This book is a very interesting analysis of some of the insights into language that can be found in the works of Lewis Carroll. Robert Sutherland is careful to point out that Lewis Carroll probably did not have a systematic theory of language consciously worked out, but Carroll was clearly very interested in language, and spent a great deal of time thinking about it, which makes sense since he was, after all, a professional logician, and Carroll puts many of his thoughts about language into the Alice books, mostly in the form of jokes.
Anyone who has read the Alice books knows that nearly all of the humor, and a great deal of the absurdity and charm, of the books is the result of "tricks" of language. Robert Sutherland attempts, in this work, to analyze the Alice books (as well as some of Carroll's other works) in order to discover the implicit postulates about language that underly so much of the humor found in the books. Robert Sutherland also attempts to provide evidence from letters showing that Carroll himself was well aware of the principles of language he used to produce humor, whether or not he had a fully worked out theory of language or not. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in going a little deeper into the Alice books, or taking a look behind the curtain to see the "hidden machinery" (so to speak) behind the Alice books (I am mixing metaphors here a bit). The Alice books are like a watch. You can use a watch to tell the time, even if you do not understand how the gears work, and you can "get" the humor of the Alice books, even if you do not know the principles of language upon which much of it is based, but it is certainly interesting to open up the watch and take a look inside. This book provides a "look inside", and, in so doing, provides a good, basic, introduction to the nature of language.
Since this book does not have a "look inside" feature on amazon I will provide a condensed version of the table of contents, with a brief synopsis of each chapter.
The first three chapters are basically introductory material. The last seven chapters are the real meat of the book.
1. Introduction: in the introduction Robert Sutherland basically lays out the plan of the book. The goal of the book, as I said in my basic synopsis above, is to analyze the principles of language that Carroll used in his works, primarily as a means for producing humor. Robert Sutherland also explains the sources of evidence, both external (biographies, diaries, letters), and internal (Carroll's literary works) that he will be relying on throughout the book.
2. Carroll's Use of Language as a Vehicle for Play: in this chapter Robert Sutherland simply argues that Carroll used his serious concern with language, and his genuine insights into the way language functions, as a means for humor.
3. Professional and Amateur: Lewis Carroll and the Study of Language: in this chapter Robert Sutherland attempts to figure out how much Carroll really knew about language. How much time did he actually spend studying it? Was he aware of current developments in philology and linguistics? It also briefly examines Carroll's work as a mathematician and logician, and its relevance for his understanding of language.
4. Signs: chapter four is where the real meat of the book begins. In this chapter Robert Sutherland provides a general analysis of the nature of signs and the different forms of meaning they possess (differential meaning, referential meaning, structural meaning, and contextual meaning). Sutherland also provides some illustrations of Carroll's use of non-linguistic signs, as well as an analysis of some of Carroll's explicit statements on language.
5. The Process of Classification: in this chapter Robert Sutherland analyzes the process of classification, as well as errors that can arise in the process of classification due to a thing's possessing misleading attributes, equivocal attributes, or a lack of available class names. Sutherland illustrates this chapter with a lot of examples from the Alice books. For example, when the talking flowers mistakenly classify Alice as a flower (that can move), or when Alice is unable to determine whether Humpty Dumpty is wearing a belt or a cravat, or when the pigeon mistakenly classifies Alice as a serpent.
6. Names: in this chapter Robert Sutherland discusses Lewis Carroll's definition of 'Name" and relates it to the theory of names worked out in John Stuart Mill's influential system of logic. Sutherland also discusses the differences between 'denotation', 'designation', and 'connotation'. This is an interesting chapter which I cannot fully summarize here, which is also filled with lots of examples from the Alice books. One of the more interesting discussions relates to Humpty Dumpty's claim that names should "mean" something, or tell you something about the thing named. For Humpty Dumpty names should have designation and connotation, whereas in Mill's analysis of names they only have designation.
7. Nominal definition: unfortunately, I am not able to fully summarize this chapter. I checked the book out from the library and 9 (out of 19) pages were missing from this chapter. The sections I read were mostly about Carroll's claim that no word has a meaning other than the meanings attached to it by speakers and listeners (people are able to stipulate the meanings of their words), but that words should normally be used in their conventional meanings to avoid misunderstandings. There are examples in the Alice books where characters fail to use words in their conventional senses (Humpty Dumpty's use of the word 'glory'), but also fail to explain the sense in which they are using the word (provide a stipulative definition) which leads to errors in communication.
8. Ambiguity: this is another very interesting chapter, as a great deal of the humor in the Alice books relies on the ambiguity of language, or, the fact that statements can mean different things depending on context, and can easily be misinterpreted when the context is not clear. Some of my favorite parts of the Alice books rely on what Sutherland calls "lexical ambiguity" which arises from the fact that a word can have more than one possible signification. For example, when the white knight is explaining how he got stuck in his own helmet, and how it took hours to get him out, since he was "as fast as...lightning". The humor arises from the fact that "fast" can mean both "quick" and "stuck", and the white knight mixes the two meanings. Sutherland also discusses homophonic ambiguity, which arises from two words sounding the same when spoken ('tale' and 'tail' for example which creates misunderstanding between Alice and the mouse).
There is also a very interesting analysis of the fundamental ambiguity of comparative terms (like large, small, heavy, old, good, and bad). Lewis Carroll had some particularly interesting things to say about the ambiguity of the use of the words 'good' and 'better' which, rather than try to summarize, I will simply quote, "Nothing illustrates a fallacy so well as an extreme case, which fairly comes under it. Suppose I find two children drowning in a pond. I rush in, and save one of the children, and then walk away, leaving the other to drown. Clearly I have 'done good', in saving a child's life? But -. Again, supposing I meet an inoffensive stranger, and knock him down, and walk on. Clearly that is 'better' than if I had proceeded to jump upon him and break his ribs?" (quoted, 178). The first mistake lies in an ambiguity in the word 'good'. Clearly, we consider 'saving a child's life' good, but we would not call someone who saved one child, and arbitrarily left another to drown, 'good'. The second mistake arises from assuming that something described as 'better' is good in itself. These are, as Carroll says, extreme examples, but these kinds of ambiguities arise in our everyday speech, and Carroll certainly exploits them to great effect in the Alice books.
9. Sound and Sense: in this chapter Sutherland discusses, among other things, the ambiguities that can arise from a divergence between the literal and the idiomatic import of a statement. A huge percentage of the humor of the Alice books arises from characters in Wonderland, or Looking-Glass House, interpreting statements in terms of their literal, rather than idiomatic meaning. For example, the white king says to Alice "There's nothing like eating hay when you're faint", and Alice replies, "I should think throwing cold water over you would be better," and the king replies, "I didn't say there was nothing better...I said there was nothing like it." The statement "There is nothing like..." has idiomatic import in English (a conventional meaning, something along the lines of, "there is nothing better..."), but the white king ignores the idiomatic import and uses it in its literal sense. Sutherland also discusses the humor that arises from Carroll's existential treatment of the null class (when Alice says that she sees "nobody on the road" and the white king treats 'nobody' as a name signifying an existing individual). Sutherland also discusses the way that syntax functions in producing meaning by analyzing the non-sense poem Jabberwocky. Despite the fact that the poem is filled with non-sense words, we still know that 'toves' are things (tove is a 'thing' word, which has the plural ending -s), we know that 'gyre' and 'gimble' are verbs, or 'action' words, and that 'wabe' is a place. We know all this due to the syntax, and the placement of function words ('in the', 'Did', 'the', etc.).
10. Word magic: in this chapter (the final chapter) Sutherland analyzes the personal associations, and emotional associations, different words can possess for different people. The term 'communist', for example, will have a different 'meaning' depending on one's political preferences. Sutherland writes that, "depending upon the respective interpreter's attitudes," the term 'communist' could mean: 'a man to be trusted', 'one of us', 'dirty Red', 'the Enemy', 'misguided soul', etc. (214). These different affective connotations can also give rise to misunderstanding and miscommunication. Sutherland also discusses the 'magical power' some words have. Long, Latin sounding words, for example, often evoke a respect for the speaker that is misplaced, because they seem to suggest a high level of intelligence, or an aura of authority.
So that is a very basic summary of the book. There is, obviously, a great deal more in the book than I have been able to summarize in such a short space, but my summary should give the reader some idea of the contents of this book. I will say again, that I definitely recommend this book to anyone who is interested in going a bit deeper into the Alice books. Anyone who has read the Alice books knows that they are definitely works of genius, and a great deal of general philosophic relevance can be learned by analyzing their machinery. This book focuses on one particular aspect of that machinery (language). I would also recommend picking up
The Annotated Alice: The Definitive Edition
, which also provides a great deal of interesting information on the Alice books.
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