What is Malapropism?

Malapropism is the use of an incorrect word with a similar sound, resulting in a nonsensical, often humorous utterance. The term derives from Richard

 

Sheridan’s 1775 play The Rivals. A woman named Mrs Malaprop frequently misspeaks as she uses words that sound like the intended word, that gives the sentence a nonsensical meaning. The character’s is a reference to the word malapros, which means inappropriately.

 

Even though Malapropism is used to add a humouredly flavour to plays and stories, however real-life examples are less funny, as they occur all of the time.  

 

How does malapropism work

David Fay (Linguistics expert) and Anne Cutler (psycholinguistics expert) examined a type of production error in speech. They did this, under the name of malapropism. Simply put:

• If these, two vectors are equivalent (same/similar) è

If these two vectors are equivocal (doubtful/ambiguous)

The text in front of the arrow is it the targets remark, whilst the sentence after the arrow is the actual remark. These errors involve the ‘inadvertent use of the wrong word. This will however show that the speaker is not aware of the correct usage of the word. According to Fay and Cutler, the malapropisms can be categorized under malapropism and classical Malapropism. However, other speech errors such as spoonerism, anticipations, omissions etc, are not forms of malapropism. Semantic (logical) errors are also not part malapropism. This has to do with the usage of the antonym of the intended word. Other semantic errors include substitutions of body parts, clothing etc.

 

Don’t burn your fingers – don’t burn your toes

 

One’s use of words is build up form one’s mental lexicon (dictionary). The Mental Lexicon represents one’s knowledge about words. This include pronunciation, definition and word structure.

 

Classical Malapropism

The classical malapropisms are known as the errors used by the character Mrs Malaprop from Richard Sheridan’s play “The Rivals”.

 

“… if ever you betray what you are entrusted with… you forfeit my malevolence for ever”.

 

Instead of using benevolent (kind and generous) Mrs Malaprop uses the word malevolence (having/showing the desire to harm another person). Because of this mistake, this sentence has been given another meaning.

 

However, these errors show that the speakers are too ambitious about using fine language whilst too obstinate to use the dictionary. Even though malapropism is used as funny and joke throughout plays, many malapropisms aren’t particularly amazing in real life.

 

There are several generalities to be made about these examples. [generalizations: a general statement ® generalities: a statement that is not specific]

 

This type of malapropism arises whenever a speaker attempts to rise above his lexical station. For example instead of using the word spices, the speaker wants to use the word condiments. These kind of malapropisms are used by sports announcers because of the many jargons. Technical terms provoke the speakers to use these words, without knowing what it really means. Yet, most malapropisms involve un-technical vocabulary.

 

A great big old dog- I think it was a collier. [collie ® collier]

A giant apartment store [department ® apartment]

 

Sources, of this type of malapropism might be for:

• Childhood slip of the ear.
• Oh, never mind ® oh, lever mind
• A reanalysis of the folk-etymological variety
• Bubonic plague ® Blue Bonnet plague
• Fault in the storage and retrieval system of the mental lexicon
• Then the doctor gave me some kind of anecdote (antidote ®anecdote)

 

This last case is an error without the speaker knowing about it. When the speaker tries to find a word, the speaker accidently picked the wrong word. Whilst using it, the speaker accepts the actual utterance in place of the target. This results into actual utterance being stored in the mind lexicon instead of the target. All in all, the classical malapropism involves the processes of perception and memory as well as processes of production. It sheds light on more aspects of cognition.

 

 

 

Inadvertent, unintended Fay/Cutler Malapropism

Fay and Cutler stated that Malapropisms has three characteristics:

• The error is a “real” word
• The error and target are unrelated in meaning
• The error and target are closely related in pronunciation

 

These rules would exclude blends, omissions, metathesis, spoonerism etc.

Mis-selection is the keyword for this kind of Malapropism. These errors might be triggered because of how the mental lexicon is organised. For example you could have it organised on comprehension, or sound pattern. For instance, if with the same first syllables were listed together; this list is activated whenever one would hear the first syllables. This results in the listener to comprehend what was said, by elimination of a restricted set of words and recognition of the word. On the other hand, a semantically (on logic) organised lexicon would be advantageous because of the access of the words are on the basis of their meanings. This would mean that the Fay-Cutler malapropism is.

 

However, Merrill Garrett (writer) hypothesised about another possibility. This theory is about the “linking address” of the semantic and conceptual systems. These linking addresses include the phonetic information, number of syllables and the stress pattern. Whenever there is an abnormality in the system, such as the linking address not pointing to the correct phonological form of the word, one could still base ones output on the information contained in the link. The result is another word with the same stress, syllables and often the same initial syllable.

 

In conclusion, the Fay/Cutler type of malapropism gives us a better picture of our mental lexicon.

 

This is a list made by Fay/Cutler of examples:

Vanishment [¬ banishment ], consolated [¬ consolidated], flagrance [¬ fragrance], rickity-split [¬ lickity-split], preempty [¬ pre-empt], jambles [¬ shambles]

Examples made by Zwicky:

Baseball [¬ base-born], Blue Bonnet [¬ bubonic], intensive [¬ intents and], juggler [¬ jugular, menthol [¬ mental]

 

References

Fay, D., and Cutler, A. (1977) Malapropisms and the Structure of the Mental Lexicon   

Zwicky, A.M. Classical-Malapropisms

Wikipedia