Wednesday, October 18, 2006

Does miscommunication elicit comedy?

Does miscommunication elicit comedy? When the Word became pork. When a German-Danish pastor declares, “the Word became pork( Fleisch)”this is comic. The comic is not just the ordinary contradiction that arises when someone speaks a foreign language he does not know and evoke by the words an effect totally different from the one he wants. But because he is pastor and he is preaching the contraindication is sharpened, since in a pastor's discourse speaking is used only in a more special sense, and the least that is assumed as a given is that he can speak the language. More over, the nontraditional strays into ethical territory: a person may innocently make himself guilty of blasphemy. Concluding Unscientific postscripts

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