Non Sequitur in Everyday Speech
See also: Derailment (thought disorder)In everyday speech, a non sequitur is a statement in which the final part is totally unrelated to the first part, for example:
Life is life and fun is fun, but it's all so quiet when the goldfish die. —West with the Night, Beryl MarkhamIt can also refer to a response that is totally unrelated to the original statement or question:
Mary: I wonder how Mrs. Knowles next door is doing.Jim: Did you hear that the convenience store two blocks over got robbed last night? Thieves got away with a small fortune.
Read more about this topic: Non Sequitur (logic)
Famous quotes containing the words everyday and/or speech:
“Natures law says that the strong must prevent the weak from living, but only in a newspaper article or textbook can this be packaged into a comprehensible thought. In the soup of everyday life, in the mixture of minutia from which human relations are woven, it is not a law. It is a logical incongruity when both strong and weak fall victim to their mutual relations, unconsciously subservient to some unknown guiding power that stands outside of life, irrelevant to man.”
—Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (18601904)
“I thought my razor was dull until I heard his speech and that reminds me of a story thats so dirty Im ashamed to think of it myself.”
—S.J. Perelman, U.S. screenwriter, Bert Kalmar, Harry Ruby, and Norman Z. McLeod. Groucho Marx, Horsefeathers, as a newly-appointed college president commenting on the remarks of Huxley Colleges outgoing president (1932)