A paraprosdo... what?
Unsere Kolumnistin stellt fest, dass „Ja“und „Nein“nicht immer unvereinbar sind — und beschäftigt sich mit einem rhetorischen Stilmittel, das für überraschende Wendungen sorgt.
An older male friend of mine recently asked me, “What is it with ‘Yeah, no’?” — a phrase commonly used these days by people younger than himself. He really didn’t get it and thought it meant the speaker was indecisive. This inspired me to answer the question here, dear reader, even though you haven’t asked it.
People say “Yeah, no” for various reasons. If you express an opinion, for example, the person you’re speaking to might answer with “Yeah, no” and then say what they think. It sounds like a contradiction, but actually, it isn’t. The “yeah” simply acknowledges the point you’re making (= “Yeah, I understand”), while the “no” tells you that they disagree with you.
The phrase can also be used sarcastically, saying “yeah” when the obvious response should be “no”: “Are you going to jump the fence into the tiger enclosure?”— “Yeah, no.”
There’s even a song entitled “Yeah, No,” by pop singer Elle Winter. The first two lines are: “You know everything about me — But you don’t.”
When it comes to sarcasm — some might disagree with me, but they’d be wrong — “Yeah, no” falls into the category of paraprosdokians. What, you’re surely wondering, are those?
A paraprosdokian — from the Greek words para (“against”) and prosdokia (“expectation”) — is a figure of speech that starts out in one direction but has an unexpected ending. Paraprosdokians are usually funny and are very popular among satirists. Groucho Marx and Sir Winston Churchill loved paraprosdokians. Here are some examples:
Groucho, leaving a party: “I had a perfectly lovely evening — but this wasn’t it.”
Sir Winston: “You can always count on the Americans to do the right thing — after they’ve tried everything else.”
Or have a look at these:
“If I agreed with you, we’d both be wrong.” “Where there’s a will, I want to be in it.”
“The last thing I want to do is hurt you — but it’s still on my list.”
“I used to be indecisive — but now I’m not so sure.”
Another common usage today, in the US at least, is “Not!” This, too, falls into the category of paraprosdokians. In my experience, it’s mostly young women who add “Not!” in order to punctuate sentences they want to negate with sarcasm.
“Are you going to jump the fence into the tiger enclosure?” — “Sure I am. Not!”
So, now comes the quiz: Can you find the paraprosdokian I used in this text?
(Pause here to look.)
The answer is: “… some might disagree with me, but they’d be wrong.”
You know me. Of course, I don’t really mean that they’d be wrong to disagree with me. — Not!