Logic of Nonsense and Pragmatics of Language Used in Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

Authors

Marwan Saeed Saif Moqbel Ibb University

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.34050/elsjish.v6i4.31300

Keywords:

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Cooperative Principle, Logic of Nonsense, Politeness Principle, Pragmatic Presuppositions

Abstract

Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is an adventure story that appeals to children as well as adults. While children are interested in the surface humour, adults are interested in the strange way of reasoning and the satire on many aspects of Victorian society. This paper aims at analyzing the conversations between Alice and the inhabitants of Wonderland to show how Lewis Carroll, through violating the well-established norms of logical argumentation and the pragmatics of conversation based on the Cooperative Principle of Grice (1975) and the Politeness Principle of Brown and Levinson (1978), was able to create humour and convey deeper messages. The paper highlights how the exchanges between Alice and the inhabitants of Wonderland turn out to be puzzling, and sometimes, even nonsensical and humorous because of the way language is used. It also shows that Carroll, through the nonsensical, yet seemingly logical, arguments of the inhabitants of Wonderland, was able to convey deeper messages, such as pointing out how confusing adults and their world are to children and how there is a gap in communication between them and mocking some aspects of the restrictive Victorian society. In this, the paper provides a deeper understanding of the language of Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

References

Abusch, D. (2002). Lexical alternatives as a source of pragmatic presuppositions. In B. Jackson (Ed.), Semantics and Linguistic Theory, 12, 1-19. CLC Publications. http://dx.doi.org/10.3765/salt.v0i0.2867

Agustina, S. (2021). Face-saving and face-threatening negotiation by lecturers: gender and teaching experience differences. Language Literacy: Journal of Linguistics, Literature and Language Teaching, 5(2), 590-599. http://dx.doi.org/10.30743/ll.v5i2.4527

Almabrouk, N. A. (2020). The illogical logic in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. International Journal of Humanities and Social Science, 10(2), 29-42. http://dx.doi.org/10.30845/ijhss.v10n2a5

Andini, C. (2017). Children Emotion in The Movie" Big Hero 6 (Doctoral dissertation, Doctoral dissertation, Universitas Islam Negeri Alauddin Makassar).

Brown, P. & Levinson, S. (1978). Universals in language usage: Politeness phenomena. In E. Goody (Ed.), Questions and politeness: Strategies in social interaction (pp. 256–289). Cambridge University Press.

Brown, P. & Levinson, S. C. (1987). Politeness: Some universals in language usage. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511813085

Bush, B. (2004). Making sense of nonsense: A literary analysis of ‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. https://homesteadinwonderland.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/bush.pdf

Carter, L. (1995). "Which way? Which way?": The fantastical inversions of Alice in Wonderland. The Victorian Web. https://victorianweb.org/authors/ carroll/carter.html

Carroll, L. (2000). Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (A BookVirtual digital edition, v.1.2). BookVirtual Corp. https://www.adobe.com/be_en/ active-use/pdf/Alice_in_Wonderland.pdf (Original work published 1865)

Chiang, Y-C. (2012). Biophilosophy and the logic of nonsense: A Deleuzian reading of Lewis Carroll's two Alice books [Doctoral dissertation, National Taiwan Normal University]. http://rportal.lib.ntnu.edu.tw:8080/server/api/ core/bitstreams/964ee322-da31-47bc-8abd-f84a7e5f28c0/content

de Rooy, L. (2004) Themes and motifs: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Alice-in-Wonderland.net. https://www.alice-in-wonderland.net/resources/analysis/ themes-and-motifs

Downing, L. H. (2000). Alice in Pragmaticland: Reference, deixis and the delimitation of text worlds in Lewis Carroll's Alice books. Academia.edu. https://www.academia.edu/29916846/Alice_in_Pragmaticland_CLAC_2000

Dunn, G. & McDonald, B. (2010). Six impossible things before breakfast. In R. B. Davis, Alice in Wonderland and philosophy (pp. 61-77). John Wiley & Sons.

Grice, H. P. (1975). Logic and conversation. In P. Cole and J. Morgan (Eds.), Syntax and semantics 3: Speech acts (pp. 41-58). Academic Press. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004368811_003

Háhn, J. (2010). Verbal humour and Lewis Carroll: A linguistic analysis of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. In P. Barta, A. Litovkina, & M. Daczi (Eds.), Linguistic shots at humour: A collection of papers (pp. 75-87). Tertium.

Hart, A. (2015). Alice in Wonderland and Alice through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll: Do words have meaning? Lacanian theory on Carroll’s writing. International Journal of Arts & Sciences, 8(3):425–440.

Haughton, H. (Ed.) (1998). Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There. Penguin Classics.

Junaid, S., Muzzammil, A., Mujizat, A., & Andini, C. (2023). Onomatopoeia Variation Among Cultures: An Exploration in Selected Children’s Story Books. ELS Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities, 6(4), 658-664.

Lanta, J., Rahman, F., Lewa, I., & Akhmar, A. M. (2022). Respect for Nature in Indonesian Children’s Fiction: Ecocriticism Perspective. Webology, 19(1), 6010-6021.

Lecercle, J-J. (2002). The philosophy of nonsense: The intuitions of Victorian nonsense literature. Routledge.

Levinson, S. (2008). Pragmatics. Cambridge University Press. (Original work published 1983)

Leech, G. N. (1983). Principles of pragmatics. Longman.

Mey, J. L. (2001). Pragmatics: An introduction (2nd ed.). Blackwell Publishing.

Moqbel, M. S. S. (2007). A stylistic analysis of Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland [Unpublished master's thesis]. Taiz University.

Mukerjee, M. (2011). Stuff and Nonsense: An Analysis of Nonsense Literature with Special Reference to the Works of Edward Lear and Lewis Carroll [Doctoral dissertation, Gujarat University]. Shodhganga. https://shodhganga.inflibnet.ac.in/handle/10603/48437

Paltridge, B. (2008). Discourse analysis. Continuum. UK: Wiley Blackwell.

Rahman, F. (2017). The revival of local fairy tales for children education. Theory and Practice in language Studies, 7(5), 336.

Ross, A. (2005). The language of humour. Taylor & Francis e-Library

Saeed, J. (2003). Semantics (2nd ed.). Blackwell Publishing.

Şahini, S. (2017). ‘Off With Their Heads!’: Violence and aggression in the worlds of Wonderland and The Looking-Glass. Mediterranean Journal of Humanities, 7(1), 299-307. http://dx.doi.org/10.13114/MJH.2017.337

Stalnaker, R, (1974). Pragmatic presuppositions. In M. Munitz & P. Unger (Eds.) Semantics and philosophy. New York University Press.

Walker, B. E. (Ed.). (2001). CliffsComplete™ Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Hungry Minds.

Downloads

Published

2023-12-29

How to Cite

Saeed Saif Moqbel, M. (2023). Logic of Nonsense and Pragmatics of Language Used in Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. ELS Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities, 6(4), 825-835. https://doi.org/10.34050/elsjish.v6i4.31300