[contents]
* * *
2. Perkowitz, “Light Tricks.”
3. Lifeboat Foundation, “Advisory Board.”
4. Zeilberger, “Opinion 108.”
5. Parker-Pope, “Writing Your Way to Happiness.”
6. Novella, “New Scientist on Miracles.”
7. Wells, A Nonsense Anthology, xxxiii.
8. Twain, Mark Twain’s Notebooks & Journals, 303.
9. Nel, Dr. Seuss, 38.
10. Shipley, Dictionary of Early English, 173.
11. Keegan, The Penguin Book of English Verse, 322.
12. Lear, The Complete Nonsense of Edward Lear, xxi.
13. Lear, Queery Leary Nonsense, 6.
14. Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass, 31.
15. Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, 183.
16. Morgenstern, “Disinternment,” 4.
17. From Christian Morgenstern: Lullabies, Lyrics and Gallows Songs.
18. Hobbes, Leviathan, 129.
19. Clark, Daniel Defoe, 24.
20. Fowler, A Dictionary of Modern English Usage, 681.
Chapter 2
Types of Nonsense
The continual discovery of fresh types of nonsense, unsystematic though their classification and mysterious though their explanation is too often allowed to remain, has done on the whole nothing but good.
J. L. Austin
There are numerous distinct, different types of nonsense. To begin the inquiry, we will consider three patterns or types that clearly emerge in both voluntary and involuntary nonsense. In the process, we will discuss distinctive structural characteristics and assign a name to each type, for there is not a standard system for categorizing, describing, and naming varieties of nonsense. A system of typology—a list of types—is necessary for a rational study of any subject. Accordingly, this chapter will develop such a system. Then, later, that system will help us comprehend the many strange sights we will see on our journey through the hidden world of nonsense.
Throughout this chapter you will have opportunities to practice some exercises. Students completed these exercises in my university courses and seminars on nonsense. The objectives of the exercises are to activate hidden cognitive faculties of the mind, increase critical thinking abilities, and inspire creative expression.
Categorical Nonsense
Categorical nonsense consists of sentences that are sound in their grammatical structure. Nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, and conjunctions are in their correct grammatical positions in relation to each other. Furthermore, sentences of categorical nonsense consist entirely of meaningful words that anyone could look up in a dictionary.
Nonetheless, categorical nonsense is meaningless and unintelligible, and it doesn’t convey coherent thoughts to the mind. The meaningful words within the sentence do not fit together meaningfully, despite being in correct grammatical order. Within a sentence of categorical nonsense, the component words are somehow incommensurable or discordant, and they fail to make sense in that particular arrangement.
Categorical nonsense is meaningless and unintelligible because it mismatches subjects and predicates, or things and attributes. That is, categorical nonsense ascribes properties to a thing that are not compatible with a thing of that kind. For example, consider the sentence, “A smiling square root repeated as one necklace an electric limp of potatoes.”
Now, a square root is a number, and it can be positive or negative, odd or even, large or small. However, there is no intelligible sense in which a square root could be said to be smiling. Similarly, to talk about a sleeping square root, singing square root, mournful square root, or mauve square root would also be to talk categorical nonsense.
Now consider the sentence, “A scholarly hiccough musically baked numerical stares in a gnawing circle.” A hiccough, as a bodily reflex, can be loud or barely audible, distracting or annoying, a normal occurrence, or a sign of a serious illness. However, it makes no sense to say that a hiccough is scholarly. Only a human being can be scholarly, not a hiccough. In other words, the combination “scholarly hiccough” is unintelligible, meaningless categorical nonsense.
Similarly, other words that are paired in the sentence make no sense in combination. The adverb “musically” doesn’t fit the verb “baked.” The adjective “numerical” does not fit together conceptually with the noun “stares,” and “gnawing” and “circle” do not convey an intelligible meaning as combined in that sentence.
In sum, sentences of categorical nonsense fit together grammatically, but not conceptually. I dub this type “categorical nonsense” because it works by transgressing what philosophers know as categories. In philosophical usage, categories are the most basic kinds of things that exist. The theory of categories is complex. Furthermore, mismatches between things and attributes in categorical nonsense need to be explained on a case–by-case basis. Still, it is usually easy to see that categorical nonsense is meaningless and unintelligible.
exercise
Categorical Nonsense
Holiness purses the vestigial lipstick of spontaneity.
A smiling square root sang an electric rainbow.
1. Write an original example of a categorical nonsense sentence.
2. Introspect and record your feelings about this type of nonsense.
Self-Contradictions
Self-contradictions are meaningless and unintelligible because they take back what they say in the very act of saying it. They are grammatically correct sentences that contain only words that are meaningful individually, yet end up meaning nothing because they cancel themselves out.
Contradicting oneself is comparable to taking a step forward only to end up back at the starting point. The net motion forward is zero. Similarly, in a self-contradiction, the net meaning is zero. This type of nonsense is present when C. G. Lichtenberg says, “I thank God that he lets me be an atheist.”