Modern Oral Tradition in Action

This is a story from when I was working in the Children's Area of the Athens-Clarke County Library:

There were two sisters who befriended me and my coworker and who came to the library to see us once or twice a week. They were 9 and 11 years old. One day, when only the older girl was there. The three of us started telling silly jokes. I told them the joke about the duck that walks into a bar:

One day, a duck walked into a bar and asked the bar tender "Do you have any duck food?"
The bar tender said "No."
The next day, the duck walked into the bar and asked the bar tender "Do you have any duck food?"
The bar tender said "No."
The next day, the duck walked into the bar again and asked the bar tender "Do you have any duck food?"
The bar tender said, "No, I don't have any duck food, and if you ask me again, I'm going to nail your little webbed feet to the bar."
The next day, the duck walked into the bar and asked the bar tender "Do you have any nails?"
The bar tender said "No."
"Good," said the duck, "Do you have any duck food."

My coworker and our friend both thought the joke was pretty funny. A few days later, both the girl and her younger sister were visiting us. The older girl decided to tell this joke to her sister. This is how she told it:

One day, a duck walked into a barn and asked the farmer "Do you have any duck food?"
The farmer said "No."
The next day, the duck walked into the barn and asked the farmer "Do you have any duck food?"
The farmer said "No."
The next day, the duck walked into the barn again and asked the farmer "Do you have any duck food?"
The farmer said, "No, I don't have any duck food, and if you ask me again, I'm going to nail your little webbed feet to the barn floor."
The next day, the duck walked into the barn and asked the farmer "Do you have any nails?"
The farmer said "No."
"Good," said the duck, "Do you have any duck food."

This reveals something of how our minds remember stories and jokes we hear. She remembered the heart of the joke, what made it funny, and filled in the rest with what made the most sense to her. An adult hears this joke and is immediately reminded of other "bar jokes":

Bacon and eggs walked into a bar and the bar tender said, "We don't serve breakfast."

A rope walked into a bar and the bar tender said, "We don't serve your kind."

The rope walked back outside, tangled himself up, ruffled his ends, and then walked back in.

The bar tender said, "You're not a rope, are you?"

"Nope, I'm a frayed knot."

(My new favorite from my sister, who is a piano teacher.)

C, E flat, and G walked into a bar. The bar tender said, "We don't serve minors."

So, E flat left and C and G shared a fifth.

No, what a child thinks of when she hears the joke is something more along the lines of, "Old MacDonald had a farm..."

So that's how she tells it, as a farm joke, not as a bar joke.

The best part is, it's still funny.

Music

Music is often referred to as a language. As a musician I feel this is an accurate analogy.

When you first start to learn a new language you translate each word into your language before extracting meaning. Once you gain fluency you can read or hear a word in another language and instantly grasp the meaning without going through the intermediate step of referring back to your mother tongue.

When you first lean to read music, you learn that each note on the staff has a letter name. You also learn that the keys/strings/pitches of your instrument have corresponding letter names. You begin to play by seeing the note on the page, recognizing it as middle C, then finding middle C on your instrument. When you become fluent, you go from note on the page to note on the instrument without thinking about note name.

This is the most obvious way in which spoken language and music are similar. But I have been thinking that music, like spoken language, consists of three parts: written form, spoken/played form, and meaning. The thing is that with music sound and sense are intricately connected. You may be able to have sound without sense, but you can't have sense without sound. People don't go around silently reading books of music the way we might read a book of poetry. And this makes me wonder (poetry is a good example since rhythm and rhyme live in the world of sound) why we are so willing to do without the sound element of language.

Music could be our guide. Writing music down preserves it and allows many people to have access to it. But it isn't really music until it is performed.

Dirty Words

Now that I have a child I've been thinking of all kinds of parenting things, like what I'll do when Virginia comes out with her first "bad word."

I would love to take the approach of saying that "bad words" don't exist. Words can't hurt you and they only have the weight that you let them have. Why should someone exclaiming "shit" be any worse than someone exclaiming "poop." (I've actually heard a pretty good defense of "shit" as the best curse word to use if you must.)

But the thing is that all words have the value society has assigned to them. For language to work we can't be like Humpty Dumpty and insist that words can mean whatever we want them to mean. And I know that as much as I would like to, I don't really not believe in "bad words."

The real problem with "bad words" isn't that they mean nothing. It is that each has a very specific meaning and too often people don't actually think about what they are saying. Yeah, if you stub your toe and you just have to shout something, maybe "shit" isn't so bad. But if you are cursing at someone - well, you are cursing them. You are wishing something bad upon them or calling them a name. Now we aren't talking about the word anymore. We are talking about intent. This is the heart of the problem.

Here sound and sense are closely united and the word itself is almost completely bypassed. We speak these words with venom and mean them to sting. But do we always mean what the words themselves are supposed to mean?

In pondering all this I have determined I should try and turn potential cursings into blessings. That person in the next lane committing X, Y, or Z driving sin? Bless his heart. Yeah, we in the South know the connotations of that phrase, but maybe if I say it enough I'll mean it.

Sound and Sense in Alice in Wonderland and Alice Through the Looking Glass

Carroll, L. (1992). Alice in wonderland. Gray, D. J. (Ed.), New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company

From Alice in Wonderland:

The Hatter opened his eyes very wide on hearing this; but all he said was “Why is a raven like a writing-desk?”

“Come, we shall have some fun now!” thought Alice. “I’m glad they’ve begun asking riddles – I believe I can guess that,” she added aloud.

“Do you mean that you think you can find out the answer to it?” said the March Hare.

“Exactly so,” said Alice.

“Then you should say what you mean,” the March Hare went on.

“I do.” Alice hastily replied; “at least – at least I mean what I say – that’s the same thing, you know.”

“Not the same thing a bit!” said the Hatter. “Why, you might just as well say that ‘I see what I eat’ is the same thing as ‘I eat what I see’!”

“You might just as well say,” added the March Hare, “that ‘I like what I get’ is the same thing as ‘I get what I like’!”

“You might just as well say,” added the Dormouse, which seemed to be talking in its sleep, “that ‘I breathe when I sleep’ is the same thing as ‘I sleep when I breathe’!”

“It is the same thing with you,” said the Hatter, and here the conversation dropped, and the party sat silent for a minute, while Alice thought over all she could remember about ravens and writing-desks, which wasn’t much. (p. 55)

“Ah well! It means much the same thing,” said the Duchess, digging her sharp little chin into Alice’s shoulder as she added “and the moral of that is – ‘Take care of the sense, and the sounds will take care of themselves.’” (pp. 70-71)

Footnote: The proverb is “Take care of the pence, and the pounds will take care of themselves.” (p. 71)

From Alice Through the Looking Glass:

After reading Jabberwocky –

“It seems very pretty,” she said when she had finished it, “but it’s rather hard to understand!” (You see she didn’t like to confess even to herself, that she couldn’t make it out at all.) “Somehow it seems to fill my head with ideas – only I don’t exactly know what they are! However, somebody killed something; that’s clear, at any rate-” (p. 118)

Alice didn’t like being criticized, so she began asking questions. “Aren’t you sometimes frightened at being planted out here, with nobody to take care of you?”

“There’s the tree in the middle,” said the Rose. “What else is it good for?”

“But what could it do, if any danger came?” Alice asked.

“It could bark,” said the Rose.

“It says ‘Bough-wough!’” cried a Daisy. “That’s why its branches are called boughs!” (pp. 121-122)

Footnote: This is the first of several passages in the book that play with the question of whether words are entirely arbitrary signs or whether, as the Daisy here suggests, the name of a thing is somehow intrinsically connected with its nature. (p. 122)

“I don’t rejoice in insects at all,” Alice explained, “because I’m rather afraid of them – at least the large kinds. But I can tell you the names of some of them.”

“Of course they answer to their names?” the Gnat remarked carelessly.

“I never knew them do it.”

“What’s the use of their having names,” the Gnat said, “if they wo’n’t answer to them?”

“No use to them,” said Alice; “but it’s useful to the people that name them, I suppose. If not, why do things have names at all?”

“I ca’n’t say,” the Gnat replied. “Further on, in the wood down there, they’ve got no names – however, go on with your list of insects: you’re wasting time.” (p. 132)

Footnote: Alice here plays with another theory of language, later to be developed by Humpty Dumpty: that names are arbitrary designations imposed on things for the convenience of humans. (p. 132)

Just then a Fawn came wandering by: it looked at Alice with its large gentle eyes, but didn’t seem at all frightened. “Here then! Here then!” Alice said, as she held out her hand and tried to stroke it; but it only started back a little, and then stood looking at her again.

“What do you call yourself?” the Fawn said at last. Such a soft sweet voice it had!

“I wish I knew!” thought poor Alice. She answered, rather sadly, “Nothing, just now.”

“Think again,” it said: “that wo’n’t do.”

Alice thought, but nothing came of it. “Please, would you tell me what you call yourself?” she said timidly. “I think that might help a little.”

“I’ll tell you, if you’ll come a little further on,” the Fawn said. “I can’n’t remember here.”

So they walked on together through the wood, Alice with her arms clasped lovingly round the soft neck of the Fawn, till they came out into another open field, and here the Fawn gave a sudden bound into the air, and shook itself free from Alice’s arm. “I’m a Fawn!” it cried out in a voice of delight. “And, dear me! you’re a human child!” A sudden look of alarm came into its beautiful brown eyes, and in another moment it had darted away at full speed. (pp. 136-137)

“Don’t stand chattering to yourself like that,” Humpty Dumpty said, looking at her for the first time, “but tell me your name and your business.”

“My name is Alice, but – “

“It’s a stupid name enough!” Humpty Dumpty interrupted impatiently. “What does it mean?”

“Must a name mean something?” Alice asked doubtfully.

“Of course it must,” Humpty Dumpty said with a short laugh: “my name means the shape I am – and a good handsome shape it is, too. With a name like yours, you might be any shape, almost.” (p. 160)

Footnote: Humpty Dumpty here advances the theory that names have something to do with the nature of the thing they name. Later, in his remarks about “glory,” he picks up the other theory Dodgson plays with in this book, that words are wholly arbitrary signs. (p. 160)

“In that case we start afresh,” said Humpty Dumpty, “and it’s my turn to choose a subject-” (“He talks about it just as if it was a game!” thought Alice.) “So here’s a question for you. How old did you say you were?”

Alice made a short calculation, and said “Seven years and six months.”

“Wrong!” Humpty Dumpty exclaimed triumphantly. “You never said a word like it!”

“I thought you meant ‘How old are you?’” Alice explained.

“If I’d meant that, I’d have said it,” said Humpty Dumpty. (p. 161)

“And only one for birthday presents, you know. There’s glory for you!”

“I don’t know what you mean by ‘glory,’” Alice said.

Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. “Of course you don’t – till I tell you. I meant ‘there’s a nice knock-down argument for you!’”

“But ‘glory’ doesn’t mean ‘a nice knock-down argument,’” Alice objected.

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.”

“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”

“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master – that’s all.” (p. 163)

(Shortly after this, Humpty Dumpty explicates the first stanza of Jabberwocky by giving meanings for the nonsense words.)