A little while back, we looked at language and the sexes through the eyes of a cartoonist, Don Piraro on “We need to text”. Back in the New Yorker of 12/25/95, Leo Cullum took on “We need to talk” in a different context:
“We need to talk” in this context can have two different imports: as a (socially fraught) statement of necessity implicating a request for couples-talk, or as a statement of necessity for the two of them to begin the evolution of language. The difference between the two can be traced back to the interpretation of the intransitive verb talk, as (respectively) an intransitive verb understood reciprocally (‘We need to talk to/with one another’) and as a plain intransitive; it’s the difference between “Kim and Sandy didn’t talk until they’d known each other for six months” and “As a baby, Kim didn’t talk for six years”.
July 3, 2010 at 8:14 pm |
[…] Arnold Zwicky's Blog A blog mostly about language « We need to talk […]
July 20, 2010 at 9:02 pm |
[…] (via) […]
May 12, 2012 at 5:46 am |
[…] “We need to talk” cartoon (on the caveman theme, from the New Yorker of 12/25/95) here, and described this “self-deprecation” cartoon (on the corporate boardroom theme, from […]
July 7, 2012 at 10:07 am |
[…] 2. A Leo Cullum cartoon, cavewoman to caveman: “We need to talk” in this context can have two different imports: as a (socially fraught) statement of necessity implicating a request for couples-talk, or as a statement of necessity for the two of them to begin the evolution of language. The difference between the two can be traced back to the interpretation of the intransitive verb talk, as (respectively) an intransitive verb understood reciprocally (‘We need to talk to/with one another’) and as a plain intransitive; it’s the difference between “Kim and Sandy didn’t talk until they’d known each other for six months” and “As a baby, Kim didn’t talk for six years”. (link) […]
July 12, 2012 at 3:20 am |
[…] Source /* Tweet reddit_url = "http://thenewspatroller.com/the-start-of-language/"; reddit_title = "The start of language"; Leave a comment! Written by admin Posted in Funny /* […]
March 19, 2013 at 7:37 am |
[…] three previous variants (notably, "we need to talk") on this blog: a Leo Cullum cartoon (here), a Zits (here), and a Bizarro […]
June 21, 2013 at 5:51 am |
[…] For a different take on the matter, see Leo Cullum’s “We need to talk” cartoon, here. […]
February 13, 2021 at 3:31 pm |
[…] of my favorites in this vein, in my 7/3/10 posting “We need to talk”, a Leo Cullum […]