"But I don’t want to go among mad people,’ Alice remarked.
‘Oh, you can’t help that,’ said the Cat: ‘we’re all mad here. I‘m mad. You‘re mad." This quote captures like nothing else the essence of Lewis Carroll’s classic children’s book Alice in Wonderland. The story of a young girl getting bored during a hot summer day and slipping into a dreamland full of odd creatures has enchanted generations of children myself included. Alice is not a typical children’s book though, as it is quite multilayered, thanks to Carroll’s clever play with language. Carroll, common name Charles Lutwige Dodgson, was quite fond of using several stylistic devices like punning, to delight the young readership his stories were for. But I also noticed that he used ambiguity in quite a few instances. Many characters are very fond of ambiguity most prominently The Cheshire Cat, the Mad Hatter, the Mock Turtle, Gryphon and the Red King. Carroll mostly uses ambiguity to create confusion through misunderstandings, mostly on Alice’s dispense, which in return tends to create a certain humor for the reader.
In this seminar paper I will discuss Carroll’s use of ambiguity in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by analyzing several instances of it that appear throughout the novel. I will start out by defining ambiguity and in what ways ambiguity has been researched by other linguists and what results their studies produced. I am also going to explore the origins of Alice in Wonderland. How did Carroll come up with it? What kind of story is it? On the stylistic level I will examine what Carroll’s general stance on ambiguity was and how he used it to create both confusion and comedy? I will take a closer look at the different forms of ambiguity he employs and how characters react to the usage of it.
At a glance
- Grade: 1.0 (1.0 is the best grade)
- Applies Robert Sutherland’s ambiguity categories to selected scenes from the novel
- 19 sources in the bibliography
Table of Contents
1. Introduction
2. Literary background to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Ambiguity
3. Background Studies on Ambiguity
4. Background Studies of Ambiguity in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
5. Analysis of the Ambiguity in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
5.1 The Caucus Race and a long Tale
5.2 The Queen’s Croquet-Ground
5.3 The Mock Turtles Story
6. Conclusion
Objectives and Themes
This paper examines how Lewis Carroll uses ambiguity to generate misunderstandings and humor in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. It asks how different forms of ambiguity operate in selected scenes and how characters respond to them.
- The literary background and intended audience of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
- Lexical, phonetic and grammatical ambiguity
- Polysemy, homonymy, puns and linguistic humor
- Interpretation and disambiguation in context
- Selected encounters involving the Mouse, the Queen and the Mock Turtle
Excerpt from the Book
3. Background Studies on Ambiguity
In general ambiguity can be defined as a linguistic condition where a word, phrase or sentence can have multiple meanings and alternative linguistic structures can be built for it (cf. Jurafsky & Martin 2009: 38) Linguist William Empson wrote that ambiguity occurs when “alternative views might be taken without sheer misreading”. (1956: x) He also distinguished between seven types of ambiguity in literature. But being more interested in the linguistic point of view I will mostly concentrate on three forms of ambiguity: phonetic, grammatical and lexical. (cf. Ullmann 1979: 156)
The most common type is the lexical ambiguity, which can interact in complex ways and can be divided into three types: polysemy, homonymy and categorical ambiguity. Polysemous words have numerous meanings, which are related to one another. Taking the word open as an example, it has several different senses in connection to “unfolding, expanding, revealing, moving to an open position, making openings […]”.Homonymous words or phrases have meanings that are not related to one another at all, like the word bark, which denotes both the noise a dog makes and the stuff on the outside of a tree. A word can be both polysemous and homonymous like right having meanings that are concerned with “correctness and righteousness”, but also the right-hand side. (cf. Hirst 1987: 5) There is also no clear distinction between polysemy, homonymy and metaphor, the metaphor tends to blend into the other two or as Hirst puts it: “[T]oday’s metaphor may be tomorrow’s polysemy or homonymy.”(1987: 6)
Categorically ambiguous are words, whose syntactic category sometimes varies. For example, the word sink can both be a noun describing the plumbing fixture or a verb with the meaning becoming submerged.
Generally, verbs have a tendency to be polysemous, while nouns tend to be homonymous, but verbs being homonymous and nouns being polysemous do occur as well. (cf. Hirst 1987: 6) Lexical ambiguity can also be separated differently into two types: semantic and syntactic ambiguity. The semantic lexical ambiguity is the on the differentiation between polysemy, homonymy and categorical ambiguity explained above. The syntactic ambiguity references to the ambiguity of a category like noun vs. verb. For example can the word fish both denote the action executed by the angler or the target of said action. (cf. Small at al. 1988: 4) Both semantic and syntactic ambiguity are orthogonal, because one word can have several related meanings in different categories like in the example can of fruit vs. to can fruit, or not related meanings in varying categories as seen in the example I saw the carpenter’s saw, but both at the same time is also possible (I saw the carpenter sawing with the rusty saw.)(Small at al. 1988: 4)
Chapter Summaries
1. Introduction: The paper introduces Carroll’s language play and explains its focus on ambiguity, misunderstandings and humor.
2. Literary background to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Ambiguity: This chapter outlines the story’s origins, its intended readership and its engagement with language and logic.
3. Background Studies on Ambiguity: The discussion defines forms of ambiguity and considers disambiguation, puns and linguistic humor.
4. Background Studies of Ambiguity in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland: This chapter reviews scholarship on Carroll’s treatment of meaning, ambiguity and communication, including work by Robert Sutherland and Anne Reboul.
5. Analysis of the Ambiguity in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland: Selected scenes involving the Mouse, the Queen’s guards and the Mock Turtle are examined for their use of ambiguous language.
6. Conclusion: The paper brings together its discussion of ambiguity, misunderstanding and humor in the novel.
Keywords
Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, ambiguity, humor, linguistic ambiguity, lexical ambiguity, homonymy, polysemy, homophones, puns, wordplay, misunderstanding, disambiguation, Robert Sutherland
Frequently Asked Questions
What is this paper about?
It explores how ambiguity contributes to humor in Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.
What are the central themes?
The paper addresses linguistic ambiguity, wordplay, interpretation, misunderstandings and the relationship between language and humor.
What is the main research question?
The paper asks how Carroll uses different forms of ambiguity to create confusion and comedy, and how characters respond to them.
What method does the author use?
The author reviews linguistic and literary scholarship and analyzes selected examples from the novel, loosely following Robert Sutherland’s categories of ambiguity.
What does the main analysis cover?
It examines scenes from the Caucus Race, the Queen’s croquet ground and the Mock Turtle’s story.
Which keywords characterize the paper?
Key terms include ambiguity, humor, lexical ambiguity, homonymy, polysemy, homophones, puns and disambiguation.
How does the paper approach the Mouse’s conversation with Alice?
It examines the different senses of “dry” and the homophones “tale” and “tail” and “not” and “knot.”
Why does the Queen’s croquet-ground scene feature in the analysis?
It provides an example of contextual ambiguity in the guards’ account of the gardeners’ whereabouts.
What role does the Mock Turtle’s story play?
It provides examples of homophonic and homographic puns associated with school and lessons.
- Quote paper
- Charlotte Bahr (Author), 2012, Ambiguity as a Source of Humor in Lewis Carroll’s "Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland", Munich, GRIN Verlag, https://www.grin.com/document/232605
