What can we learn from constructed speech errors?
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Lucia Kornexl
Abstract
Due to her untiring and constantly failing attempts to enhance her social standing by employing highly extravagant diction, Mrs Malaprop in Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s The Rivals (1775) has given her name to a specific type of lexical misapplication exploited for humorous effect. While her ‘malapropisms’ have usually served as a starting point for scholarly investigations into similar speech errors produced by modern speakers, this paper asks what the original material, skilfully embedded in a ‘comedy of manners’, can tell us about the linguistic microstructure of such lexical mismatches, about their semantic relationship to the target words, and how this peculiar kind of material relates to modern speech error typologies. To examine these questions, the linguistic character of Mrs Malaprop’s malapropisms will be explored on the basis of some significant criteria applied in pertinent studies of Present-day English data. Sheridan’s material will also be seen in relation to relevant evidence provided by three leading 18th-century dictionaries and by the OED. I hope to show that, when examined in their original, late 18th-century context and tested against some major variables, Sheridan’s malapropisms are not so far away from linguistic reality as is often assumed. Yet however ‘authentic’ his constructed malapropisms may be, their skilful use for literary effect nevertheless calls for a special treatment.
Abstract
Due to her untiring and constantly failing attempts to enhance her social standing by employing highly extravagant diction, Mrs Malaprop in Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s The Rivals (1775) has given her name to a specific type of lexical misapplication exploited for humorous effect. While her ‘malapropisms’ have usually served as a starting point for scholarly investigations into similar speech errors produced by modern speakers, this paper asks what the original material, skilfully embedded in a ‘comedy of manners’, can tell us about the linguistic microstructure of such lexical mismatches, about their semantic relationship to the target words, and how this peculiar kind of material relates to modern speech error typologies. To examine these questions, the linguistic character of Mrs Malaprop’s malapropisms will be explored on the basis of some significant criteria applied in pertinent studies of Present-day English data. Sheridan’s material will also be seen in relation to relevant evidence provided by three leading 18th-century dictionaries and by the OED. I hope to show that, when examined in their original, late 18th-century context and tested against some major variables, Sheridan’s malapropisms are not so far away from linguistic reality as is often assumed. Yet however ‘authentic’ his constructed malapropisms may be, their skilful use for literary effect nevertheless calls for a special treatment.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Linguistic norms and conventions 1
- Usage guides and the Age of Prescriptivism 1
- “Splendidly prejudiced” 29
- Paradigm shifts in 19th-century British grammar writing 49
- Promotional conventions on English title-pages up to 1550 73
- What can we learn from constructed speech errors? 99
- The proverbial discourse tradition in the history of English 129
- Testing a stylometric tool in the study of Middle English documentary texts 149
- Pragmatic and formulaic uses of shall and will in Older Scots and Early Modern English official letter writing 167
- Studying dialect spelling in its own right 191
- Index 213
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Linguistic norms and conventions 1
- Usage guides and the Age of Prescriptivism 1
- “Splendidly prejudiced” 29
- Paradigm shifts in 19th-century British grammar writing 49
- Promotional conventions on English title-pages up to 1550 73
- What can we learn from constructed speech errors? 99
- The proverbial discourse tradition in the history of English 129
- Testing a stylometric tool in the study of Middle English documentary texts 149
- Pragmatic and formulaic uses of shall and will in Older Scots and Early Modern English official letter writing 167
- Studying dialect spelling in its own right 191
- Index 213
