ELS Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities
Vol. 6 No. 4 (2023): DECEMBER

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




Article Info

Publish Date
29 Dec 2023

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.

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Journal Info

Abbrev

jish

Publisher

Subject

Arts Humanities Education Languange, Linguistic, Communication & Media Social Sciences

Description

ELS-JISH is, a journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities: Linguistics, Literature, Language Teaching, Translation, and Culture, a scholarly peer-reviewed international scientific journal published quartely by the Faculty of Cultural Sciences Hasanuddin University Publication, focusing on ...