Double meanings in phrases - is there a word for this?

Cafe Society
1

There’s a technique that I’ve seen in country song lyrics… country does a lot of narrative storytelling in song, and I’ll try to describe what I’m talking about.

In Lorrie Morgan’s “I Guess You Had To Be There”, the singer tells her husband of being downtown and seeing a couple having lunch. She’s apparently struck by how much in love the couple obviously is, tries and fails to describe it, and ends up saying, in essence, “I guess you had to be there,” which is a common expression to convey the sentiment there’s no way to adequately describe this; you had to see it to get it.

But then the second verse twists the story – it turns out that the man she saw was her husband, and she acknowledges, sorrowfully, that their marriage has lost its intimacy and love… and, in fact, she understands why he went in search of a new lose – he had to, she says.

When the refrain is sung again, then, the same words convey a strikingly different meaning: she’s telling her husband that she understands he had to be there.

In Kenny Chesney’s “There Goes My Life,” in the first verse the singer, a young man, reacts to news of a girlfriend’s unplanned pregnancy by saying, “There goes my life… there goes my future, my everything…” In subsequent verses, we see that the couple has married and the baby, a girl, is born, and her father loves her desperately… so much so that as years go by, and she’s a young adult, he has to choke back tears as she packs up to leave for college… and again we hear “There goes my life… there goes my future, my everything…” with, obviously, a very different meaning.

OK, long-winded explanation.

Question: is there a name for that sort of technique? I considered double entendre, but I’ve never heard it applied to something like that.

2

The first things I think of are (not answers):

A clever change of context

Paul Harvey: don’t his Rest of the Story stories often explain a mysterious element from earlier in the story, thus giving it a new meaning?

David Mamet: I’ve only seen a couple of his movies, Hannibal and Heist, but supposedly he uses circular dialogue, in which dialogue from earlier in the film is used later but in a way different way:

Crime boss at beginning of film: “Why did the chicken cross the road? B/c the road crossed him!”

Gangster laughs

Gangster, at end of film, is pointing gun at boss

Crime boss: “Why’d you have to foil my plan? I thought you were chicken!”

“I was. And you crossed me.” Boom.
I just made that up partially based on actual Mamet dialogue.

Earlier today I remembered the term malapropism, a humorous misuse of words, like if you say ‘defecation’ instead of ‘desecration’- named after a character in the play The Rivals. In this manner, I’m naming your thing a Mametism.

In other words, I don’t know. :wink:

3

The closest literary term I can think of is “deferred significance.”

That may not be precisely what you’re looking for, though, because something with deferred significance may initially appear to be simply insignificant – there’s no intrinsic sense of the intentionally misleading.

4

Irony is what I’d call it.

Was digging around and stumbled on a site that listed the “traits of irony”:

Take your pick… I was leaning toward “role of the implicit”, though “play on values” seems apropos.

5

I like “clever change of context” even if it isn’t as catchy as “double entendre.”

And here’s my favorite example (note the shifting sense of the title phrase):

Mean To Me*
Music and Lyrics by Roy Turk and Fred E. Ahlert

*You’re mean to me,
Why must you be mean to me?
Gee, honey, it seems to me
You love to see me cryin’.

I don’t know why
I stay home each night
When you say you phone.
You don’t and I’m left alone
Singin’ the blues and sighin’.

You treat me coldly each day in the year.
You always scold me
Whenever somebody is near, dear.

It must be great fun to be mean to me
You shouldn’t, for can’t you see
What you mean to me?*

and my favorite performance, Miss Annette Hanshaw (RealAudio), who was all of 19 years old when she made this recording in 1929.

*Not the complete lyrics. First published in 1929, so probably in PD, anyway.

6

To Serve Man :smiley:

7

Another interesting example comes more from pronunciation than from spelling in the old standard But Not For Me where “knot” gets replaced for “not” in the last verse.

I do believe this device goes beyond double entendre, and since I know nothing better as a replacement, I’d vote for the “clever change of context” until someone with more detailed familiarity with literary (or rhetorical) nomenclature comes along to give the definitive answer.

Country music has so many funny variations on this theme. If I said you had a beautiful body, would you hold it against me? has been one of my favorites. It would be amusing to know what percentage of C&W titles are based on this device.

I think it extends to titles for books, movies, poems, and that sort of thing, too.

8

I had already hit “submit” on the previous post before thinking to include another example that happens here all the time for me. I suspect that similar mechanics of language are at play. And I even started a thread one time about the notion.

So many times I’ll read a thread title and have a significantly different reaction on first reading from the one that will settle in after I see what was really said or meant. I’m sure the “sequential thread title” humor is based partially on that feature at least some of the time.

Also I wonder to what extent optical illusions rely on a similar aspect of our awareness and perception. Then I can’t help wondering if “reality” as we have come to think of it is just a common misinterpretation of a totally different intention. I mean, what if our senses are deliberate distortions of the true meanings of things? Would that be funny?