7 - Fitting the pieces together

Summary

A dog will stay stupid. That's why we love them so much. The entire time we know them, they're idiots. Think of your dog. Every time you come home, he thinks it's amazing. He has no idea how you accomplish this every day. You walk in the door, the joy of this experience overwhelms him. He looks at you, He's back, it's that guy, that same guy! He can't believe it. Everything is amazing to your dog. Another can of food? I don't believe it!

–Jerry Seinfeld

This bit from Seinfeld's stand-up routine might seem loosely put together. Just some guy talking off the cuff about dogs and their owners. But actually, it's fairly well organized. Consider its overall design. It begins with a general statement about dogs and their stupidity and then illustrates that point with a specific example – that is, the dog's reaction (or overreaction) to its owner. This two-part structure – a general point followed by an example illustrating that point – gives the Seinfeld excerpt its overall shape. It also serves as a framework into which smaller structural elements fit. For instance, Think of your dog serves as a transition between the general point and specific example, and the example itself takes the form of a narrative: it's a story recounting how a dog will typically behave when its owner returns home. And within this narrative, we can find smaller structural units, including repetitions of words, quotes, even another general-to-specific pattern: Everything is amazing to your dog (general point); Another can of food? I don't believe it! (example illustrating that point).

We could go on analyzing other structural elements in the Seinfeld bit (and we will give those elements a closer look in a minute), but if we left it at that – if we limited ourselves to looking only at its verbal form or shape, then we'd only have a partial understanding of how it all works. To complete the picture, we also need to consider how its structures interact with its context, including: who the speaker is, who the audience is, what their assumptions and expectations are, and where, when, and how they interact. Take the general-to-specific pattern again. It's a fairly common structure and appears in all kinds of speaking and writing – humorous and otherwise. But Seinfeld's use of it is constrained by context, particularly who he is and what his audience expects from him. Seinfeld is, of course, a comedian, and his audience expects him to be funny. So it's not enough for him to follow a general-to-specific pattern – or any other pattern, for that matter. He must do so in a way that provokes laughter. If he had opened with A dog will stay stupid and then gone on to talk about canine intelligence, he'd have followed the general-to-specific pattern, but it wouldn't have been funny, and wouldn't have worked. He doesn't do that, of course. He knows his role and knows what his audience wants. So he presents a monologue that both has a definite structure, and is appropriate to the context in which it appears.