Yesterday’s Scenes From a Multiverse, entitled “Reality Denialism”:
Aside from the references to the current U.S. presidential campaign, there’s the entertaining kittenpocalypse, with the libfix -pocalypse.
Thursday’s Zits:
If it’s fiction, it almost surely doesn’t have a bibliography. If it’s a non-fiction book, it doesn’t necessarily have a bibliography, or even usable references sprinkled somewhere in the text (irritating but true, some publishers are set against references in books meant for a popular audience, collections of essayistic “thought pieces” often lack references, and some authors are lazy). But if it has a bibliography, it’s a serious piece of non-fiction: a research report or survey, if it’s short, and yes, a book if it’s longer.
Unless you and your mom share an academic interest, a bibliography in a note from her moves it from ordinary parent-child communication into some strange territory.
Making up cards to send to correspondents yesterday, I pulled out a booklet of German stickers for kids. About a creature that appeared to be a wooden pull-toy with the name Tigerente. Tiger-duck? Well, yes, and you can sort of see that:
(Not about language.)
The weekend’s background track while working and diversion from pain and discouragement was the Legacy Collection box on The Invisible Man, a collection comprising the 1933 original and four more on the theme — The Invisible Man Returns (1940), The Invisible Woman (1940), Invisible Agent (1942), and The Invisible Man’s Revenge (1944) — plus some extras. Unfortunately, it lacks Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man (1951), the most entertaining of the later spinoffs. But then the A&C is played for laughs, with only a hint of the Science Amok theme that drove the first Invisible Man film (as well as Dr. Moreau, Frankenstein, and Jekyll / Hyde from the great years of b&w horror movies); close to the end of The Invisible Man’s Revenge, we get the solemn pronouncement:
He probed too deeply in forbidden topics.
An especially silly Zippy today, leading up to a groaner pun:
As is often the case in a Zippy, there are a lot of things going on here. I’ll focus on three: on the pun at the end, on the game of Bowlf, and on the title, “Biso-mania”. It all starts with the absurd name Higgs Bison, a play on Higgs boson.
From Stephen L. Mann at the Univ. of Wisconsin-La Crosse this morning:
The deadline (November 5) is quickly approaching to submit abstracts for the 20th annual Lavender Languages and Linguistics conference, which will be held at American University in Washington, DC, on February 15-17, 2013. Below are general conference details, as well as the call for the session I am organizing (“Sounding LGBTQ: Identifying Sexual and Gender Orientation in Speech”). Please let me know [address link above] if I can answer any questions about the conference or the individual session.
General conference details
From the conference website: “Stated broadly, the Lavender Languages and Linguistics Conference examines language use in lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and/or queer life. Linguistic inquiry is broadly defined here, to include studies of: pronunciation, vocabulary and meaning, conversational structures and styles, life stories and other narratives, fiction, and poetry, the “language” of scientific and historic documents and print media, meanings encoded in spatial practices, sign language, non-verbal communication, and communication through photography, cinema and other visual arts.” For information, including abstract submission details, go to the conference website: http://www.american.edu/cas/anthropology/lavender-languages/index.cfm
Organized session details
“Sounding LGBTQ: Identifying Sexual & Gender Orientation in Speech”
When listeners claim to be able to identify the sexual or gender orientation of a speaker, on what are they basing their claim? This question has received some attention in the lavender language literature over the past 20 years (e.g., Gaudio 1994; Levon 2006; Moonwomon-Baird 1997; Munson et al 2006; Piccolo 2008; Pierrehumbert et al 2004; Zimman 2010; plus sessions at past Lavender Languages and Linguistics conferences). This panel will focus on this question from multiple perspectives, including (but not limited to): What linguistic and extralinguistic factors contribute to listener perception of sexual and gender orientation? What is the role of levels of language other than phonetics/phonology? What does it mean to sound LGBTQ in languages other than English? How are linguistic features associated with sounding LGBTQ situated within a larger “indexical field” (Eckert 2008)? What social psychological connections are associated with sounding LGBTQ? Abstracts are welcome for papers that address these and similar questions from different theoretical perspectives and methodological approaches.
Today’s Zits, with Sarah and Jeremy coming in out of the rain:
Though the relevant scene in Singin’ in the Rain has a substantial downpour, walking in the rain tends to conjure up very light, even misty, warm rain. But my interest here is in Jeremy’s comment, “Songwriters are often liars.”
Today’s Zippy:
Three invented photographers, each specializing in the facial expressions of cartoons (plus Zippy himself), and each with an invented name — composed of parts taken from the lexicon of art supplies (both common and proper).