… in the past ten years or so (following up on my “Restored!” posting). Excluding postings (more on them to come) and publications in print, here are the relevant materials on my website:
Archive for July, 2011
What I’ve been doing
July 28, 2011American Gothic
July 28, 2011(Not about language.)
From my friend Max yesterday, a postcard with this famous arresting image by Gordon Parks:
Portmanteaus: boonerang
July 28, 2011Mary Ballard (at Appalachian State University in Boone NC) writes to say that she and some friends (in Boone) have been discussing the word boonerang. An entertaining portmanteau combining Boone and boomerang, with local relevance via this rental cabin called “Boonerang”:
muskox(en)
July 28, 2011From Chris Waigl (in Fairbanks AK), two photos of Arctic ruminants:
LARS is the Large Animal Research Station at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks. Photo by Chris.
This photo is on a card from Greatland Graphics in Anchorage. The linguistic hook comes in the text on the card:
Restored!
July 27, 2011Yesterday’s satisfying news: my Stanford appointment has been re-updated to a (consulting) full professorship. Of course, now I’ve been exploring the evidences of my competence and worth.
In stage 1, at the suggestion of a friend I looked at my h-index (scHolar index) of citations (as of 7/25/11), which lists 213 references between 1965 and 2010 — there are a fair number of dupes, plus one citation for another Zwicky (only one; what happens to people named Smith, Brown, or Jones?), but that’s in the right neighborhood — and gives me an index in the high stratosphere (for a linguist, but then linguists are just fleas on the noble dogs of science and scholarship).
Blogs and resources II
July 27, 2011Geoff Nunberg to ADS-L on May 15, about my list of blogs and resources:
Subject: Re: Query on Language Columns in Media
Just to comment on Arnold’s point and on the impressive list he’s assembled, I think the shape of discourse about language has really changed in the last few years, as the space that has opened up between what were formerly distinct public and private spheres has filled with a range of new voices. LanguageLog is probably the most pointed example. Its audience isn’t nearly on the scale of the NYTimes or NPR, but in certain ways it — and in particular Mark Liberman — can exert more influence on public discourse than either of them, for example in countering the million-word march, the Obama pronoun hokum and the gals-just-talk-more flim-flam, as searches readily show. I’ll grant you those canards haven’t exactly been driven into the sea. But it’s so much easier for linguists to diffuse their views both within informed opinon and to the media than it was even fifteen years ago, when linguists would have had no recourse but sit by the phone hoping the press would call for comments or publish books that with a few exceptions wouldn’t have gotten much of a readership, and that in any case wouldn’t have appeared until years after the fact.
That said, Arnold, I assume you’re going to put this list somewhere where it won’t scroll out of sight as you post new things!
Well, I’ve added a link from my website and from the top page of this blog. With notes that the list is constantly being updated (most recently, this morning). Beyond that, I don’t know what I can do.
Boldly going
July 27, 2011From a Lands’ End e-mail ad received on July 17:
Subject: Boldly go where no Paintbrush has gone before.
(showing brightly colored broadcloth dress shirts in the Paintbrush line). A play on the Star Trek tag
To boldly go where no man has gone before
(with variants having no one and no person), referring to the exploration of space.
Then it turns out that there are huge numbers of playful variations on the Star Trek line, using the formula
Boldly go where no X has gone before
(some with the infinitive marker to, some not), all conveying X moving into some new territory. So: snowclone-like, but at the edge of the snowcloniverse, along with other playful variations on well-known fixed expressions.
Pejorative portmanteaus
July 26, 2011Victor Steinbok writes to tell me of ESPN’s use of DisAstros to refer to the Houston Astros (a National League baseball team, which, deliciously, plays in Minute Maid, formerly Enron, Park). That’s disaster/disastrous + Astros. A pejorative portmanteau.
It’s not just ESPN; thousands of people use the expression about the down-at-the-bottom-of the-league Astros — ruefully, sadly, angrily, whatever. There’s even a website:
DISASTROS
News and Views from Astros Planet (link)
(Among other uses: an album by the English singer-songwriter Sonny J. (link).)
So: are there other portmanteaus with a pejorative noun or adjective plus a proper name (not necessarily in sports). I’m sure I’m forgetting some obvious ones — so remind me!
Sunday Punnies #16
July 25, 2011Another Bizarro installment of puns:
On carpal tunnel, cell phone, and Toy Story, with the second really working only in spelling rather than speech.
We are everywhere
July 25, 2011A Zippy with a plaint of minorities of many sorts:
They stare at us. But we are everywhere.