What do we know about salmon?

It's always interesting to see how world knowledge affects our understanding of language. Whether it's has to do with general assumptions about the world, cultural background or even religious and scientific hypotheses, the encyclopedic information we have for concepts represented by words plays an important role in language comprehension. I was particularly interested in this when I read this on a Kitkat chocolate: "Remember, you are not a salmon; have a break, have a Kitkat". The immediate question arising here, of course, is what kind of associations between 'salmon' and 'having a break' the Kitkat people are drawing upon? According to my encyclopedic knowledge about salmon, I know that they are known for travelling for thousands of miles to spawn, so the connection is obvious.

But I wondered if this interpretation is easily accessible to all Kitkat lovers out there. I also did a bit of a research and found that there is (or was) actually a Kitkat TV ad in which you see salmon swimming up a river and hence the 'have a break' part. Still, I wondered to what extent not seeing this ad at all would affect people interpreting this utterance by just reading it on the chocolate. How relevant would it be then? I also wondered if the expression "I am not a salmon" would mean anything else in any context.

I actually asked a few people (1 British, 2 Egyptians, 2 Greek Cypriots, 1 Chinese, and 1 Jamaican), especially from different cultural backgrounds to see what kind of context they will choose against which to process this utterance. Note that, according to Relevance Theory, "no unique context is given in a discourse; rather an addressee chooses a context against which an utterance is relevant to her/him" (Sperber & Wilson, 1995: 60). So, I started by asking about the expression in isolation, as in (1), then in relation to Kitkats, as in (2):

1) What do you understand when you hear someone saying "I am not a salmon"?

2) What if you read on a Kitkat chocolate "Remember, you are not a salmon, have a break, have a Kitkat". What do you think it means now?

And the responses were as follows:

Question 1

First responses
These were along the lines of "never heard it before" or "don't understand a thing".

Second responses (after some thinking)
These included some interesting interpretations:

• it means I am not stupid or dense (because fish have no memory).
  it means I am not a fish as in I don't smell bad.
  it means I am not afraid of you, I am not scared.

Question 2

First responses
These were along the lines of "for real? Does it actually say that?" (I guess some people just eat the kitkat :) )

Second responses (after some more thinking)
These were almost the same and show that they get the general idea, so:

• it means that salmon, being fish, don't take a break from swimming (or 'leaping around') all the time, so don't be like them and have a break.
  one still insisted that it makes no sense, then said that maybe it's related to an ad.
  all of them concluded that it looks 'weird' anyway to write that on a chocolate (the Chinese student actually couldn't stop laughing).

So, it seems that the contextual assumptions about 'salmon' are in fact linked to the more general concept of 'fish'. Still, it can become confusing, and maybe the Kitkat people should have gone with "you are not a fish"?

Mai

Comments

[Reena]

Its a conceptual metaphor, 'life is a journey' and a crap one at that! Or it could be viewed as a metaphor for 'life is a battle'. Kit Kat have mapped the idea of survival in life with taking a break, hense 'Have a break... Have a Kit Kat' :)

[Sarah B]

"Remember, you are not a salmon" is my personal motto!

Everyone needs to breathe and rest.

[Jah]

If this post is still active
Salmon swim thousands of miles to upstream through rapids to be able to spawn where they were born. They have a natural like gps in them so that they can return to this spot. It takes so much energy to get there that after they spawn and lay hundreds of eggs they die from exhaustion...

Thus "you are not a salmon... take a break, have a kitkat"