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David, I think part of your problem, at least as manifested by your inability to see just how and why Mark's statement is humorous, is that you simply don't understand register-jumping. I was going to say more, but I think I'll just leave it at that. Well, no, I won't. Just to pursue an earlier point about your use of "obvious", and your apparent inability to recognise the mode in which context functions in language interaction, let's take the first phrase in Mark's post, “How about this?” As it stands, before anything comes after, it could mean a whole range of possible things, but you assert that *as an opening statement*, it signals one specific possibility, "seriousness": I quote your exact words: "I fail to see the humour in this. It opens with the question “How about this?” in response to the question about the status of poems v songs. He seems to be taking the question seriously enough to be offering an answer. I don’t see the humour in this part of it." Whether or not what follows is intended to be humorous on Mark's part (and like Jamie, and unlike you, I see it as that), to make the above assertion on *your* part suggests both a mind-numbing adherence to a monological view of language that almost beggars my belief, and a certain arrogance in assuming that your interpretation of a multifarious range of possibilities is not only the correct one, but the only *possible* one. Bakhtin, thou shoulds't be living at this hour! Robin ____________________________ On 26 October 2016 at 19:21 David Lace <[log in to unmask]> wrote: I fail to see the humour in this. It opens with the question “How about this?” in response to the question about the status of poems v songs. He seems to be taking the question seriously enough to be offering an answer. I don’t see the humour in this part of it. His next statement: “In some times and places people sang poems, in others they didn't”, is a statement of fact, as is “Some poems are more amenable to being sung than others, but sometimes people sang the less amenable ones anyway”. Again I don’t see any humor in this. The last sentence (“And the Nobel Committee didn't care about any of this, because they weren't awarding a prize for poetry or song”) I can see as humerous. But even assuming it is humorous, does that deny its truth? Some of the greatest truths are conveyed using satire, for instance. ---------------------Original Message-------------------- Jamie McKendrick wrote: For the edification of all concerned, here is Mark's post: "How about this? In some times and places people sang poems, in others they didn't. Some poems are more amenable to being sung than others, but sometimes people sang the less amenable ones anyway. And the Nobel Committee didn't care about any of this, because they weren't awarding a prize for poetry or song. " Honestly, it seems to me a potted history (alluding to some of the earlier instances where song and poetry coincided). The list is comic in effect and in its detail "but sometimes people sang the less amenable ones anyway". Hard to explain jokes, but I think this conjures up a hapless choir that have chosen the wrong hymn sheet. Nice one, Mark.