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Zoo story
Task B – Our answer
Jerry’s utterance (‘You have a TV, haven't you?’) is
a reversed polarity tag question (a positive statement-like form followed
by a negative question form tagged on to it). This suggests that he is
assuming that what he says in the statement-like part is almost certainly
true, and that in the tag question he is merely requesting confirmation
of the assumption behind his statement. Compare Jerry’s utterance
with the more straightforward question ‘Do you have a TV?’,
for example.
These days almost everyone in the USA will have a television (or more
than one), and so Jerry’s utterance will probably seem odd because
it breaks Grice’s maxim of quantity, checking up on a statement
that would be true for just about everyone. At the time the play was written
televisions would have been reasonably common, but not so common as now,
and so, if anything, it would have appeared that Jerry was assuming too
much. Whether you react to the tag question with 1958 assumptions or more
modern assumptions Jerry’s utterance is odd, and it is also difficult
to work out whether it is intended as a violation or a flout of the Gricean
quantity maxim, making it difficult to work out exactly what Jerry is
getting at, and why. This begins to explain why Jerry seems odd and a
bit threatening. In politeness terms he is invading Peter’s personal
space, if the 1958 assumptions are in place. He appears to know more about
Peter than he should.
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