[This paper has been presented as a poster at the 5th International Pragmatics Conference, held at Mexico city, july 4-9, 1996]
Jonathan Swift left A Compleat Collection of Genteel and Ingenious Conversation, according to the most polite Mode and Method, now used at Court, and in the best companies of England, in several Dialogues to publication in 1738. The booklet contained a long introduction displaying Swift's opinions about standard conversational practices. The second part was made up of three imitations of courteous dialogues which, in fact, turned out to be a biting satire of English social modes of talk of that time. The characters and the style of the book (filled with clichés and proverbs rescued by the author for the occasion) still make it interesting enough for any sociolinguistic approach to English language. Swift's ironies were mainly distilled in the preface, where he devoted himself to describing the function of the discourse analyst, a long time before the profession was even conceived of.
Swift wondered which social contexts happened to be the best ones for collecting natural samples of conversation, which were the best ways of transcribing it and what the purpose of the whole project would be. He developed his program ironically, in a period in which nobody was thinking of the eventuality of such an analysis. Swift's approach and ours differ in substantive respects, but the comparison may throw new light on current presumptions about everyday talk and set a background for describing how conversation has been conceived in different historical contexts.
Swifts's ironies happen to have serious concerns for us. His imaginings have become part of our academic discourse. Writing in a period of profound changes in literacy and its relationship with the past (Merton 1965), Swift's descriptions of polite talk have intriguing features of sheer ethnography.
Swift wrote the Gentle... in the middle of a huge cultural transition. He took a principled part in the central debate between Ancients and Moderns (cf. his Battle of books, 1704) and the consequences of such a large debate can be traced in some of his non-fictional, prose works. His stylistic innovations --the digressions of The Tale of a Tube (1704), for instance-- are part of this particular tension. His comic efforts (in the Gentle...) to imitate a serious pragmatic researcher --a kind of social scientist, avant la lettre-- make clear the dubious status of literate culture as the century goes; however, Swift kept alive a sense of classical education, where writing and reading were the main topics. His final stance against Newton was firmly set at the end of the Introduction (Gentle 581):
"The man it seems was knighted for making sun-dials better than others of his trade, and was thought to be a conjurer, because he knew how to draw lines and circles upon a slate, which nobody could understand. But, adieu to all noble attempts for endless renown, if the ghost of an obscure mechanic shall be raised up to enter into competition with me, only for his skill in making pot-hooks and hangers with a pencil, which many thousand accomplished gentlemen and ladies can perform as well with a pen and ink upon a piece of paper, and, in a manner, as little intelligible as those of Sir Isaac."
Swift's Gentlemen and Ladies were to prove their solvency in polite conversation, but the purpose of those dialogues was to provide people of distinction with an "infallible remedy", a sort of "supply of fuel" when conversation "falls and drops to nothing". As an applied scientist, he attentively examined different issues to spread his model practices (Gentle 582):
"If my treatise were shaped into a comedy, the representation, performed to advantage on our theatre, might very much contribute to the spreading of polite conversation among all persons of distinction through the whole kingdom. (...) But (...) such a project (...) would intolerably mangle my scheme and thereby destroy the principal end at which I aimed, to form a complete body or system of this most useful science in all its parts."
Being a pure analyst was not totally compatible with popular forms of art or with urgent moral concerns. The effort to offer a more formal presentation of everyday talk ("a complete body or system") began to look at these things differently. Indeed, Swift was placed in the middle of two worlds, one ready to accept the implications of cultural shift and the other more prone to rescue old books and traditional learning. Irony fused these too serious questions in a new and unclassifiable discourse. The analyst became a painstaking writer, if not a conversationalist himself. The old art of conversation that emphasized community and kept its roots in orality could not conceal its traditional prestige, not even from criticism.
The Introduction to the treatise was signed by Simon Wagstaff, who also claims to be the material author of the three subsequent dialogues, held at Lord and Lady Smart's home, near St James' Park in London. Swift-Wagstaff was, like us, worried with catching real discourse from everyday situations. The Second Conversation takes place at dinner time and allows us to study verbal and interactional rules mingled with social routines during meals. Swift-Wagstaff discovered real interaction while he was still occupied in dialogue as a form of knowledge.
Dialogue was an accepted expression of written knowledge which had spread everywhere since the European Renaissance (Cox 1992). Authors were not thinking at all about oral communication, although occasionally they produced samples of very lively discussions. In most cases, written dialogues settled for the more comfortable background of written and learned traditions, with little relation to everyday orality. The attention given to oral communication has increased (during the XXth century) on quite independent grounds. Nowadays, we are prone to accept the weight and the implications of oral interaction; putting a dialogue in a written form leads us to study and understand it; but it has nothing to do with written practices or even with the old "art of conversation" of the antique handbooks.
Swift represents our missing link with these, apparently divergent, subjects. The reflections of the Genteel... swing between a live art and more literate, stylistic concerns. In passing, they reminds us that our common knowledge (about social interaction, for instance) is indebted to history. They also remind us that our perspective of natural conversation had to be built against a background of (near) ignorance of what orality meant. When we accept our own perspective, we tend to forget rival ones. Orality (and everyday interaction) has gained a respected position in the ranking of humanistic disciplines.Meanwhile, the illusion of "real discourse", as a guide, has been very powerful and perhaps still keeps its force. But we probably do not have such direct access to real instances of speech; mediation of our more or less accepted theories is strictly necessary to discern what has to be observed. The problematic character of "real discourse" makes it fascinating and adaptable at the same time (cf. Burton 1980; also Kennedy, 1983). Swift is still our best example: in his treatise of Genteel and Ingenious Conversation the question of real discourse is always in the balance. The complexity of Swift's stance should be an incentive to remodel our thinking about natural conversation.
As far as we know, Swift could have been working as a modern linguist (Genteel 689):
"Polite Conversation is frequently cited as a source in dictionaries and list of proverbs. The dialogues preserve real linguistic observation and real feeling for speech. It is quite possible that Swift remembered and noted down conversations he had heard; it is equally probable, indeed it would be characteristic, that perhaps predominantly he used collections and lists of proverbs and phrases."
He declared the same thing, disguised as Simon Wagstaff (the author of the treatise), but in a more detailed manner (Genteel 564):
"I always kept a large table-book in my pocket; and as soon as I left the company, I immediately entered the choicest expressions that passed during the visit; which, returning home, I transcribed in a fair hand, somewhat enlarged; and had made the greatest part of my collection in twelve years, but no digested into any method; for this I found was a work of infinite labour (,,,) and consequently could not be brought to any degree of perfection in less than sixteen years more."
The result is a product which, in a way, reflects the purpose declared in the preliminary essay. We find good manners and good sayings, but also teasing and boldness, and perhaps much more mechanism than was expected. As is usual in Swift, as a fine punlover (Redfern 1984), people's names tend to relate to meaningful situations: Mr. Neverout, Lord and Lady Smart, Lady Answerall, Lord Sparkish and Colonel Atwit, Sir John Linger and Miss Notable. These are the characters of the Genteel and Ingenious Conversation.... There is no doubt that we read it today in a very different vein than Swift's contemporaries. But the kind of witticism that underlies these clichés seems to be, at any rate, quite general and widespread.
A good deal of Swift's criticism come from the reversal of verbal routines. Verbal here is supposed only to refer to linguistic behaviour. Linguistic tricks tend to uncover double meanings, exaggerations, dysphemisms, or analogies. All these resources usually serve us to emphasize how everyday conversation is built within linguistic constraints. There is no need for any special skill to overcome these constraints, and normal performance knows how to deal with them. Swift's rule is to run into these difficulties, in a way that they become comic material and, eventually, the target for moral reproaches. Let's now revise some significant tricks (all samples coming from the Second Conversation; numbers in brackets refer to pages in the quoted edition).
1. Tongue joke (586).
Miss. [to NEVEROUT.] Pray, Mr. Neverout, will you please to send me a piece
of tongue?
Nevereout. By no means, madam; one tongue's enough for a woman.
Col. Miss, here's a tongue that never told a lie.
Miss. That was, because it could not speak. Why, colonel, I never told a lie in my
life.
Neverout. I appeal to all the company, whether that be not the greatest lie that
ever was told.
2. Double meaning, double action (587).
Ld. Smart. My Lord Sparkish, I have some excellent cider, will you please to taste
it?
Ld. Sparkish. My Lord, I should like it well enough, if it were not so treacherous.
Ld. Smart. Pray, my lord, how is it treacherous?
Ld. Sparkish. Because it smiles in my face, and cuts my throat.
[Here a loud laugh]
3. Double meaning, one action (591).
Ld. Sparkish. (...) Egad. My lord, your mustard is very uncivil.
Ld. Smart. Why incivil, my lord?
Ld. Sparkish. Because it takes me by the nose, Egad.
4. Learned Exaggeration (591).
Ld. Sparkish. Pray Lady Smart, you sit near that ham; will you please to send me
a bit?
Ld. Smart. With all my heart. [She sends him a piece.] Pray, my lord, how do you
like it?
Ld. Sparkish. I think it is a limb of Lot's wife (...).
5. Tricky questions (593).
Ld. Smart. This goose is quite raw. Well, God sends meat, but the devil sends
cooks.
Nevereout. Miss, can you tell which is the white goose, or the grey goose the
gander?
Miss. They say, a fool will ask more questions than twenty wise men can answer.
Col. Indeed, miss, Tom Neverout has posed to you.
Miss. Why, colonel, every dog has his day; but, I believe I shall never see a
goose again without thinking on Mr. Nevereout.
Ld. Smart. Well said, miss; faith, girl, thou has brought thyself off cleverly. Tom,
what say you to that?
Col. Faith, Tom is nonpluss'd; he looks plaguily down in the mouth.
6. Rhymes at talk (592).
Miss. Nay, I love Mr. Neverout as the devil loves holy water; I love him like pie,
I'd rather the devil would have him than I.
Nevereout. Miss, I'll tell you one thing.
Miss. Come, here's t'ye, to stop your mouth.
Neverout. I'd rather you would stop it with a kiss.
Miss. (...) Lord, I wonder what fool it was that first invented kissing!
Neverout. Well, I'm very dry.
Miss. Then you are the better to burn, and the worse to fry.
The six samples try to show a progression in patterns of complexity, from the first harmless joke about lying, presented as a "tongue" vice, to the last rhymed discourse, presented as a defence against flirting; the former based on tendentious content, the latter on formal skills. Two different kinds of ambiguities resting on foodstuff (in cases 2 and 3) show us clearly the ordinary use of linguistic constraints. Finally, the goose question (that has no unique answer if it is not suitably rephrased --our case 4--) starts up a lively scene of verbal exchanges bearing on the limits of asking and answering; which is the main subject of our next section.
Conversational routines show us a different kind of problem: here we deal with the search for common topics of talk, with beginnings and endings (which could be accepted by ordinary speakers), with compatible rules (referring to eating --or drinking-- and talk, for instance); with courtesy and anger or with separate roles for answering and asking; all those questions will be the subject of our next samples (always from the Second Conversation, the formal dinner at Smart's home). Swift aimed to display the emptiness of mechanical conversation, but the dialogues can also be read as an illustration of deep constraints on interaction and rules of politeness. This new reading will be favoured by widespread practices for analysing natural conversations. Swift's sequences, not being noticeably absurd (as many are in Ionesco's plays), give us the feeling of real confusion which is so common in everyday exchanges.
1. (In)significant subjects (589)
Neverout. Pray, colonel, help me, however, to some of that same sauce.
Col. Come; I think you are more sauce than pig.
Ld. Smart. Sir John, cheer up; my service to you. Well, what do you think of the
world to come?
Sir John. Truly, my lord, I think of it as little as I can.
2. Prefaces (584)
Lady Smart. Ladies and gentlemen, will you eat any oysters before dinner?
Col. With all my heart. [Takes an oyster.] He was a bold man, that first eat an
oyster.
Lady Smart. They say, oysters are a cruel meat, because we eat them alive.
Then they are an uncharitable meat, for we leave nothing to the poor; and they
are an ungodly meat, because we never say grace to them.
Neverout. Faith, that's as well said, as if I had said it myself.
Lady Smart. Well, we are well set, if we be but as well served. Come, Colonel,
handle your arms; shall I help you to some beef?
3. Speaking on drinking (590)
Neverout. Miss, I must tell you one thing.
Miss. [With a glass in her hand] Hold your tongue, Mr. Neverout; don't speak in
my tip.
Col. Well, he was an ingenious man, that first found out eating and drinking.
Ld. Sparkish. Of all vittles, drink digests the quickest. Give me a glass of wine.
4. Distaste (589)
Ld. Smart. O, here comes the venison pasty. Here, take the soup away.
Ld. Smart. [He cuts it up, and tastes the venison.] ‘Sbuds! This venison is musty. [Neverout eats a piece, and burns his mouth.]
Ld. Smart. What's the matter Tom? You have tears in your eyes, I think. What
dost cry for, man?
Neverout. My lord, I was just thinking of my poor grandmother; she died just this
very day seven years.
[Miss takes a bit, and burns her mouth]
Neverout. And pray miss, why do you cry too?
Miss. Because you were not hang'd the day your grandmother died.
Ld. Smart.I'd have given forty pounds, miss, to have said that.
5. Courtesy and anger (593)
Neverout. Miss, will you reach me that glass of jelly?
Miss. [Giving to him] You see, ‘tis but ask and have.
Neverout. Miss, I would have a bigger glass.
Miss. What! You don't know your own mind; you are neither well, full nor fasting;
I think that is enough.
Neverout. Ay, one of the enoughs; I am sure it is little enough.
Miss. Yes; but you know, sweet things are bad for the teeth.
Neverout. [to Lady Answ.] Madam, I don't like this part of the veal you sent me.
Lady Answ. Well, Mr. Neverout, I find you are a true Englishman; you never know
when you are well.
6. Asking (594)
Ld. Smart Sir John, will you taste my October? I think it is very good; but I believe
not equal to yours in Derbyshire.
Sir John. My lord, I beg your pardon; but they say, the devil made askers.
Ld. Smart. [to the Butler.] Here, bring up the great tankard full of October for Sir
John.
7. Disjointed meanings (595)
Miss. (...) Here, Mr. Neverout, will you take this piece of rabbit that you bid me
carve for you?
Nevereout. I don't know.
Miss. Why, why, take it, or let it alone.
Neverout. I will.
Miss. What will you?
Neverout. Why, take it, or let it alone.
Miss. Well, you're a provoking creature.
Sir John. [Talking wiht a glass of wine in his hand] I remember a farmer in our
country---
Ld. Smart. [Interrupting him.] Pray, Sir John,did you ever hear of Parson Palmer?
8. Empty bottles and glasses washing (602)
Ld. Smart. Come, John, bring us a fresh bottle.
Col. Ay, my lord; and, pray, let him carry off the dead men (as we say in the
army) [Meaning the empty bottles}
Ld. Sparkish. Mr. Neverout, pray, is not that bottle full?
Neverout. Yes, my lord; full of emptiness.
Ld. Smart. And, d'ye hear, John? Bring clean glasses.
Col. I'll keep mine; for I think, the wine is the best liquor to wash glasses in.
Swift didn't drop the idea of making sense in his dialogues, unlike some well-known practices in modern plays. Instead, he wanted his nonsenses to become transparent and exemplary. He was aiming to explore linguistic skills as well as pragmatic boundaries, in order to place himself beyond simple mockery and always able to reveal the paradoxes of contemporary behaviour. His dialogues were by this issue full of realistic insights and ready to rescue colloquials tags and sayings. It is very difficult, as is well known, to find common topics serious enough for every speaker (case 1); it is also difficult to adjust smartly what we are doing and what our comments are, as is the case when we begin dinner (case 2); drinking is usually seen as a sort of interruption, unless you could manage it in order to produce meaning (case 3); irony is the honest face of concealment, as when you try to get by with a burning venison pasty (case 4); it may not be very polite, but in extreme situations we can switch quickly from anger to charm or viceversa (case 5); and we all make use of perennial sentences about speakers and listeners when there is a crucial situation to face (case 6); if a danger of dissociation arrives, the absurd will always be chased away (case 7). Those seven examples range over compatible rules and pragmatic boundaries, and our last one can probably sum up the whole story. Everything can be said, provided you can make sense of it with your partner. Impure liquors may clean glasses as well as detergents, if we are ready to accept them. That last exemple seems a fair one perhaps to represent how conversation works (creatively), as well as the purpose of Swift's ironies. Perhaps without trying, he was leaving us a complete chapter of European ethnography.
We may wonder now which might be the social role of dialogue in a, let's say, predemocratic society. Nowadays, we assume that public mechanisms of dialogue are essential to institutional playing. Turning to more common ground, we assume too the need to examine everyday conversation in order to search for social and cognitive regularities. Swift's society was not so committed to those bearings in relation to public dialogue, but at that time new situations had arisen along with changes in mentalities: the end of written dialogical forms, which accompanied the spread of scientific disciplines and the decay of Latin as a learned language; the new needs of more literate groups, who tend to organize themselves in salons and social gatherings; a new sense of written culture, bearing sharper distinctions between past and present (and between erudition and education).
Swift's Genteel and Ingenious Conversation succeeded in combining these three main aspects: a soft longing for old forms of culture (including written dialogues) that were solidly implanted in their native contexts (Genteel 565), a methodical analysis of forms of social interaction that were probably changing sharply in those years, and an increasing consciousness of the gap between two cultures --a complex, specialized classical formation, besides a claim for general education that imposed its own demands. The result was also an in-depth work on English language, consisting in a surprising contrast of clichés and humour, old style sentences and new patterns of colloquial routines.
At the beginning of mechanical reason as a social consensus (Tierno 1969), Swift reminds us of the power of natural dialogue. He was gathering material for his essay during at least thirty years, probably thinking of his new work as a sort of mixture. It was neither theatre, nor classical dialogue; nor was it either prose or a conventional conversation handbook. The Art of conversation vogue included him too (Burke 1993), and Swift's ironies found their natural background against those treatises and counsels' booklets. But his lessons pointed further than those of his contemporaries. In the end, reason does not seem enough to guide conversation, nor society, nor even life, either. As we know, these questions would become challenges for the times to come.
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