Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, VoL 19, No.

2, 1990

Why Boys Will Be Boys and Girls Will Be Girls:

Understanding Colloquial Tautologies
Raymond W. Gibbs, Jr., 1 and Nancy S. McCarrelP
Accepted February 20, 1990
What do tautological phrases such as Boys will be boys, A promise is a promise, or War is war
mean and how are they understood? rhese phrases literally appear to be uninformative, yet speakers
fi'equently use such expressions in conversation and listeners have little difficulty comprehending
them. Understanding nominal tautologies requires that listeners/readers infer the speaker's attitude
toward the noun phrase (e.g., boys) mentioned in the sentence. The purpose of the present studies
was to investigate the role of context, syntactic form, and lexical content in the interpretation of
nominal tuatologies. Two studies are reported in which subjects rated the acceptability of different
tautological constructions either alone (Experiment 1) or with supporting contextual information
(Experiment 2). The results of these studies provide evidence that colloquial tautologies can be
interpreted differently in different contexts, but that there are important regularities in the syntactic
form and lexical content of these phrases which influence how they are understood. Our findings
highlight the importance of speakers~listeners' stereotypical understanding of peopIe, activities, and
concrete objects in the use and understanding of different tautological expressions. The implications
of this research for psycholinguistic theories of conversational inference and indirect language use
are discussed.

INTRODUCTION
Consider the following brief exchange between two parents. A mother asks her
husband "Did the children ever clean up their rooms. "' The father shakes his
head and responds "'Well, boys will be boys. "" At first glance, the father's
response to his wife's question seems nonsensical. The phrase "Boys will be
b o y s " is true by virtue of its logical form alone (as a nominal tautology) and,
superficially, contributes no new information to the conversation. But the utProgram in Experimental Psychology, Clark Kerr Hall, University of California, Santa Cruz, Santa
Cruz, California 95064.
125
0090-6905/90/0300-0125506.00/0 9 1990 Plenum PublishingCorporation

126

Gibbs and McCarrell

terance "'Boys will be boys" is readily interpretable and most listeners would
agree that the father intended to convey a particular meaning, something like
"Boys will be unruly and that it is often difficult to get them to do what you
want." What linguistic and extra-linguistic information does a hearer rely on to
recognize that the father's response "Boys will be boys" is not redundant and
actually conveys specific meaning?
Our interest in this article was to investigate people's comprehension of
colloquial tautologies, such as "'Boys will be boys" Diamonds are diamonds,
Business is business, and A promise is a promise. Nominal tautologies are found
with surprising frequency in everyday speech, literature (e.g., Gertrude Stein's
famous lineA rose is a rose is a rose), and advertising (e.g., Motor oil is motor
oil). Various researchers in linguistics and philosophy have considered the problem of interpreting tautological sentences (Brown & Levinson, t978; Fraser,
I988; Grice, I975, 1978; I_evinson, 1983; Wierzbicka, 1987, 1988), but the
comprehension of tautological sentences has not previously been experimentally
examined. Although the related topic of understanding indirect and nonliteral
discourse has been widely investigated by psycholinguists in recent years (Clark,
1985; Gibbs, 1984, 1986), there has been no emphasis on interpreting conversational statements that are obviously true due to their logical form. We specifically examined how systematic differences among types of nominal tautologies
affected judgments of their acceptability. The results of our studies highlight
the importance of different pragmatic, semantic, and syntactic information on
the interpretation of colloquial tautologies.
There are two main theoretical approaches to interpreting nominal tautologies. Perhaps the most influential model is that proposed by Grice (1975,
1978) in his writings on how listeners derive inferences during utterance interpretation. Grice noted that much of the information that is conveyed from speaker
to listener in conversation is implied, rather than asserted. For example, a speaker
asserts nothing new when he says that Business is business, but he implies
something about business in this phrase which is intended to be understood by
the listener. Grice argued that speakers and listeners expect each other to interpret their utterances as if they were acting in a rational, and cooperative manner.
He recognized several kinds of cooperation which he grouped into the maxims
of Quantity (make your contribution as informative as needed); Quality (do not
say what you believe to be false); Relevance (be relevant); and Manner (be
perspicuous, avoid ambiguity). Although Grice (1975, 1978) did not argue that
this list is exhaustive, he suggests that these maxims describe the norms speakers
operate with in conversation.
In Grice's approach, conversational inference (or "implicature") involves
taking the meaning of the sentence uttered, in conjunction with background
knowledge, inference rules, and the above set of general pragmatic maxims, to

Understanding Colloquial Tautologies

127

work out what the speaker might have meant. For the conversation described
above, the father's remark "'Boys will be boys" flouts the maxim of Quantity
because the assertion of a tautology is not informative when taken literally. Yet
it is clear that despite the apparent failure of cooperation, most listeners normally
assume that the speaker is cooperative at some deeper level. We do this normally
by inferring that the speaker is trying to remind us of some belief or attitude
about boys, namely that boys are often unruly (Levinson, 1983).
According to Grice one of the defining features of conversational inference
is that no implicature can be deduced from the explicit content of the utterance
alone. That is, we cannot strictly derive that "boys are unruly" from Boys will
be boys apart from the specific context at hand and any background knowledge
shared by speakers and listeners. The Gricean proposal, which we refer to as
the pragmatic view, suggests then that the interpretation of nominal tautologies
is context-dependent with different meanings attached to the same tautology
depending on the conversational context and the shared beliefs of the participants
(Levinson, 1983).
Most discussions of linguistic tautologies, following Grice, have explicitly
assumed that the interpretation of utterances such as Boys will be boys and A
promise is a promise changes from one situation to another (Brown & Levinson,
1978; Fraser, 1988; Levinson, 1983). Boys will be boys might convey the idea
that boys are unruly in one context, but can express the notion that little boys
are cute and adorable in a different context of use. Recent critics of the pragmatic
view have alternatively argued that there is a good deal of regularity in the
interpretation of colloquial tautologies because these phrases are to some extent
language-specific (Wierzbicka, 1987). This approach, which we'll refer to as
the semantic account, suggests that the meanings of colloquial tautologies must
be explicitly spelled out in appropriate semantic representations for different
phrases in different languages. For example, Wierzbicka (1987) noted that nominal tautologies such as Boys will be boys are simply not used in French, German,
or Russian. Thus, the French sentence Les garcons seront les (des?) garcons
(i.e., "The boys will be the boys") would be simply incomprehensible. If the
variety of interpretations for sentences such as Boys will be boys and A husband
is a husband were simply due to a pragmatic process of conversational implicature, then the acceptability of such phrases should be identical in different
languages. But the extreme variation in the interpretation of nominal tautologies
in different languages suggest that these phrases are partly conventional and
language-specific. Each tautology has a specific meaning that cannot be predicted in terms of any universal pragmatic maxims (Wierzbicka, 1987).
The semantic view proposes that English nominal tautologies can be distinguished in terms of their different syntactic patterns and their different nominal classifications (Wierzbicka, 1987). For example, tautologies of the syntactic

128

Gibbs and McCarrell

form N (abstract-singuIar) is N (abstract-singular) (e.g., War is war, Politics is

politics, and Business is business), convey a sober, mostly negative, attitude
toward complex human activities that must be understood and tolerated. Tautologies of the form N (plural) will be N (plural) refer to some negative aspects
of the topic, but also convey an indulgent attitude toward this relatively unchangeable negative aspect (e.g., Boys will be boys). Phrases such as Rapists
will be rapists or Murderers will be murderers seem less acceptable because it
is unlikely that the speaker would wish to convey an attitude of indulgence
toward the topic (i.e., rapists and murderers). In general, contrary to the pragmatic view, a semantic approach to nominal tautologies proposes that the specific syntactic form and lexical content of different phrases contribute significant
semantic information to their interpretation and acceptability.
Our approach to colloquial tautologies is a hybrid theory that captures
aspects of the previously described views. Within this framework, the systematic
and conventional meaning associated with tautological constructions varies depending on the speaker/listener's conceptual knowledge of the objects nouns
referred to in the tautology. Following Fraser (1988), our account first specifies
that an English nominal tautology signals that the speaker intends that the listener
recognize (a) that the speaker holds some view or attitude toward all people,
activities, or objects referred by the noun phrase, (b) that the speaker believes
that the listener can recognize this particular view, and (c) that this view is
relevant to the conversation. The very form of nominal tautologies signals that
the speaker intends to convey the belief that the participants share a view about
some aspect of the noun mentioned in the tautology and wishes to bring this
belief to the listener's attention. The particular beliefs about a noun that a speaker
wishes to convey will depend partly on context. For instance, in different circumstances a speaker may state that Business is business to convey either that
business is competitive (a negative attribution) or that business is financially
rewarding (a positive attribution).
However, context alone is insufficient for explaining the exact interpretations listeners/readers give to colloquial tautologies. Speakers and listeners share
information about the particular social situation at hand, but they also mutually
assume specific stereotypical understandings of people, activities, and objects
(cf. Putnam, 1975). This stereotypical knowledge is directly used in interpreting
exactly what speakers mean when they refer to different people, activities, and
objects in nominal tautologies. Listeners should often interpret Boys will be boys
to mean that boys are unruly not just because of the specific conversational
context, but because of the assumption that the speaker shares a similar stereotype about boys. On the other hand, there are many objects and activities for
which people possess weaker stereotypes. When speakers refer to objects such
as hats, beds, or food such as carrots, in tautological phrases, they seem less

Understanding ColloquialTautologies

129

likely to evoke specific attitudes about these objects because people generally
don't have strong stereotypes for them. People may certainly have strong prototypical representations for particular objects and events (Rosch & Mervis,
1975), but they do not have as detailed stereotypical attitudes towards concrete
objects such as hats, beds, or carrots (Dahlgren, 1985). Phrases such as A hat
is a hat or Carrots will be carrots seem less acceptable as meaningful tautologies
than do phrases such as Business is business or Boys will be boys that mention
people or activities for which speakers/listeners have strong stereotypes. These
observations suggest that people's stereotypical attitudes toward the people,
activities, or objects referred to by the noun phrases in nominal tautologies
should play an important role in the use and acceptability of these colloquial
expressions.
A third aspect of our approach to nominal tautologies concerns the syntactic
form of these phrases. Following Wierzbicka (1987), we expected that the syntactic form of a nominal tautology should have an effect on how stereotypical
information about people, activities, and objects are evoked. Consider the difference between A boy is a boy and Boys will be boys. The singular nominal
tautology expresses the idea of "token indifference" (Wierzbicka, 1987), or
that any one instance of a concept is equivalent to any other. However, modaI
constructions express a more negative sense that our stereotypical understanding
of the noun topic will remain unchanged in the future and that we should be
accepting of this sometimes unpleasant fact. These differences in the syntactic
forms of nominal tautologies should also influence the meaning and interpretability of these statements.
A primary motivation for the present studies was to explore why some
tautological phrases seem meaningful or acceptable while other tautologies are
less meaningful and rarely appear in everyday speech. Not all tautological phrasesare colloquial and many logically true, redundant sentences of the forms A X
is a X or X's will be X's do not convey much information about a speaker's
beliefs or attitude toward the noun mentioned. Our aim was to empirically
establish some constraints for a theory of nominal tautologies that could motivate
why some types of tautological sentences seemed more acceptable than others.
We report two experiments investigating the roles of context, noun type, and
syntactic form on people's understanding of nominal tautologies. Subjects were
asked to rate the acceptability and affective quality of systematically generated
tautological phrases both without any contextual information (Experiment 1) and
in different contexts (Experiment 2). The acceptability ratings reflected subjects'
intuitions about the comprehensibility of different tautologies and the affect
ratings measured subjects' intuitions about the positive/negative valence for different tautological phrases. Our general hypothesis was that there should be
specific interactions between context, noun type, and syntactic form in subjects'

130

Gibbs and McCarreU

acceptability judgments for nominal tautologies. Although a pragmatic view

would predict that context should be the primary influence on the interpretation
of nominal tautologies, and the semantic view would predict that different syntactic forms and different types of nouns affect the comprehension of tautologies,
neither of these approaches is sufficient to account for specific interactions
between these various sources of linguistic and extra-linguistic information.

EXPERIMENT 1

The aim of Experiment 1 was to gather evidence about people's interpretations for nominal tautologies without biasing contextual information. Different
tautological phrases were presented to subjects in either plural syntactic form
(e.g., Boys are boys) singular syntactic form (e.g., A boy is a boy), or as modal
constructions (e.g., Boys will be boys). Each syntactic form contained either
human role nouns (e.g., boys, doctors, teachers), abstract nouns involving human activities (e.g., war, sports, promises), or concrete nouns referring to
ordinary objects (e.g., flowers, diamonds, beds). The subjects' task was to first
rate the acceptability or interpretability of each tautological phrase and then to
rate the affective meaning of these phrases (i.e., the degree to which each phrase
conveyed a positive or negative attribution about the noun). We assumed, following Dahlgren (1985), that subjects should possesses more stereotypical
knowledge for human nouns and abstract nouns than they would for concrete
nouns. Although people know a good deal about concrete objects, they do not
usually have specific stereotypes that polarize either negatively or positively,
their attitudes about these objects. Consequently, we expected that subjects
should generally find tautologies with human role and abstract nouns to be more
interpretable than they would phrases containing concrete nouns. At the same
time, we predicted an interaction between noun type and syntactic form such
that some nouns (e.g., human roles) should be viewed as quite acceptable in
some syntactic forms (e.g., modal constructions), but less so when presented in
other forms (e.g., singular constructions).
Method

Subjects
Thirty-six University of California, Santa Cruz, undergraduates participated
in the experiment. They either received payment for their participation or credit
for a course requirement. All of the subjects were native English speakers.

Understanding ColloquialTautologies

131

Materials and Design

The stimulus materials were constructed in two steps. First, 12 nouns were
selected for each of three noun types: human role (e.g., boys, teachers, or
doctors), concrete (e.g., books, flowers, or hats), and abstract (e.g., war, religion, or divorce). Each of these 36 nouns were then inserted into three syntactic
forms of tautologies: singular (e.g., A boy is a boy), plural (e.g., Boys are
boys), and modal (e.g., Boys will be boys). The resulting 108 nominal tautologies were divided into three counterbalanced lists of materials. Each list contained 36 tautological sentences formed by factorially crossing the three noun
types with the three syntactic forms. Across the three lists of stimuli, each of
the 36 individual nouns appeared equally often in both the different noun type
and syntactic form conditions. Examples of the stimuli in the different experimental conditions are presented in Appendix A.

Procedure
Subjects were randomly assigned to receive one of the three lists of stimuli
that were presented in a booklet along with a written set of instructions. The 36
phrases in each list were randomly ordered. Subjects were instructed to carefully
read and make two different judgments about each phrase in their booklet. Their
first task was to rate the '%cceptability" of each phrase on a 7-point scale
(where 1 meant that the phrase was "unacceptable" and 7 meant that the phrase
was "highly acceptable"). "Acceptability" was explained as reflecting how
easy it was to interpret the phrase. Subjects were then instructed to judge each
phrase for the attitude a supposed speaker of the phrase might be trying to
communicate. This rating was also to be made on a 7-point scale ranging from
1 indicating that the speaker meant to convey a highly negative attitude toward
the phrase, to 3 or 4 where the speaker meant to convey a neutral attitude toward
the phrase, to 7 indicating that the speaker meant to communicate a highly
positive attitude toward the phrase.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

Acceptability Ratings. The mean acceptability ratings for each noun type
in each syntactic form, averaged across subjects, are presented in Table 1. The
mean standard error for these ratings was + .06.
An analysis of variance on these data indicated a significant effect of noun
type, F(2, 46)--40.67, p < .001. Although the variation in subjects' ratings for
the different syntactic forms was only marginally significant, F(2, 46)= 2.45,

132

Gibbs and MeCarrell

Table

I. Mean Acceptability Ratings in Experiment 1

Ill

Noun Type
SyntacticForm
Modal
Plural
Singular
Means

Human

Abstract

Concrete

Means

5.71
4.63
4.64
4.99

4.23
4.77
4.86
4.62

3.04
3.92
4.56
3.84

4.32
4.44
4.69

p < . 1 0 , the interaction of noun type and syntactic form was reliable, F(4,
92) = 16.85, p < .001.
Further examination of the individual cell means using Fischer's LSD tests
showed that subjects found tautologies with human role and abstract nouns to
be more acceptable than tautologies containing concrete nouns (p <.01). The
higher rating for tautologies with human role nouns compared to phrases with
abstract nouns was only marginally reliable (p< .10). Subjects generally found
tautologies in singular syntactic form to be more acceptable than they did modal
forms (p <.05), but the difference between singular and plural forms was not
statistically reliable. The noun type X syntactic form interaction was primarily
due to variation in subjects' ratings for modal syntactic forms with different
types of nouns. Subjects found tautologies with human role nouns to be more
acceptable in modal forms than in either singular or plural syntactic forms (p < .01
for both comparisons). However, the mean ratings for tautologies with abstract
or concrete nouns were significantly lower when presented in modal forms than
in either plural or singular syntactic forms (/9 < .05 for each comparison). Most
notably, these data showed that subjects found modal phrases with human role
nouns to be more acceptable than any other type of tautology (p < .01 for all
comparisons).

Affect Ratings
The mean affect ratings are shown in Table II. The average standard error
of the mean for these ratings was + .07.
An analysis of variance of these data revealed a significant effect of noun
type, F(2,46) = 39.49, P < .001. The effect of syntactic form was not statistically
significant, F(2, 46) = 2.42, p > .10. However, the noun type X syntactic form
was reliable, F(4,92) = 16.74, p < .001.
Further examination of the individual means showed that subjects judged
tautologies with abstract nouns to be more negative than they did phrases with
either human role or concrete nouns (p<.05 for both comparisons). Subjects
most generally found modal phrases with each type of noun to convey more

133

Understanding Colloquial Tautologies

Table II. Mean Affect Ratings in Experiment 1~

Noun Type
Syntactic Form
Modal
Plural
Singular
Means

Human

Abstract

Concrete

Means

3.95
4.15
4.24
4.11

3.57
3.98
3.72
3.75

3.90
4.17
4.39
4.14

3.80
4.09
4.11

~Higher ratings indicate more positive affect.

negative attributions than for plural or singular phrases (p <.05 for each comparison). However, examination of the noun type X syntactic form interaction
indicated that subjects found tautologies with human role and concrete nouns to
convey the most positive affect in singular forms, but that abstract nouns conveyed the most positive affect when seen in plural forms (p < .05 for all three
comparisons).
In summary, the results of this first study showed important differences in
the comprehensibility of tautological expressions. Subjects found modal forms
with human role nouns (e.g., Doctors will be doctors) to be the easiest type of
tautology to comprehend and attributed relatively negative affect to these phrases.
This finding supports the predictions of the semantic view that modal syntactic
forms are most appropriate to use when they express a sober, mostly negative
account toward people. Subjects find these types of tautologies easy to comprehend because of their stereotypical knowledge of people (i.e., different human
role such as mothers, doctors, teachers, and so on). Tautologies with concrete
nouns are more difficult to interpret precisely because subjects do not possess
stereotypical attitudes toward concrete objects (e.g., carrots, hats, beds) in the
same way they do for people and various human activities (e.g., war, divorce,
vacations). The lack of stereotypical attitudes for various concrete objects makes
it difficult for subjects to determine why speakers/writers would express any
belief about such objects (i.e., concrete nouns).

EXPERIMENT 2

Subjects in Experiment 2 rated the acceptability of tautological phrases in

contexts designed to evoke either a positive or negative attitude toward the
mentioned noun phrase. For instance, subjects judged the acceptability of phrases
such as Boys will be boys at the end of either a negative context:

134

Gibbs and McCarrell

Boys give such trouble. You're lucky you have a daughter. Most boys are juvenile
delinquents in spirit if not in fact. And a small boy can show such cruelty.
or at the end of a positive story context:
Boys give such joy. It's too bad you have daughters. Most boys are mischievous
angels in spirit if not in fact. And a small boy can show such tenderness.
The pragmatic view of nominal tautologies emphasizes that the interpretation of these phrases depends on particular contexts. We too expected that
subjects would comprehend tautologies differently in negative and positive contexts. This should be particularly evident in subjects' affect ratings. However,
the results of Experiment 1 indicated that people differentially interpret tautological sentences depending on the exact syntactic form and lexical content of
these phrases. We were particularly interested to see whether or not subjects'
stereotypical understanding of people, human activities, and concrete objects
would be influenced by contexts highlighting either a positive or negative attitude toward these people and things. Contrary to both the pragmatic and semantic views of colloquial tautologies, we predicted that there should be evidence
of interactions between context, noun types, and syntactic form in both subjects'
acceptability and affect ratings.
Method

Subjects
Thirty-six University of California, Santa Cruz undergraduates participated
in the experiment. They either received payment for their participation or credit
for a course requirement. All of the subjects were native English speakers. None
of the subjects participated in Experiment 1.

Materials and Design

Two short story contexts, ranging from 4 to 6 lines, were written for each
of the 36 nouns used as stimuli in Experiment 1. One story suggested a positive
attitude toward the noun mentioned in the final sentence and the second story
suggested a negative attitude toward that same noun. For a given noun, the
positive and negative stories were written in parallel sentence structure so that
each context referred to the same type, but opposite, characteristics of the noun.
The positive and negative stories for a given noun also contained roughly the
same number of words.
The 108 tautological sentences from Experiment 1 were placed at the end
of both a positive and negative story for each of the 36 nouns. The resulting
216 stories (36 nouns X 3 syntactic forms X 2 story contexts) were then divided

Understanding ColloquialTautologies

135

into six counterbalanced lists of materials. Each list contained 36 tautological

sentences formed by factorially crossing the three noun types with the three
syntactic forms and the two types of context. Across the six lists of stimuli,
each of the 36 individual nouns appeared equally often in both the different
noun type and syntactic form conditions. Examples of positive and negative
contexts for one item in each noun type are presented in Appendix B.

Procedure
Subjects were randomly assigned to receive one of the six lists of stimuli
that were presented in a booklet along with a written set of instructions. Subjects
were instructed to carefully read each story and to make two different judgments
about the last line in each story. Their first task was to rate the "acceptability"
of the last sentence on a 7-point scale (where 1 meant that the phrase was
"unacceptable" and 7 meant that the phrase was "highly acceptable"). "'Acceptability" was explained as reflecting how easy it was to interpret the phrase.
Subjects were then instructed to judge each phrase for the attitude a speaker of
the phrase in a given story was trying to communicate. This rating was also to
be made on a 7-point scale ranging from 1 indicating that the speaker meant to
convey a highly negative attitude toward the final sentence, to 3 or 4 where the
speaker meant to convey a neutral attitude toward the final sentence, to 7 indicating that the speaker meant to communicate a highly positive attitude toward
the final sentence. The subjects gave their two ratings for each final sentence
as they read the stories.
Results and Discussion

Acceptability Ratings
The mean acceptability ratings for each noun type in each syntactic form
and each type of context are presented in Table III. The mean standard error
for these ratings was + .09.
An analysis of variance on these data indicated that subjects found tautologies in negative contexts as being more acceptable than in positive contexts,
F(1, 35)= 5.86, p < .025. Subjects also varied their acceptability ratings for the
different types of nouns, F(2, 70)= 12.97, p < .001. The interaction between
noun type and type of context was very close to significant, F(2, 70)= 3.05,
p<.051. Although the variation in subjects' ratings for the different syntactic
forms was only marginally significant, F(2, 70)= 2.40, p < .10, the interaction
of syntactic form and type of context was statistically reliable, F(2, 70) = 7.56,
p < .001.
Further examination of the individual cell means using Fischer's LSD tests

136

Gibbs and McCarrell

Table III. Mean Acceptability Ratings in Experiment 2

Noun Type
Human

Abstract

Concrete

Context

Neg,

Pos.

Neg.

Pos.

Neg.

Pos.

Syntactic Form
Modal
Plural
Singular
Means

3.92
4.23
3.92
4.16

3.51
3.61
3.64
3.59

3.33
3.87
3.63
3.61

3.22
3.27
3.86
3.45

3.44
3.43
3.00
3.29

2.68
3.36
3.83
3.30

Means
3.70
3.84
3.52

3.14
3.41
3.78

showed that subjects found tautologies with human role nouns to be more acceptable than tautologies with abstract nouns (p < .05) and tautologies with abstract nouns were more acceptable than were phrases with concrete nouns (p < .05).
This pattern of results is similar to that found in Experiment 1 and supports the
idea that subjects' stereotypical understandings of people and human activities
make it easier to understand nominal tautologies with nouns referring to these
people and abstract activities. Subjects do not have as clear stereotypical attitudes about concrete objects and find it less acceptable to refer to these objects
in tautological constructions.
Closer analysis of the context X noun type interaction showed that subjects
gave higher acceptability ratings to human and abstract nouns in contexts emphasizing their negative attributes than in positive contexts (p < .01 for the human
noun comparison, p > .10 for the abstract noun comparison). However, there
was virtually no difference in subjects' ratings for concrete nouns in positive
contexts than in negative situations. This finding also suggests that people have
clearer, and more negative, stereotypical attitudes associated with human nouns
and abstract human activities than they do for concrete nouns.
Examination of the context X syntactic form interaction indicated that nominal tautologies were more acceptable in negative than in positive contexts for
both plural and modal syntactic forms (p < .05 for both comparisons), but that
the reverse was true for tautologies presented in singular forms (p < .10). These
data support Wierzbicka's (1987) conjecture that plural forms are likely to communicate a characteristic which is both negative and obviously true of the noun
concept while singular forms communicate token indifference. Unlike the findings in Experiment 1, subjects did not give especially high ratings to modal
tautologies with human role nouns. Although subjects gave their highest ratings
overall to tautologies with human role nouns in negative contexts (p< .05 for
each comparison across the different column means), there was no evidence to
suggest that the modal verb will facilitated subjects' interpretation of tautologies

137

Understanding Colloquial Tautologies

with human role nouns. Subjects rated concrete nouns in modal phrases as more
acceptable in negative contexts than they did in positive contexts (p<.01). In
contrast, they rated concrete nouns in singular forms more acceptable in positive
contexts than in negative ones (p < .01). Apparently, concrete nouns in singular
syntactic forms (e.g., A bed is a bed) are seen as being more sensible in contexts
highlighting their positive attributes than in situations depicting their negative
qualities. This finding implies that the token indifference suggested by singular
syntactic forms is generally positive for concrete nouns but negative for human
role nouns.

Affect Ratings
The mean affect ratings are shown in Table IV. The average standard error
of the mean for these ratings was + .07.
An analysis of variance of these data revealed that subjects viewed tautologies in positive contexts as communicating positive attributes about the nouns
mentioned than when these same nouns were seen in negative situations, F(1,
35) =55.94, p<.001. This finding demonstrates that the particular context of
use can influence the attitude about the noun concept mentioned in a tautology,
a result consistent with the pragmatic view of nominal tautologies. The effect
of noun type was significant, F(2, 70) = 3.49, p < .05, and there was a reliable
interaction between noun type and type of context, F(2,70) = 12.46, p < .001.
The interaction between syntactic form and type of context was significant, F(2,
70) = 13.96, p < .001, as was the 3-way interaction of noun type X syntactic
form X type'of context, F(4, 104) = 5.86, p < .001.
Further examination of the individual means showed that subjects viewed
tautologies in positive contexts as conveying more positive affect for each type
of noun (p < .01 for all three comparisons) and each type of syntactic form
(p < .01 for all three comparisons). Analysis of the three-way interaction indi-

Table IV. Mean Affect Ratings in Experiment 2 a

Noun Type
Human

Abstract

Concrete

Context

Neg.

Pos.

Neg.

Pos.

Neg.

Pos.

SyntacticForm
Modal
Plural
Singular
Means

2.93
2.47
2.96
2.79

4.83
5.20
4.68
4.91

3.05
2.75
3.01
2.93

4.15
4.56
4.31
4.34

3.30
2.15
2.50
2.65

4.42
5.37
5.65
5.15

"Highermeans indicate more positiveaffect.

Means
3.09
2.45
2.83

4.47
5.05
4.88

138

Gibbs and McCarrell

cared that the differences between negative and positive contexts was significantly reduced for human and abstract nouns compared to concrete nouns.
Similarly, the differences between negative and positive contexts were significantly reduced for modal and plural syntactic forms compared to singular forms.
In summary, the data from Experiment 2 demonstrated the influential role
of context on the comprehension of tautological phrases. Subjects found nominal
tautologies easier to interpret in negative contexts than in positive ones, but
there were also significant interactions of context with noun type and syntactic
form showing the importance of pragmatic, semantic, and syntactic information
in understanding tautological expressions.

GENERAL DISCUSSION
Psycholinguistic research has in recent years begun to examine how listeners derive what is meant from what is said in conversation. Previous research
has focused on understanding different types of nonliteral speech, such as metaphor, irony, idioms, proverbs, and indirect speech acts in which speakers'
intended meanings deviates from their literal utterances (cf. Gibbs, 1984, 1986).
The aim of the present experiments was to investigate the interpretation of
colloquial statements that are true by virtue of their logical forms (e.g., Boys
will be boys, Teachers are teachers, Business is business). Speakers use nominal
tautologies frequently in conversation and listeners/readers seem able to interpret
these superficially redundant, nonsensical expressions. Our goal was to assess
the importance of context, syntactic form, and lexical choice on people's understanding of nominal tautologies. The results of two studies establish several
constraints motivating why some tautological phrases are acceptable and likely
to be viewed as colloquial expressions, while other tautologies are less acceptable and are unlikely to be heard in everyday conversation.
Experiment 1 showed that subjects can readily understand the meanings of
nominal tautologies without supporting contextual information. Subjects had
little difficulty in interpreting most tautological phrases. However, there were
specific differences in the acceptability of different types of nominal tautologies.
Subjects found it easier to assign meanings for tautologies containing human
role nouns (e.g., Salesmen are salesmen, A teenager is a teenager) and abstract
nouns (e.g., War is war, Promises are promises) than they did for statements
containing concrete nouns (e.g., Flowers will be flowers, A hat is a hat). There
were specific interactions between the type of noun used in a tautology and its
particular syntactic form. Most notably, subjects found modal tautologies with
human role nouns (e.g., Boys will be boys) the easiest to interpret and modal
phrases with concrete nouns (e.g., Carrots will be carrots) the most difficult to

Understanding Colloquial Tautologies

139

understand. At the same time, there was little difference in subjects' acceptability ratings for singular tautologies (e.g., X is a JO with human role, abstract,
or concrete nouns. Plural syntactic forms (Xs are Xs) with human role and
abstract nouns were also more comprehensible than were plural forms with
concrete nouns.
These findings support the predictions of the semantic view of nominal
tautologies (Wierzbicka, 1987) in that both syntactic and lexical information
operate to make some tautological phrases more understandable than others. For
instance, modal tautologies are, in a sense, the least tautological in that they
can be used to convey new information about the future. They can not only
remind a listener of a preexisting stereotype but to predicate its continued existence. This predication is informative only if it is possible for a change in the
stereotypic behavior. The possibility of change is enhanced by the idea of "volition" to which the modal verb will also refers. It is difficult to ascribe volitional
behavior to concrete objects. For instance, a teacher is more capable of change
than is a carrot. Since it is much less likely that concrete nouns will change,
the modal tautology predicating their continued existence is much less informative. Modal tautological phrases with concrete nouns do not make as much
sense, and are judged as less acceptable than tautologies with human role nouns.
Experiment 2 examined whether or not understanding of nominal tautologies could be influenced by different contexts. Similar to the findings in Experiment 1, the results of Experiment 2 revealed significant interactions between
the syntactic form and lexical make-up of nominal tautologies. Once again,
tautologies with human role nouns were viewed as more acceptable than were
phrases with concrete nouns. However, the presence of positive and negative
contextual information clearly influenced people's interpretations of tautological
sentences. Subjects generally found tautologies in negative contexts more comprehensible than in positive contexts. There were also important interactions
between the type of context (i.e., positive or negative) and the different syntactic
forms, as well as a significant interaction between context and noun type. Subjects' affect rating provided clear evidence that the interpretations for tautological phrases changed in different contexts of use. Unlike the data from the first
study, subjects in Experiment 2 did not find modal tautologies with human roie
nouns more readily interpretable than plural or singular tautologies with human
role nouns.
The data from Experiment 2 are inconsistent with the view that tautological
phrases are best seen as idioms. Various colloquial tautologies, such as Boys
will be boys, Business is business, and A promise is a promise are listed as
idiomatic phrases in some contemporary idiom dictionaries (cf. Boatner, Gates,
& Makkai, 1975; Long & Summers, 1979). For example, Boys will be boys is
listed as meaning that the behavior of boys is naturally rough and noisy and

140

Gibbs and McCarrell

they cannot be expected to behave otherwise (Long & Summers, 1979). However, the data from Experiment 2 demonstrate that the meanings of nominal
tautologies can change when comprehended within different contexts. Subjects
rated Telephones are telephones as being equally comprehensible when seen
either in a negative (telephones are annoying and always ringing) or positive
context (telephones are invaluable for convenient communication). Colloquial
tautologies containing concrete objects are generally more contextually flexible
than tautologies with either human role or abstract nouns. Moreover, there are
important syntactic constraints of the acceptability of various forms for tautologies that also influence their usage. It seems perfectly appropriate to state the
modal construction that Boys will be boys, but it is less sensible to say that A
boy is a boy. Stereotypes are general impressions of people and things that are
most easily evoked in plural and modal syntactic forms which focus on classes
of things rather than on individual instances of a concept. These observations
strongly suggest that nominal tautologies are not simple idioms with their meanings being arbitrarily stipulated.
Nominal tautologies seem appropriately analysed as predicating a special
type-token relation in which the subject noun refers to the token or instance of
the concept and the predicate noun refers to the more general type or class
concept as a whole. When a class is weakly stereotyped, as are many concrete
nouns, the tautology may express the idea that all tokens are alike, "token
indifference". When a class is strongly stereotyped, as are human roles, the
tautology may express the idea that the token is true to its class stereotype.
The type-token analysis also highlights the relationship between "classic"
tautologies and "hedged" tautologies such as A boy is still a boy (meaning that
one should expect some misbehavior even if the boy is generally well-behaved
and not generally true to stereotype), and A carrot is only a carrot (meaning
that one cannot expect a carrot to command the price of a fancy vegetable like
an artichoke). Hedges are often used to disambiguate an expression such as He
is a boy. When the pronominal referent is not known by the listener to be a
boy, the expression is simply a class inclusion statement. However, when the
referent is known by the listener to be a boy, the expression is tautologic and
is often "'flagged" by a hedge (He (boy) is a real boy, or He is only a boy)
depending upon whether the positive or negatively valued stereotype is implicated.
This analysis of tautologies as expressing a special kind of class inclusion
relation suggests that subjects' responses to tautologic expressions should differ
from responses to expressions of similar syntactic form that express ordinary
class inclusion relations. We therefore conducted a control study identical to
Experiment 1 with the exception that the predicate nominals were replaced by
appropriate superordinates. For example, instead of A diamond is a diamond,

Understanding Colloquial Tautologies

141

subjects rated the acceptability of A diamond is a gem. Eighteen University of

California, Santa Cruz students participated as subjects in this study. The mean
acceptability ratings for this control experiment are presented in Table V.
An analysis of variance on these ratings showed a main effect for syntactic
form, FI(2, 34)= 14.21, p < .01, and the interaction of noun type and syntactic
form was also significant, F1(4, 68) = 3.81, p < .01. Further examination of the
individual means indicated the modal was overall less acceptable than the other
syntactic forms, p < .05. Moreover, modal tautologies were less acceptable for
concrete and human nouns than abstract nouns, p <.05 for both comparisons.
These results reverse the main findings from Experiment 1 where modal syntactic constructions were the most acceptable overall for both human and abstract
nouns. The data from this control study demonstrate, then, that the special
interpretation listeners give for tautologies seems to rest on their expression of
token to stereotype relations rather than token to type relations.
The findings from both studies suggest principled differences in people's
interpretations of various types of tautological sentences. Subjects in both experiments found nominal tautologies with human role nouns to be most interpretable and as generally conveying negative, sober attitudes. This was not the
case for tautologies containing nouns referring to concrete objects. We've interpreted these data as reflecting people's stereotypical attitudes toward various
people and human activities. People within a linguistic community share certain
beliefs, knowledge, and attitudes--their "common ground"--and use this information in both deciding what to say as well as understanding what is meant
from what is said (Clark & Carlson, 1982; Gibbs, 1987). Part of the common
ground that forms the context for comprehension is the set of stereotypical
attitudes people have about other individuals (and types of individuals) and
various human activities. Speakers can easily remind listeners about their shared
beliefs about certain people and human activities by stating simple redundant
phrases, such as Business is business or Mothers will be mothers. Colloquial
tautologies are convenient devices for evoking the shared stereotypical presuppositions among conversants without having to explicitly spell out those beliefs.

Table V . Mean Acceptability Ratings For Control Study

i|

Syntactic orm

Human

Noun Type
Abstract

Concrete

Means

Modal
Plural
Singular
Means

5.00
5.78
5.65
5.48

5.13
5.43
5.66
5.40

4.58
5.88
5.98
5.48

4.90
5.69
5.76

142

Gibbs and McCarreU

We understand Boys will be boys as expressing a very different meaning than

Girls will be girls because of our different stereotypical attitudes about boys
and girls. This kind of indirect speech is especially appropriate when speakers
wish to convey a negative attitude or remind listeners that they jointly share a
negative stereotype about people, activities, or things. Our data supports this
idea by showing that subjects mostly interpret tautological phrases with human
role and abstract nouns as conveying negative affect.
The studies we've reported are the first experimental evidence on the comprehension of tautological sentences in English. Our findings highlight the importance of stereotypical knowledge in the process of conversational inference.
Psycholinguistic theories of indirect and/or figurative language use have only
recently begun to explore how speakers' and listeners' shared knowledge, beliefs, and attitudes, play a role in the production and comprehension of everyday
discourse (cf. Clark, 1985). Various studies have shown that the assessment of
common ground information is a collaborative process that directly effects the
real-time comprehension of speakers' utterances (Gibbs, Mueller, & Cox, 1988).
Future research should specifically explore the "on-line" consequences of different pragmatic, semantic, and syntactic information on the understanding of
nominal tautologies. The present empirical findings suggest that speakers/listeners' stereotypical knowledge of different people and objects should interact
with both contextual and syntactic information during the immediate "on-line"
comprehension of tautological phrases in everyday conversation.

APPENDIX A
Examples of Tautologies used in Experiment I

Human Nouns
Modals
Boys will be boys
Teachers will be teachers
Doctors will be doctors
Plurals
Fathers are fathers
Soldiers are soldiers
Salesmen are salesmen
Singular
A mother is a mother
A celebrity is a celebrity
A teenager is a teenager

Understanding ColloquialTautologies

143

Abstract Nouns
Modal
Sports will be sports
Scandal will be scandal
War will be war
Plural
Promises are promises
Birthdays are birthdays
Vacations are vacations
Singular
A divorce is a divorce
A law is a law
A religion is a religion

Concrete Nouns
Modal
Flowers will be flowers
Beds will be beds
Telephones will be telephones
Plural
Books are books
Houses are houses
Carrots are carrots
Singular
A penny is a penny
A diamond is a diamond
A hat is a hat

APPENDIX B
Examples of Positive and Negative Contexts in Experiment 2
Human Role Noun ("father")
Negative context
"Fathers think they know everything. They are always interfering when
you don't want them. It's disgusting that a father so often demands
respect without earning it."
Positive context
"Fathers seem to know everything. And they always seem to be there

144

Gibbs and McCarrell

just when you need them. It's comforting that a father so often inspires
respect and really earns it."
Abstract Noun ("birthday")

Negative context
" W h y should I like birthdays? A birthday just means I'm one year closer
to death. It's just an occasion to get depressed. Nobody I care about ever
remembers it anyway."
Positive context
" W h y shouldn't I like birthdays? A birthday means I've an excuse to
buy myself a present. It's an occasion for self-indulgence. All the people
I care about remember it."
Concrete Noun ("carrot")

Negative context
"Carrots are ultimately boring. They don't even have enough sugar in
them to give you a real boost and even the taste is raw. The ideal food
for rabbits but not for people."
Positive context
"Carrots are great sources of vitamin A. They have just enough sugar
in them to give you an energy boost but not much in the way of calories
and fat. The ideal munchie food."

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Preparation of this article was supported by Grant MH42980 from the
National Institute of Mental Health and by a Faculty Research Grant from the
University of California, Santa Cruz. Reprint requests may be sent to: Raymond
W. Gibbs, Jr., Program in Experimental Psychology, Clark Kerr Hall, University of California, Santa Cruz, California 95064.

REFERENCES
Boatner, M., Gates, J., & Makkai, A. (1975).A dictionary of American idioms. New York: Baron's
Educational Series.
Brown, P., & Levinson, S. (1978): Universals in language usage: Politeness phenomena. In E.
Goody(Ed.), Questions and politeness (pp. 56-311). Cambridge:CambridgeUniversityPress.
Carroll, J., Davies, P., & Richman,B. (1971). Wordfrequency book. NewYork: HoughtonMifflin.
Clark, H. (1985). Languageuse and languageusers. In G. Lindsay& E. Aronson(Eds.),Handbook
ofsocialpsychology (third edition) (pp. 179-231). New York: Wiley.

Understanding Colloquial Tautologies

145

Clark, H., & Carlson, T. (1982). Context for comprehension. In J. Long & A. Baddeley (Eds.),
Attention and performance. XI (pp. 313-330). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Dahlgren, K. (1985). The cognitive structure of social categories. Cognitive Science, 9, 379-398.
Fraser, B. (1988). Motor oil is motor oil: An account of English nominal tautologies. Journal of
Pragmatics, 12, 215-220.
Gibbs, R. (1984). Literal meaning and psychological theory. Cognitive Science, 9, 275-304.
Gibbs, R. (1986). On the psycholinguistics of sarcasm. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 104, 3-15.
Gibbs, R. (1987). Mutual knowledge and the psychology of conversational inference. Journal of
Pragmatics, 11, 561-588.
Gibbs, R., MuelIer, R., & Cox, R. (1988). Common ground in asking and understanding questions.
Language and Speech, 31,321-335.
Grice, H. P. (1975). Logic and conversation. In P. Cole and J. Morgan (eds.), Syntax and semantics
3: Speech acts (pp. 41-58). New York: Academic Press.
Grice, H. P. (1978). Some further notes on logic and conversation. In P. Cole (Ed.), Syntax and
semantics 9: Pragmatics (pp. 113-128). New York: Academic Press.
Levinson, S. (1983). Pragmatics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Long, T., & Summers, D. (1979). Longman dictionary of English idioms. London: Longman.
Putnam, H. (1975). The meaning of meaning. In H. Putnam (Ed.), Mind, language, and reality:
Philosophical papers, Vol. 2. (pp. 215-271). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Rosch, E., & Mervis, C. (1975). Family resemblances. Cognitive Psychology, 7,573-605.
Wierzbicka, A. (1987). Boys will be boys: 'Radical semantics' vs. 'radical pragmatics.' Language,63, 95-114.
Wierzbicka, A. (1988). Boys wilt be boys: A rejoinder to Bruce Fraser. Journal of Pragmatics,
12, 221-224.