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ELSEVIER Journal of Pragmatics 27 (1997) 719-752

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The pragmatics of verbal parody

Deborah F. Rossen-Kni l l , R ichard Henry

Institute for Research in Cognitive Science. University of PennLLvlvania, 3401 Walnut Street. Suite 4c, Philadelphia. PA 19104-6228. USA

Received March 1994; revised version June 1996

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 conventional 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 essential 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 So t -Weed 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 typically 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 important features of parody; however, by confining their investigations to literary texts, they severely limit its scope. Highlighting its critical and imitative features, Stone

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(1914) characterizes parody as high art, while Rose (1979) offers us parody as metafiction, 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 particular 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 investigate 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 language 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 critical 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).

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ical and social tool. 4 In Section 3.1, 'Extending the analysis ' , we appeal to Brown and Levinson ' 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 parody ' s range in choosing its object, targeting multiple objects, and conveying multiple messages. In Section 3.5, we discuss briefly the taxonomic limits of our formal definition, particularly in distinguishing verbal parody 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.

2. A pragmatic model of verbal parody

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):

Example 1 - original text:

The Soul selects her own Society - Then - shuts the Door - (Dickinson)

the parody: The Soul selects her own Sorority - Then - shuts the Dorm -

Like any speech act, the verbal parody in (1) utilizes those intentions essential in communicat ion: (a) an informative intention, " to inform the audience of some- th ing"; and (b) a communicat ive intention, " to inform the audience of one ' s infor-

4 In developing our model of prototypical parody, we rely on examples of parody taken from real conversation. 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 conversation, 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 constructed (16, 18, 23-27).

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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 obviously, by publishing that writing (Pratt, 1977:116). In Austin's (1975) terms, in producing 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 content" (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 propositional content. In apparent disregard for his recognition that non-propositional utterances 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:

Example 2 - the parody.

Joe: Lynn: Joe: Penny: Gail:

How much our shister wastes money, Your shister? needlessly - Our shister hehhehheh. My shister Penny. Ha ha ha. (Norrick, 1993: 77)

Example 2 constitutes a group parody of Joe's accidental phonetic vocalization of 'sister' as shister. 'Your shister', 'Our shister', and 'My shister Penny' do not have propositional content; rather, the phonetic renditions of particular words in the parodying verbal expression point to a state of affairs, in this case, Joe's manner of speech. To account for (2) and the general category of non-propositional referring expressions to which it belongs, we revise Searle's definition of the expressive speech act: the illocutionary point of this class is to express the psychological state specified in the sincerity condition about a state of affairs pointed to by the utterance or some part o f it. According to this definition, verbal parody is an expressive.

It is because we view verbal parody as one way people use language to communicate that we have turned primarily to pragmatics to develop our model. However,

5 Kuiper (1984) distinguishes between two types of parody, one of which is not critical.

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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.

2.1. The four essentials of verbal parody

In every occurrence of verbal parody, the speaker conventionally makes use of four essential acts: (1) the intentional verbal 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 produce a verbal parody, a speaker must manipulate all four of these acts with the intent to create a parody that is recognizable to the hearer(s). In addition, the hearer(s) must recognize the message associated with each of the four acts of parody, as well as the speaker's intention to perform the four acts of parody for the purpose of communicating a parodic message. While the speaker cannot ensure successful uptake by the hearer, he/she can verbally re-present the object of parody and flaunt that re-presentation in a way that maximizes the likelihood of successful uptake, as we discuss in greater detail in Section 2.1.2.

2.1.1. Intentional re-presentation 6 In verbal parody, the speaker intentionally recasts the object of parody in the form

of a verbal expression. This act creates the parodic text as Bakhtin sees it, as the juxtaposition of the "represented" (or parodied) style and the "representing" (or parodying) style (1981: 75). More than this, the act of re-presentation intentionally recalls the object of parody and its context. The intentional re-presentation may take any linguistic form and target anything in the world: events, actions, individuals, groups, institutions, and/or beliefs and thoughts (whether enacted by an individual, a group, or an institution), as we demonstrate in Sections 3.2 and 3.3. Consider the re- presenting verbal expression in example 3:

Example 3 - background: Brandon is attempting to justify the didactic tendency Ned has objected to in some of director Frank Capra's later films.

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 somewhat different form in Rossen-Knill (1995).

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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-presentation involves Brandon's repetition of Ned's locutionary act combined with intentional alteration of it by means of emphasis on 'fav' in 'favor' and 'pres' in 'depression'. 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):

Example 4 - background: participants are discussing the Playboy Channel.

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 verbal expressions which are enough like the scenes to make them recognizable to the audience. That the audience recognizes the re-presentation is evidenced most obviously 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 intention to re-present must accompany his utterance. To understand the distinction between intentional re-presentation and iteration, consider that a speaker can accidentally/unconsciously iterate another's behavior, but cannot accidentally or unconsciously re-present it to create a parody:

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Example 5 - background: Father answers the telephone with a booming, distinc- tive 'hello' which sounds something like, 'Eee-yello' .

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 sufficient to it. Consider this next e~.ample:

Example 6 - background: At a daycare center, the teachers encourage the children (ages 2 to 3) to use words (rather than biting or hitting) to communicate their dislikes. Frequently observed is the following interchange, or something quite similar to it:

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 producing 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 understanding 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 linguistic 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).

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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 linguistic 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 pragmatic 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:

(7) Want to take the dawg for a walk? (8) My fellow Americans .... iterated by Richard Little to parody President

Nixon. (9) Duh (said by one teenager to another, in order to parody a third teenager's

lack of intelligence). (10) 'I know this town like the back of my hand' (said by wife to husband who's

driving a car and is lost).

(7) constitutes an intentional re-presentation of the phonetic vocalization of 'dawg', and is used to parody both the speaker's accent and her over-attentiveness to her dog. (8) constitutes a stylistic intentional re-presentation in order to parody the manner in which Richard Nixon spoke (and perhaps the overt peace-and-brotherhood content of his speeches). (9) intentionally re-presents a lack of semantic content, in order to parody someone's stupidity. (10) is an intentional re-presentation at the pragmatic level: the wife re-presents her husband's speech act in order to parody her husband's confidence in his sense of direction.

Sperber and Wilson's (1986) and Kreuz and Glucksberg's (1989) solution to the linguistic constraints imposed by mention theory is to rename it, respectively, as echoic interpretation and reminder theory. This revision toward a more lenient relationship between a verbal expression and what it echoes may account better for irony, as irony employs only a single code to refer to and comment on its object

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 reminder theory, 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' involves linguistic constraints which are too limited to account for irony's allusions to non-linguistic entities. 9 For discussion of allusion in parody, see Nash (1985).

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(Rose, 1979: 51). Parody, however, employs two codes (Rose, 1979: 51), the representing voice and the represented voice (Bakhtin, 1981), each of which corresponds to distinct speech events. In recalling the object of parody, intentional re-presentation 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 representation 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 recognizing 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)

In describing (as well as in demonstrating and in indicating) direct, nonserious quotation, Clark and Gerrig (1990)come close to characterizing what we call re-presentation. There are, however, some important differences. Much like re-presentations, "quotations deal in depictions of things, not in linguistic expressions" (Clark and Gerrig, 1990: 799). ~° In example 4, when P says in a high voice, 'oh hi how are you oh i 'm not bad how are you oft good let's take our clothes off ' , she uses a verbal expression in order to depict the ridiculous scenes from the Playboy Channel. Simi- larly, when Holman and Harmon use capitals to over-dramatize the trivial 'Sorority' and 'Dorm' (example 1), they depict Dickinson's use of capitals for dramatic effect. In neither example do the parodists repeat verbatim the linguistic expressions of their targets; rather, they produce a text which allows us to experience the parodied event.

Unlike quotation, re-presentation must not only demonstrate, but also indicate the object of parody. Mary might say, 'John said, "no no no no no" '. Mary need not recall John's words verbatim, and the hearer can understand the quotation quite well

~0 Because both 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).

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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 recognizes the resemblance between the parody and the original work, then the parody can succeed for that reader [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 reading 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 general 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 general 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 mention' (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-presentation 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-


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 quotation 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 parasitic act of re-presentation. As Clark and Gerrig explain, "Demonstrations are performed 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 'depictive', 'supportive', 'annotative', and 'incidental aspects' of demonstrations:

(i) Depictive Aspects. [I]ntended to depict aspects of the referent - to be used for distinguishing the intended referent from other possible referents. [I]n Alice's demonstration [of McEnroe's serve], let us suppose, these include her initial stance, the trajectory of her arms, head ... .

(ii) Supportive Aspects. [N]ecessary in the performance of the depictive aspects. In Alice's demonstration .... these include her use of slow motion, the lack of a real ball and racket .. . .

(iii) Annotative Aspects. [C]ommentary on what is being demonstrated. Alice, for example, might sneer .. . .

(iv) Incidental Aspects. [l]nc:idental to the demonstrator's purpose in demonstrating, aspects he or she has no specific intentions about. (1990: 768)

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 communication, 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

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hearer to recognize (1). This act of flaunting is key to the hearer(s) ability to recognize 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 recognizes 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 immediate 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 imitations 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).

Example 11 - the parody:

Lydia:

Brandon: Ned:

We had such a nice day today, so you hurry and get rested. Because you're gonna have a big nice [day tomorrow.] [Hurry and get] rested. 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.

~t For discussion of jokes as violations of Gricean maxims, see Attardo (1994).

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In addition to exploiting Grice 's maxims of relation and manner, a speaker may flaunt the intentional re-presen,cation through exploitation of the quality maxim: "Try to make your contribution one that is true" (1989: 27). j2 To some extent, many re-presentations in the service of parody might be understood as exploitations of Grice 's maxim of quality, one of whose submaxims says, "Do not say what you believe to be false" (1989: 27). To understand this point, it 's first necessary to restate the submaxim so that it more easily applies to all speech acts. Cooper 's revision of the maxims to suit questions offers direction in this task:

1. Don ' 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 maxims 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 ( 'Don ' t ask questions you don' t want the answer to'). The remaining maxims emerge from Searle's preparatory conditions.

Preparatory conditions for questions: 1. S does not know 'the answer' , i.e., does not know if the proposition is true or,

in the case of the propositional function, does not know the information needed to complete the proposition truly . . . . 13

2. It is not obvious to both S and H that H will provide the information at the time without being asked. (1969: 66)

The negation of Searle 's first preparatory condition forms the basis for the second part of Cooper 's first maxim, 'Don ' 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, 'Don ' t ask questions you have no reason to ask' . In order to gener- ate the remaining part of Cooper 's second maxim, 'Don ' t ask questions you don' t believe the listener can answer ' , we need only expand Searle 's preparatory conditions 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 questions. In real questions S wants to know (find out) the answer; in exam questions, S wants to know if H knows" (1969: 66).

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Generalizing from the discussion of Cooper 's revision of Grice 's maxim of quality, we can describe a speaker's believing or not believing in his or her speech act according to whether or not the preparatory and sincerity conditions hold (from the parodist 's perspective, of course). With this said, we could re- examine any of the examples so far presented and argue that they exploit the maxim of quality. However, the extent to which that exploitation flaunts the re- presentation and/or results from it varies. When A says in a high voice, ' let 's prance around saying silly little things' (example 4), she does not say so sincerely: the sincerity condition for requests, 'S wants H to do A', and that for commissives, 'S intends to do A' (with respect to promises, Searle, 1969: 60), do not hold. Clearly, A uses a 'high voice' to flaunt her re-presentation of scenes from the Playboy Channel. To the extent that A's friends know her, the unlikeli- ness of the serious (that is, non-parasitic (Austin, 1975)) interpretation of her directive also helps to flaunt the re-presentation. In other words, the audience, which recognizes that A couldn't possibly mean for everyone to prance around, etc., also recognizes that something other must be meant. Of course, that the clash between what is said and what is meant must be worked out may result primarily from the flaunting enacted through the high voice, thus making the exploitation of the maxim of quality a product of the flaunting rather than a signal that something must be worked out.

In this next example, exploitation of the maxim of quality seems essential to the act of flaunting the intentional re-presentation.

Example 12 - background: A brother and sister have a long history of arguing about women's rights issues in general, and more relevant to this example, about the brother's demeaning habit of calling women 'girls'. The brother, who has a great distaste for feminism, has just finished reading Benjamin Hoff's The Te of Piglet, which, to his mind, offers a solution to the problem of feminism. Para- phrasing the text, he explains that the whole business of equality is a big fuss over nothing, that it's just a matter of calling everyone one thing. That way everyone will be equal.

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 reasons: (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-presentation 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

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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 grandmother:

Example 13 - background: Before any trip, a grandmother always says to her grandchildren, 'Go make vee vee, darling'.

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 audience responds to the grandson's flaunted re-presentation with laughter, but the loudest laughter comes from the grandchildren, perhaps because they perceived not merely humor, but a parody. The humor emerges from the incongruity between a well poised 34-year-old adult and the serious and sincere speech act he whispers to himself ('Go make vee vee'), as if he were a child barely out of diapers. The parody emerges for those grandchildren intimately aware of their grandmother's penchant for lovingly (but firmly) directing others' bodily needs. The utterance recalls her actions both critically and humorously, that is, through parody.

However the speaker flaunts his or her intentional re-presentation of the object of parody, the purpose of that flaunting is to indicate that the re-presented verbal expression is not to be taken literally or interpreted only in accordance with its propositional content. For this reason, recognizing the act of flaunting is key to the successful working out of the parody. Consider, for example, what happens when, from the hearer's perspective, the flaunted re-presentation is too similar to the text being parodied:

Example 14 - background: The couple is planning to repaint parts of their house and have asked several painters for estimates. One painter, Sal Kobokalski, was a bit of a shmoozer and overlty dramatic. After work, the wife listens to the messages on the answering machine.

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.

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In (14), the husband fails to recognize his wife's utterance as an intentional re-presentation 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 purpose, in either case, the husband merely interprets it seriously.

Without sufficient knowledge of the actual text, the hearer may also fail to recognize 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 directing 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 something like, 'I mean for my re-presentation of Dickinson's stylistic quirks to communicate 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 interpretations).

14 Rose lists types of incongruencies which can signal parody (Rose, 1993: 37-38).

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2.1.3. Critical act The critical act ridicules the object of parody. It emerges from the intentional re-

presentation of the object of parody and the flaunting of the re-presentation: these first two acts recall for the hearer the object which the critical act ridicules. The tenor of the critical act, though always pejorative, may range from mild teasing to contempt, depending on the speaker's attitude toward the object of parody. In (3), Bran- don might be performing the relatively mild critical act of poking fun at his brother Ned's imprecise use of language. Toward the other end of the spectrum, the parodies of the Playboy Channel (example 4) suggest contempt for the targeted scenes, evidenced in part by one speaker's serious comment about their group's anger toward the object of parody: "[W]eren't you here that night when a whole bunch of us sit- ting around getting pissed ..." (Hay, 1995). Importantly, it is not the particular utterance, intentional re-presentation, or means of flaunting that re-presentation which determines the tenor of the critical act, but the psychological state motivating it and the purposeful manipulation of the first two acts to communicate this psychological state. As with any speech act, the speaker also manipulates his or her style of speech (including tone, pitch, and timing), and relies on his or her estimation of the hearer's background knowledge, as well as on the hearer's ability to recall that knowledge to successfully perform the critical act.

The critical act, in combination with intentional re-presentation and the intention to flaunt this re-presentation, is necessary to parody; however, it is not sufficient to it. Consider this political critique, constructed for the sake of demonstration:

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 building 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.

2.1.4. Comic act The final essential (and probably most visible) act of verbal parody is the comic

act. To produce this act, the speaker constrains the language used to produce the

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intentional re-presentation of the object of parody, the flaunting of this re-presentation, and the critical act, and integrates/manipulates these three acts in order to create the comic act (see Fig. 1).

Fig. 1. A model of verbal parody.

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 simultaneously. Looking just at the act of re-presentation, we have seen that the parodist'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:

(7) Want to take the dawg for a walk? (8) My fellow Americans (iterated by Richard Little to parody President Nixon). (9) Duh (said by one teenager to another, in order to parody a third teenager's

lack of intelligence) (10) 'I know this town like the back of my hand' (iterated by wife to husband

who's driving a car and is lost)

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

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'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'; ~6 the second 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-presentation 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 stupidity 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-presented 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 discussion 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 melodramatic 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.

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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.

3. Extending the analysis: Using verbal parody

So far, we have discussed verbal parody in relatively simple terms: we have shown how a single speaker uses verbal parody to communicate a single message which expresses an attitude about a single object of parody to a single audience. In this section we begin to address issues related to the range of parody in real communication. In Section 3.1, we account for instances of parody which seem not to criticize their objects, but extol them. In Sections 3.2-3.4, we consider the potential objects of verbal parody, the number of objects one act may parody, and the ways in which a parodic speech act can simultaneously communicate a serious speech act. Finally, with an eye toward future research, we discuss in 3.5 the formal boundaries (or lack of boundaries) between parody and its close relatives irony and satire.

3.1. Parody to pay tribute

Our model indicates that verbal parody recalls some object for ridicule and so suggests 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 convention, 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, " I f 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


object precisely when a direct expression of tribute or affection would prove too threatening to the speaker or he~.rer. Consider this example:

Example 16 - background: Don, the groom, often trips over things.

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:

Example 17 - background: Don (the groom) also tends to forget things.

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 criticism, serves particularly well to pay tribute when avowable tribute is inappropriate. 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).

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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.

3.2. The objects of verbal parody

As we have already discussed in our sections on the intentional re-presentation of the parodied act and the flaunting of that re-presentation, the object of parody is at minimum the action pointed to through the flaunted re-presentation. This object may be anything in the world: events; actions, beliefs, and thoughts (whether enacted by an individual, a group, or an institution); individuals; groups; institutions - in short, any thing, inanimate or animate. We adopt the definition of the terms 'event' and 'action', whereby 'event' refers to non-intentional and intentional acts in the world and 'action' refers to intentional acts only (Flew, 1979: 4, 115).

In this paper, we have focused on parodic objects which are intentional acts, perhaps because parody is a distinctly human behavior. It is worth pausing for a moment to show that non-intentional acts may also be the target of parody, although they become humanized in the process. Stuttering exemplifies a non-intentional act which often functions as the target of parody. Similarly, 'shister' in (2) parodies the unintentional mispronunciation of 'sister'. It is also worth noting that verbal parody can target unintentional acts which are not associated with speech acts, as stuttering and pronunciation are, though parody communicated through gesturing seems better suited to this task. Consider:

Example 18 - background: After a dinner at Denny's, Mr. Coleman sits back from his meal, slaps his belly, and burps involuntarily. He turns to his wife and asks: 'How'd you like the eats?'

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-propositional 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 parodied, 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

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that Rachel Hunter - a model now married to Rod Stewart, was going to have ... [the] birth filmed live" (1995).

Example 19 - the parody(ies): G: /but [h]she'll [h] probably (look beautiful) S: she'll probably go ++

All [laugh] 1 sec E: [h]oh look what's //this\ S: /have aX\ [ha ha] E: //perfectly\ bathed and//dressed baby\ G: /but\\ /it'll be\\ half hour

STOP stop my hair hair H: [h] [h] [h]ye[h]ah=

S: [ha ha ha] mm my baby popped out all made up and dressed. (Hay, 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 identifiable 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 individual 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.

Example 20 - background: while the husband is in charge of taking care of their 3-year-old, the wife often tells him to be careful of something which to his mind is at times an obvious danger During this conversation, the husband is giving the child a bath; the wife is in another room.

the parody: Wife: [calls from another room] Is everything okay? Husband: Is it okay if his head is in the water? Wife: [laughter] No.

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The husband re-presents the wife's belief in a verbal expression which feigns stupidity: 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 people - 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 parody, '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 individual 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: Ned: Claire:

Ned: Claire: Brad:

You never check it. I check them so often Because I 'm on his back. "Don' t you think we (h)hafta che(he)ck the oil and the coolant. Nahneh nahneh". I check the oil about every say fifteen or twe(hehe)nty (h )minutes. [I wish you'd show me how to] do it. [Huh heh heh heh. Huh huh huh huh. Huh (h)l just che(he)ck - (Norrick, 1993: 64)

Claire and Ned re-present a 'squabbling couple', and by means of exaggeration of semantic and phonetic content (e.g., 'I check the oil about every say fifteen or twe(hehe)nty (h)minutes'), flaunt that re-presentation in a humorous way in order to foreground (and criticize) the ridiculous behavior of 'squabbling couples'. In addition, this parody serves the purpose of highlighting the incongruity between Ned's and Claire's points of view on car care, which is a source of conflict for them (Nor- rick, 1993: 64). Through this lighthearted parody of a squabbling couple, then, Ned

D.F. Rossen-Knill. R. Hem'y / Journal of Pragmatics 27 (1997) 719-752 743

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.

3.3. Multiple objects of parody

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 parodying Rachel Hunter in her roles as model and movie star. By association, the parody 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 artistic 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-presentation 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 simultaneously re-present and so parody two acts (or one type of act manifested in two distinct speech events).

Example 22 - background 1: Sarah and John's mother frequently tells other people 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'.

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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 mimicking his mother's voice. As a result of these first two acts, he ridicules this tendency of his mother, and, if his manipulation of the first three acts of parody is successful, 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 grandmother, 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, maintain, and process multiple representations of the world simultaneously.

3.4. Multiple and simultaneous messages

As we've seen in the section on multiple objects of parody, a single parodic speech act can target several objects and so send several parodic messages to its hearer. In addition, 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. In this next example of parody, the re-presenting verbal expression functions as a directive (see also example 13).

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


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.

Example 24 (indirect assertive) - background: Peter is from Virginia and is visiting his cousin Paul in Minnesota. Even though it is summer, Peter has been com- plaining about the cold and threatening to buy a fur coat.

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 simultaneously 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.

Example 25 (direct commissive) - background: Marcia throws parties the first Saturday of every month; for the past two months she's invited Sally to each one. Sally, who is quite flaky, inevitably responds in a sing-song voice, 'I'11 be on time. I'll be on time', but never makes it to the party. Sally decides to throw herself a big 'surprise' birthday party and invites Marcia.

the parody: Marcia respond,; in a sing-song voice, 'I'11 be on time. I'll be on time'. 18

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 anonymous 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.

Example 26 (indirect expressive) - background: Martin runs a small sales depart- ment. Quite clumsy, he often bumps into his employees. On several occasions, these mishaps have resulted in strewn files and spilt coffee. Martin typically reacts to the situation with a bent head and mumbled 'Sorry. Sorry. I 'm really sorry'.

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 association 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 apology, 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 declaration.

Example 27 (Declaration) background: Twelve-year-old Sally acts as a surrogate parent for her mischievous, seven-year-old brother, John. Sally, who meets John after school, must often wait for him, as he is frequently kept late as punishment for some minor offense. Inevitably, he ends his explanation with, 'But I didn't do anything'. Sally consistently responds with a chuckle and declares, 'Guilty as charged'.

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!'


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 challenged 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 message 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 disavowable. 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.

3.5. Parody ? Irony ? Satire ?

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 particular 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 f ine fr iend" (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 parodist'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 message of the ironist to his 'initiated' audience, and the 'ironically meant' decoy message" (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 parodying/satirizing text and its target (condition (2) for satire and parody). Another difference 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 boundaries, 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 parody, irony, and satire should identify essential features of production. Once these features 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

1. an intentional verbal re-presentation of some prior action or event, 2. the flaunting of (1), 3. the critical act, and 4. the comic act.

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 parody. 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 parody, 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 constraints on creating and interpreting parody, including an individual's ability to activate, 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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