In a comment on my recent Pogo posting, Bob Richmond gave a link to a posting of his (“Hum a few bars and I’ll fake it”) on the joke template that begins with the question “Do you know X?” and has some variant of the “Hum a few bars” reply as the punch line. (Several of these are from comic strips.) The joke turns on the ambiguity of the verb know, a use-mention ambiguity, and the speech-act ambiguity of Do you know? questions.
Archive for July, 2012
Knowing
July 22, 2012Sporno again
July 22, 2012From the August issue of OUT magazine, “The Sporno Guide to the Summer Olympics” by Mark Simpson (p. 49), with text concluding:
For 2012, it’s entirely appropriate … that a very prominent face of the Olympics is Mr. David Beckham, the athlete who became a global sporno star by flaunting his lunchbox on billboards for Armani and H&M. So, in keeping with the spirit, we present a spornographic guide to the Olympics, based shamelessly on aesthetics, rather than athletics.
with a set of photos and brief sketches about the visual pleasures of (men’s) gymnastics, cycling, wrestling, swimming, water polo, high dive, and obelisk climbing (at the U.S. Naval Academy: “shirtless cadets attempt to scale a giant phallic monument covered in Crisco” — not an Olympic event).
Sporno is Simpson’s portmanteau of sport and porno.
More Alain Delon
July 21, 2012(Homoerotic silliness for the weekend, thanks to Arne Adolfsen.)
A follow-up to “Hunks and their sacks” from 12/19/11, which featured Alain Delon and Victor Webster (separately, not together). Now we get a shot of Delon leaping and showing off his stuff:
The sound in your head
July 21, 2012Reported in the Sic! (errors) section of Michael Quinion’s World Wide Words #794 this morning:
A health report of 18 July on the BBC site about the risks of not taking physical exercise was spotted by Martin Wynne: “The public needed to be warned about the dangers of inactivity rather than just reminded of the benefits of it.”
Here, it at first appears to refer in inactivity, but a bit of thought will convince you that the writer intended it to refer to activity; but activity is inside the word inactivity, and so would (on many accounts) be unavailable as an antecedent for it. The relevant putative generalization is known as the Anaphoric Island Constraint (AIC): words are “islands” for anaphora; anaphora can’t “reach inside” words. (Brief discussion here; examples of AIC violations here and here.)
But things aren’t that simple.
Artists in underwear
July 21, 2012According to my records, it’s been almost a month since my last underwear posting. Now, from Kim Darnell on Facebook, a link to this image from Megaphoto. Not about language, but it’s colorful.
Let us spray.
The Pogo files
July 21, 2012One cartoonist who reveled in language but has been largely neglected in my postings on linguistics in the comics is Walt Kelly, the creator of Pogo. The problem is that good examples of Pogo material are hard to find on the net. But here are a few high points: the quote “We have met the enemy and he is us”; notes on the Okefenokee swamp dialect in Pogo; and the inspired nonsense of Kelly’s song parodies.
Opera news for penguins
July 20, 2012Via Arne Adolfsen on Facebook, this photo on the Facebook page Against Modern Opera Productions, under the heading “Guess the Opera!”:
Commenters on both Facebook pages have provided entertaining suggestions for an opera a penguin might be introduced into. Not to mention those boots.
César Cui’s Puss in Boots, in a penguin translation?
Dora Johnson
July 20, 2012News from the Center for Applied Linguistics yesterday:
CAL is saddened by the passing of our cherished colleague and friend, Dora Johnson, on June 26, 2012. Dora joined CAL in 1964 and was at the heart of many of our activities for 45 years. She will be profoundly missed by all whose lives she touched.
Dora was, I think, the only CAL staff member who lasted all through my years of association with the Center (including service on the Board of Trustees and involvement in several CAL projects). She was smart, energetic, funny, and motherly, and I always looked forward to spending time with her on my visits to the Center. She had a wonderful life history; from the Center on her retirement:
with whom
July 20, 2012Yesterday’s Scenes From a Multiverse:
Jon Rosenberg’s comment, about the second panel:
I have no idea if Gil’s first line of dialogue is grammatically correct. I can tell you that I rewrote it about a dozen times and it is fully refined, correct or not. It is a grandiose turd with a diamond shine and I will not change it, ever.
Well, it’s still odd, thanks to the combination of with whom and hot lady … made the sexy.
