Topic 1 (session B) - Levels of language: Linguistic levels, style & meaning > Levels of language & pop group names > The Who

Levels of language & pop group names

Analysis of the popgroup name, The Who

Graphologically, this pop group name is like 'The Beatles' in capitalising the head noun. But this name is a bit more startling than 'The Beatles'. This is because of its strong grammatical oddity. The pronoun 'who' normally refers back in the text it occurs in to some person or group of people who have already been identified and referred to by an appropriate noun phrase (e.g. 'The mayor of Lancaster, who tripped over my foot last night, will not be undertaking mayoral duties for the next week'). This pop group's noun phrase is thus grammatically odd because the pronoun 'who' cannot normally act as the headword in a noun phrase.

However, there is one speech situation where the noun phrase 'the who' might occur reasonably regularly, namely as an echo question in relation to a previous reference which the second speaker has not heard properly, or is surprised by. Compare:

A. I just saw the [unclear words].
B. The who?
A. The Stephensons.

and:

A. I love the Beatles.
B. The who?
A. The Beatles.
B. But they are so old fashioned. If you say you love the Beatles everyone will laugh at you.

This echo question possibility helps explain part of the effect of the name 'The Who', which turns out to be appropriate for them. They were a pop group who set out to surprise and alarm people with their outrageous behaviour (for example, their leader, Pete Townshend, was the first well-known guitarist to smash his guitars on stage). The echo-question construal thus mimics a predicted response to them by someone who does not know them or is outraged by them. This suggests by inference that they will be ignored or disliked by some people (particularly older, more conventional, members of society), which in turn reinforces group solidarity with their admirers (who were typically young and rebellious).

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