{"id":476,"date":"2015-03-21T01:40:58","date_gmt":"2015-03-21T01:40:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/?p=476"},"modified":"2016-08-24T15:51:11","modified_gmt":"2016-08-24T15:51:11","slug":"take-some-more-tea-recognizing-social-preconceptions-in-alice-in-wonderland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/2015\/03\/21\/take-some-more-tea-recognizing-social-preconceptions-in-alice-in-wonderland\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cTake some more tea\u201d: Recognizing Social Preconceptions in Alice in Wonderland"},"content":{"rendered":"

Alice in Wonderland<\/i> is a fanciful tale about a girl who dreams about falling down a rabbit hole into a magical realm of nonsense and curiosities (because to say wonder seems to nondescript). Once there, she encounters many situations in which standard phrases in which readers may think themselves familiar until they are re-imagined with different social interpretations or meanings. The constantly changing nature of social meaning through language instills in readers the opportunity, if not the obligation, to be more liberal in their interpretations and understandings of social situations and questions. <\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/i>Language in Alice<\/i> asks readers to become aware of their own social preconceptions through the use of seemingly familiar phrases and the presentation of opposing interpretations. Alice is told to \u201ctake some more tea,\u201d during tea time with the March Hare, Mad Hatter, and the Doormouse, to which she replies that she\u2019s had none yet, therefore, cannot take more. The Hatter refutes the point by stating, \u201cYou mean you can\u2019t take less… it\u2019s very easy to take more than nothing.\u201d In this instance, we see Alice\u2019s conception of more and less and the Hatter\u2019s. Alice interprets \u201cmore\u201d as adding to an already existing value (a previous cup of tea) while the Hatter presumes that zero is a reasonable value on which to start adding more<\/i> tea. There is a social judgment placed on the interaction by both Alice and the Hatter yet the text does not seem to take sides in order to guide a reader towards the \u201ccorrect\u201d assumption. Rather, the text seems to ask the reader to consider their own understanding of the situation. Which interpretation is more familiar, which is more reasonable, or if both are reasonable, how does it change a reader’s concept of what is being asked of them? If the reader agrees more with the Hatter they may begin to question their sanity. If they agree with Alice perhaps they might question their adulthood. No matter which character they agree with the reader must reflect upon the effectiveness of the question itself. <\/span><\/p>\n

The language in Alice in Wonderland<\/i> plays with the variety of means a word or phrase can have,\u00a0depending on the manner in which a person chooses to interpret it. Interpretation can stem from many sources such as learned social cues and a standardization of linguistic patterning. However, when the aforementioned expectations change or become ambiguous misunderstandings abound. This post will investigate briefly the effectiveness of Alice in Wonderland<\/i> as a text that exposes readers\u2019 social preconceptions and their ability or inability to adapt in an environment with different or changing expectations. <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Alice in Wonderland is a fanciful tale about a girl who dreams about falling down a rabbit hole into a magical realm of nonsense and curiosities (because to say wonder seems to nondescript). Once there, she encounters many situations in which standard phrases in which readers may think themselves familiar until they are re-imagined with … Continue reading \u201cTake some more tea\u201d: Recognizing Social Preconceptions in Alice in Wonderland<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2304,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[111380,108029],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-476","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-360-victorian-sexualities","category-spring-2015"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/476","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2304"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=476"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/476\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=476"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=476"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=476"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}