Pragmatics in My Pants!

A couple days ago while doing research on online social networking site LastFM I stumbled upon an amusing example of music and linguistics colliding. For those of you uninitiated, LastFM is an online social networking site like Facebook or MySpace, except for music fans. You can install software called a scrobbler that works with your iTunes player and tells the website what you're listening to on iTunes. Then everyone else can see it and judge your taste in music (or lack thereof).

And, if judging other people gets old, you can visit one of the many group pages, such as the group Indie Sex. This group has a message board where people must add the phrase "in My Pants" to the end of song titles.

Try it-get out your iTunes, your Windows Media Player, or whatever you're listening to, and put it on shuffle. Whatever song comes up, you must add "in My Pants" to the end of the title. Here were the first 10 results when I did it:

Out Hud-The Stoked American in My Pants
Placebo-Black Eyed in My Pants
Wilco-Sky Blue Sky in My Pants
Fiona Apple-Sleep to Dream in My Pants
Elliott Smith-Amity in My Pants
Talking Heads-This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody) in My Pants
Depeche Mode-The Great Outdoors in My Pants
Office-Possibilities in My Pants
The Fixx-Don't Be Scared in My Pants
Counting Crows-American Girls in My Pants

Alright, so why are the results for this funny? Linguistically, what does adding "in My Pants" to anything do for it? Why not "in My Socks" or "in My Kitchen" or "in Space"? Sociolinguists interested in pragmatics would point out that "in My Pants" is an example of implicature. Stanford's got a useful online dictionary of philosophy, which includes a very helpful discussion of implicature. According to Grice's Cooperative Principle, which has four parts, implicatures like "in my pants" are explained by the Maxim of Relation-that is, by being relevant to your audience. So apparently we all know that the phrase "in my pants" is funny. I blame Anchorman, and the Pants Party. Go to 1:09 in the video to hear Brick's invitation.



So, I'd love to see your playlist results if you try the "in my pants" game. Also, any other theories besides the cultural relevance of Anchorman to explain why we recognize the phrase "in my pants" as funny?