By
Obododimma Oha
Sometimes one hears some people ask in anger: "Are you mad?" From the angle of abnormal psychology, a truly mad person would not answer: "Yes, I am mad." He could rather laugh at the questioner and shout, "You must be plain mad for asking me that stupid question!"
The questioner is not really trying to know if the addressee is mad or not. In fact, if he or she realises that the addressee is mad, he or she may run.
The question is not really a question. In structure, it may look like a question, the polar type. But it's not a question. It's an exclamation that pretends to be a question.
Truly mad people may not accept that they are mad for they are in are different reality, different life. If mad people cannot accept that they are mad, what is the point asking "Are you mad?" The expression, therefore, is not a good inquiry.
The following are some of the presuppositions:
- The speaker disapproves of the addressee's action or statement.
- The action or statement is seen as unfavourable.
- The speaker is in a position to dictate what is right or proper.
We proceed to classify the expression as a deliberate attempt to provoke another person. Other similar expressions are:
(2) Don't be crazy.
(3) You must be crazy.
(4) Are you stupid?
(5) Don't be stupid.
(2) to (5) are heard among siblings, playmates, friends, etc with little or no desire for offence, and the addressees hardly process them as offensive. They rather view them as the poking of the fire among people who are familiar and fond of some people.
The expression "Are you mad?" is in this class of false questions used by familiar and fond people to register their familiarity and fondness. It's one way of using language to signify presence in someone's life, as to say: "Yes, I can say that because I am an insider!"
The Pragmatics of the expression requires that we pay good attention to
- the context. We are invited to view madness as something that discourse can diagnose, even though the speaker would not send the addressee to any asylum. The speaker has all the therapy in discourse.
It is a prescriptive context. One side is right; the other side wrong, mad!
- Whether uttered in private conversations or in open public debates, the goal is to tell an addressee that he or she is wrong in decision-making.
- Then, the interactants. One, the speaker, is right or normal. The addressee, wrong, sick in the head! The speaker assumes being right and therefore normal. There is also that the other side is terribly wrong.
- A speaker of the expression performs the illocutionary act of scolding and correcting.
- Presupposition plays an important role in the use. The speaker makes certain assumptions which have been pointed out.
Now, next time, do not ask me "Are you mad?" unless you are plain mad!
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