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Saturday, July 17, 2010

"Get thee to a nunnery": a fossilised conversational implicature

From online source, and following remarks by J -- and sorry, L. J. Kramer, while I look for better word than 'fossilised'.


This online remark went:


"Another play on words, nunnery, in this
instance, symbolizes both sexual abstinence and
sexual perversity. In a cloister, Ophelia would
take a vow of chastity, and in a brothel, she would
serve as the basest sexual object."

Read more: http://www.cliffsnotes.com/WileyCDA/LitNote/Hamlet-Character-Analysis-Hamlet.id-121,pageNum-354.html#ixzz0txf7XJM7

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Also:

I once coined the phrase ironysm, I think, or something like that. It struck me that some expressions can ONLY be used ironically, or rather that the ironical implicatum may get 'conventionalised', but not in the sense of 'conventional implicature' but rather more like 'fossilised CONVERSATIONAL implicature', since it's metaphorical, or metonymical, or metaphtonymical play:

So a 'nun' possibly became at one time a fixed cliche (via irony) for 'nun'.

------ There is a local piece of pastry which is referred to as "the monk's ball", since it resembles one (as those who've seen them can testify): it's a rather ugly thing, too sugary for my taste. But oddly, some people find 'monk's ball' ("Pass me a monk's ball") as a rude thing to say, so they have conceived of a euphemism: 'a nun's delight'. So a 'nun's delight' works just as well in the circumstances, even though it is perhaps just as gross.

I'm glad I am not a Catholic!

(I was baptised one, but soon enough converted to Church-of-England! -- or "Anglican", strictly).

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