0

Transcript at this TEDxSydney talk video, at 4:10

You know, I'm from Brisbane, which is a great city to live in.(Applause and shouts from the audience) Yeah! All right! Most of Brisbane's here. That's good. (Laughter)

I assume the transcript above provided by the official website is accurate.

I think Brisbane in the transcript refers to the city, not the people in that city, right? As to Most of Brisbane's here, I have two guesses:

1, Most of those who are applauding are from Brisbane.

2, Most people from Brisbane have come here.

Improve this question
1
  • 1
    This might be called metonymy or synecdoche: the speaker does not literally mean "most of the city of Brisbane", but "most of the people who live in the city of Brisbane".
    – stangdon
    Apr 7, 2022 at 11:46

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
4

It's 2, most of the people from Brisbane are in the audience.

In this context it does refer to the people from the city, and is a colloquial way of saying "Most of the population of Brisbane's here".

I can't justify it linguistically, but the general assumption would be that anyone who responded positively to his mention of Brisbane would be from there (as when a singer at a concert asks "is anyone from [place] in tonight?" and everyone from there cheers!) so the statement that "most of those applauding are from Brisbane" is unlikely ever to be needed!

Improve this answer

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .