sense of nonsense Alison Rieke Iowa City : University of Iowa Press, 1992

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The Encyclopedia of Philosophy lists six distinct types of nonsense. Of course, a writer may use any or all of these, singly or combined.

1.Utterances (spoken or written) that are contrary to fact.

2. Utterances or actions performed out of their expected context. For instance, a man orders a pizza from a bride during a wedding ceremony.

3. Utterances containing what is known as a "category mistake": a syntactically correct sentence attaches an unsuitable predicate to

a subject or vice versa. In semantics, this may be any use of language violating semantic laws rather than syntactic laws; for example, we know that a sentence can be correctly formed out of words of inappropriate semantic function: "Colourless green ideas sleep furiously."

4. Utterances constructed from strings of actual words

lacking, to a greater or lesser degree, the syntactic structure of the paradigms of sense.

5. "Vocabulary nonsense,'' or utterances which have a discernible syntax, but

whose vocabulary is unfamiliar and untranslatable into recognizable sense.

6. Utterances which are total gibberish, where no recognizable vocabulary or syntax

appears (this would be "pure" or "true'' nonsense).