see Pretending and Meaning: Toward a
Pragmatic Theory q[ Fictional Discourse (Henry, 1996).
D.F. Rossen-KnUl, R. 14enr~' / Journal of Pragmatics 27 (1997) 719-752 749
which lacks condition (1) (which parallels our critical act) and, as such, is distinct
from all satire (1984: 470). Offering a structural distinction between parody and
satire, Rose says, "[P]arody, unlike forms of satire or burlesque which do not make
their target a significant part of themselves, is ambivalently dependent upon the
object of its criticism for its own reception" (1979:51) - a view which contradicts
Kuiper's claim that parody and satire involve a 'similarity of form' between the par-
odying/satirizing text and its target (condition (2) for satire and parody). Another dif-
ference between parody and satire may be found in the tenor of the criticism and the
relationship between the targeting text and its object. When distinguishing parody
from satire and irony, Rose highlights the "comic juxtaposition of specific pre-
formed linguistic or artistic materials" (1993: 89). In contrast, she speaks of satire's
"unequivocal message about its target" (1993: 89) and of "satirical arrows drawn
from the quiver of caustic criticism" (1993: 28) - again, a view which challenges
Kuiper's claim that both parody and satire necessarily involve humor (1984: 470).
Adding to the confusion is our own reaction to Kuiper's first example of satire
aimed at the classic Marlboro Man scene: rather than the backdrop of rugged moun-
tains, we see flat land, depicted in black and white; in place of the hardy cowboy,
we see gravestones. We did not perceive humor in this scathing critique, making us
lean toward the view that humor was not in fact essential to satire, though certainly
a possible accessory.
So far, our discussion has assumed that parody, irony and satire are distinct. Still
open for investigation is the possibility that no distinction can be made once intuitions
are put aside and replaced by close analysis. Speaking of parody and irony, Martin
says, "What they have in common, except in their most exaggerated uses, is that no
rule can tell us how to recognize them" (Martin, 1986: 180). We would emphasize
satire's and parody's relationship in the group of easily confused relatives.
We raise the problem of taxonomic identities not merely to highlight fuzzy bound-
aries, but to anticipate our model's role in locating the source of the overlap. Is it, for
example, a matter of like forms producing like interpretations, as Kuiper suggests
(1984), of like forms leading to different interpretations, of distinct forms resulting in
similar perceptions, or some combination of these? Such uncertainty suggests the
need for a formal and comparable account of each act, a need which our approach
begins (and can continue) to fulfill. As much as possible, comparable models of par-
ody, irony, and satire should identify essential features of production. Once these fea-
tures have been identified, they can be monitored for their interaction within specified
contexts, and the resulting interpretations can then be observed. Our expectation is
that such a methodical approach might help us pinpoint clear differences between the
acts, as well as the source(s) of overlap. Where the formal distinctions fall short in
their abilities to account for perceived differences, we can search out pragmatic
explanations, much as we have done to explain the use of parody to pay tribute.
4. Conclusion
In sum, the four essential and interacting features of verbal parody are:
750 D.F. Rossen-Knill, R. Hemy / Journal of Pragmatics 27 (1997) 719-752
The speaker manipulates these four acts to convey at minimum a parodic message
and often a complex of messages. As the above discussions demonstrate, even the
minimum parodic message must be 'worked out'. The parodic message (unlike the
ironic message) cannot take an explicit form: we can't say, 'Isn't it parodic that the
Reagan administration turned ketchup into a vegetable?' Our instincts tell us this is
wrong; the bald statement in and of itself lacks the comic act essential to verbal par-
ody. Said in speech act terms, the parodic message is always conveyed through an
indirect speech act. In part a result of its indirection, verbal parody's potential scope
in real conversation is quite broad. It has become a conventional way to pay tribute
to the very object it parodies. It can target any object in the world. Moreover, it can
target multiple objects, either through the first targeted object's association with
additional objects or through the simultaneous re-presentation of multiple objects.
Finally, the parodic speech act can function to convey additional, non-parodic
messages.
In the process of constructing our model and considering how it accounts for some
examples of verbal parody, we have come to discover several directions for future
research in parody. The model could be refocused, for example, on literary studies to
offer a close working analysis of parody as a critical tool, or to help distinguish par-
ody, irony, and satire (as well as their less famous relations, such as burlesque).
Working in a quite different discipline, the model might aid in identifying the kinds
of social or political contexts in which parody thrives and help us consider the extent
to which parody has served social and political change, if it has at all. Relocating our
model again, this time in cognitive science, raises questions about cognitive con-
straints on creating and interpreting parody, including an individual's ability to acti-
vate, maintain, and process multiple representations of the world. Finally, for the
many disciplines (and interdisciplinary studies) interested in describing human
behavior, we think it worthwhile to re-evaluate the model for its ability to describe
all acts of parody, particularly since we have designed the model with this goal in
mind.
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