Changing more than just the conversation

Maybe I am just watching too much TV.

But another commercial struck me funny. There is a clip of it right here:

The transcript:

Mother:I have not had it up to here with you, young lady!
Daughter:Why do you insist on treating me like an adult?
Mother: Because you insist on acting like one! Now you're getting this new phone.
Daughter:But it's so small! I really like it! Why is it always what I want?
Mother: Well, do you have any idea how much money this is not going to cost me?
Daughter:I love you!
Mother: I know you really mean that.
Daughter: You never hated me and you never will!
Mother: You are the most grateful little....
Announcer: Cingular is changing the conversation about cellphones....

Now this is a bit like that piece I quoted from The New Yorker in this post -- in both cases, effort is made to give the opposite meaning to the words. There are some important differences, though:

• The older piece used back-formations in a deliberate and consistent way, while the former simply sought to invert the meaning of every line;
• The commercial kept the tone of an argumemt between a parent and child that most viewers can immediately identify with, while the older piece was obviously a monologue;
• The commercial actively showed product features (small, economical, etc.) in its inversions and giving them a positive context, by associating them along with positive traits (not hating, nevet hating, being grateful, etc.) while the older piece caused an almost 'garden path' kind of moving through meanings where one had to deconstruct the term, reconstruct the original, and then invert the meaning.

Now none of this approaches a rigorous exaplanation of what is going on from a linguistic standpoint. But then again I am not really a linguist.... :-)

Enjoy the commercial in any case. I like what it is doing here -- by putting things in the context of the cellphone 'changing the conversation,' it is keeping it in the form of argument, one that anyone could write the script for:

Mother:I have had it up to here with you, young lady!
Daughter:Why do you insist on treating me like a child?
Mother: Because you insist on acting like one! Now you're not getting this new phone.
Daughter:But it's so big! I really hate it! Why is it always what you want?
Mother: Well, do you have any idea how much money this is going to cost me?
Daughter:I hate you!
Mother: I know you don't really mean that.
Daughter: You never loved me and you never will!
Mother: You are the most ungrateful little....

And even as we recognize this, and even though we know that the framework of the parent and child arguing would never really hold up here (they would still argue, to be sure; they would just find other things to argue about!), we are left with a positive impression of the product.

Quite clever, really. :-)

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