The 'Cottard' is also a rhetorical stategy much used in the blogosphere. Comments should appear suitably encrypted, arch, playful, never quite divulging their meaning. Your interlocuter tries to pin you down, to answer you, but the indefinite ironical form in which your ideas are couched facilitates your escape - you're already elsewhere, or on another level, smiling knowingly. "That is not what I meant at all". Perhaps less Cottard and more the Cheshire cat, a smile without a body of ideas, concerned only to maintain your position of enunciation outside or above the conversation.Dr. Cottard was never quite certain of the tone in which he ought to reply to any observation, or whether the speaker was jesting or in earnest. And so in any event he would embellish all his facial expressions with the offer of a conditional, a provisional smile whose expectant subtlety would exonerate him from the charge of being a simpleton, if the remark addressed to him should turn out to have been facetious. But as he must also be prepared to face the alternative, he never dared to allow this smile a definite expression on his features....
Saturday, April 15, 2006
Virtual Cottard
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5 comments:
(conversations) with no future?
?
http://pasaudela.blogspot.com/2006/04/fresh-fetish.html
I take it the first of those comments was supposed to be an example of Cottarding. V. Amusing.
I'd like a for instance, better than the first comment, which seems meaningless rather than flip floppy to me.
I don't think I am familiar with people being dodgy in this fashion online. What is very common though is a kind of 1984 speak in matters of s e x. . . if someone says "I want to get my dick sucked" it often really means they want to suck dick, etc. . . The strategy is to attract someone by making an "attractive" offer upfront (to be followed by the fine print) i.e. by offering what one is actually looking for (then pressing on in the "negotiations" to make sure one gets what one really wanted all along).
"I want to get my dick sucked" in the headline on craigslist is almost invariably followed by "and maybe more [i.e. will reciprocate] if the vibe is right" as if anyone with the "wrong vibe" were a thing to be desired under any circumstances.
it's as tiresome as Dr. Cottard and his puns!
Anyway I'd like an example of this kind of speech described above online, the complement to Dr Cottards vague smiles. I'm not aware of people being so crafty. It takes a lot more cunning to set up an utterance to work slippery in this way than to just smile vaguely (which is something I know very well how to do actually because I'm hard of hearing and it often isn't worth the trouble to get people to really communicate with me so sometimes I'm sort of cornered into for example laughing along with what would appear to be a joke of some kind in order not to give the appearance of their being anything wrong with either me or the person speaking.
here is an example from craigslist!
the headline reads:
*New Non-Pro Open to New Late Night Experiences* - w4m - 21
the rest of the ad:
Reply to: pers-169271694@craigslist.org
Date: 2006-06-08, 2:15AM PDT
I am brand new to the CL and seeking fun guys for discreet late night fun.
I love giving sensual massages. I have 34 DD's and love to take then while were completely naked and cover you in oil.
I am a former CMT and know the right way to touch to release deep tension.
I am a non pro looking for a few roses and available to come to you.
Honey
three23 seven17 seven780
[in case you're altogether naive "roses" signify american dollars!]
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