Newsgroups: alt.usage.english,sci.lang
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!nntp.club.cc.cmu.edu!eecs-usenet-02.mit.edu!nntprelay.mathworks.com!howland.erols.net!iagnet.net!198.87.88.26!news.altair.com!uwvax!uchinews!not-for-mail
From: deb5@midway.uchicago.edu (Daniel von Brighoff)
Subject: Re: Punning in German [was: Re: The Naming of Letters
X-Nntp-Posting-Host: ellis-nfs.uchicago.edu
Message-ID: <EEu23w.DyK@midway.uchicago.edu>
Sender: news@midway.uchicago.edu (News Administrator)
Organization: The University of Chicago
References: <sullivan.190.185.33D76309@osu.edu> <33E36695.1729@tony.arsusda.gov> <5sg9fl$9vs$1@news01.btx.dtag.de> <slrn5uvfri.gb.peter@eepjm.newcastle.edu.au>
Date: Wed, 13 Aug 1997 03:38:20 GMT
Lines: 38

In article <slrn5uvfri.gb.peter@eepjm.newcastle.edu.au>,
Peter Moylan <peter@ee.newcastle.edu.au> wrote:

[snip]
>As I recall it, this thread started with someone's assertion
>that Germans don't much indulge in wordplay.  The truth, I
>believe, is a lot more complicated than that.

Of course it is--it was just a generalisation, after all, and I took care
to frame it as such.  My source for this was _The German language in a
changing Europe_ by Michael Clyne (Cambridge, 1995), an excellent
*Forschungsstandbericht* that summarises the results of several hundred
individual studies.  On p. 129, Clyne states:

	Germans, but not Austrians,...tend to take a more prescriptive
	attitude toward language than do English speakers.  To Germans,
	language is a serious matter, related to ideology.  This limits	
	the use of verbal humour and verbal irony in everyday discourse.
	The kind of 'ping-pong pun game' that is played by many English
	speakers is not known to, or understood by, most German speakers.
	Verbal humour and verbal irony are, at best, the province of 
	creative writers...and cabarettists....German children do not have
	as rich a tradition of children's riddles and rhymes based on
	linguistic creativity and polysemy as do English-speaking 
	children....Most of the children's verbal humour referred to by 
	Helmers[*] appears to be based on a reaction to linguistic errors
	made by the informant or someone else, i.e. a prescriptive
	attitude.


[*] H. Helmers _Sprache und Humor des Kindes_.  Stuttgart, 1971.

(More later--my step-daughter is kicking me off the computer.)

-- 
	 Daniel "Da" von Brighoff    /\          Dilettanten
	(deb5@midway.uchicago.edu)  /__\         erhebt Euch
				   /____\      gegen die Kunst!
