Arrr!!! Performing Piracy
overturning or subverting the appropriateness of the situation. 01’ Chumbucket
addressed the issue of appropriateness directly by saying:
It’s just in almost any situation you can name, talking like a
pirate is inappropriate. Unless you are actually on the
quarterdeck of a Seventeenth century sailing ship, then I
suppose it’s appropriate. You know, at the doctor’s office, at
work, at church, at school, on a date, when you’re out at the
bowling league, it’s inappropriate. And inappropriate is funny
I think. (Baur, Interview)
5. Pretending
Related to performance is pretending. Austin states of pretending, “Praetendere in Latin never strays far from the literal meaning of holding or stretching
one thing in front of another in order to protect or conceal or disguise it” (Austin
208). On Talk Like a Pirate Day that is what we are doing. We are hiding the
real thing behind the facade, talking like a pirate when we really are not pirates.
“There is necessarily involved in pretence, or shamming, the notion of a limit
which must not be overstepped: pretence is always insulated, as it were from
reality. Admittedly this limit may be vague, b