Nonsensical dialogue

Other works of Nonsensical language -Posted by Jack Mower

Recently I became more interested in the use of nonsensical dialogue and have tried to find other examples in non-play based pieces such as books, music and films. Some example in Music are songs such as "I'm blue" by Eiffel 65 which contains the lyrics "I'm Blue da bee dee da ba die" as the chorus of the song. and the song  Numa Numa by O-zone uses nonsensical words for the beginning and other verses. Many other songs use another form of words or rather another genre called Scat which is the vocal improvisation using wordless vocals and nonsensical language but still fitting with the rhythm of the song. This is an interesting effect which is usually associated with Blues and Jazz music.

In Television shows there are many characters and whole series based on nonsensical dialogue. The Sooty Show or Sooty and Sweep have either no language like Sooty or squeaks for Sweep and yet the other character Puppet and Human alike can both understand these two no matter what noises they make. The television series Bill and Ben the Flowerpot Men is similar to this as Bill and Ben didn’t use words or if they did it was intermixed with random words and noises yet some characters such as the Sunflower called Weed could understand them and have a conversation with them often helping them in need. Many children’s shows also have nonsensical dialogue such as the teletubbies saying very little and most of it is random babble. An older show that involved noises rather than words was Clangers. The series was about mice-like creatures that live on the moon, speak in whistles and eat soup given by the soup dragon. This show was extremely popular and is believed to be making a comeback for a new generation as well. While many plays are slated by the critics for the use of nonsensical language and absurdist shows like these are still popular, maybe due to the target audience of children but it has worked in other ways too.

In literature this has worked well. Roald Dahl and Dr. Seuss both use unusual and nonsensical words in his works especially in Seuss’ case. Dahl does this in his works the BFG where the BFG uses strange words to describe things such as Whizzpoping as a word for flatulence. Dr. Seuss uses nonsensical words in a majority of his works. A poem that is nonsensical is the Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll with lines such as “his Vorpal sword went snicker snack… he went galumphing back” the poem is in the sequel to Alice’s adventures in wonderland and a significant amount of the book is also nonsensical.

Nonsensical language and characters are seen in film as well. The most numerous amount of nonsensical characters are the minions in Despicable me 1 + 2. These yellow creatures have very few words but make nonsense speech to one another and yet understand this as does the main character Gru. These films are again targeted at children and as comic character but are still used to a great effect in both films showing different emotions and situations well without using real words.