Archive for June, 2014

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Noir 1949

June 14, 2014

The Zippy from the 11th takes Zippy back, in a Pontiac, to a cinematic 1949:

(#1)

The film noir movies in question (from that year) are, in order, The Big Steal and Cover Up. And the first features one of the major figures of film noir, the icon of masculinity Robert Mitchum:

Robert Charles Durman Mitchum (August 6, 1917 – July 1, 1997) was an American film actor, author, composer and singer. … Mitchum rose to prominence for his starring roles in several major works of the film noir style, and is considered a forerunner of the anti-heroes prevalent in film during the 1950s and 1960s. (Wikipedia link)

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Posted in Gender and sexuality, Inflection, Linguistics in the comics, Movies | Leave a Comment »

DILF days

June 13, 2014

(Warning: Very high (gay) sexual content in the text of this posting. Pass on if you are under 18 or if such content doesn’t suit you.)

Father’s (or Fathers or Fathers’) Day is about to be upon us, so of course purveyors of porn are offering dad-oriented films. Well, daddy-oriented films, daddy-boy relationships being a gay specialty, in real life and even more in the fantasy world of Gayland, where DILFs abound.

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Posted in Gayland, Gender and sexuality, Holidays, Language in advertising, Style and register | Leave a Comment »

Architectural notes

June 13, 2014

Today’s Zippy:

(#1)

cornice, soffit, fascia, frieze board, dentil — technical terms of architecture that get Zippy off (so much so that he uses soffit, fascia, frieze board as a mantra).

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Posted in Architecture, Linguistics in the comics, Ordinary vs. technical lg | 1 Comment »

Three blog notes

June 12, 2014

On AZBlog, three developments: still more spam comments; revisions of Pages; and the “About (academic)” main Page as the descendant of my old Stanford webpage.

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Posted in This blogging life | Leave a Comment »

Josh Kline

June 11, 2014

From Andrea K. Scott’s review “Parklife: Playing hide-and-seek at a sculpture show on the High Line” in the New Yorker of June 9th and 16th, about

Josh Kline’s brilliant “Skittles,” near the Standard hotel. An illuminated deli display case is stocked with rows of colorful drinks in ridiculous flavors — “Williamsburg,” “Big Data,” “Nightlife” — made from surprising ingredients. (“Condo” blends coconut water, HDMI cable, infant formula, turmeric, and yoga mats.) Think of “Skittles” as Duchamp’s “Bottle Rack,” updated for the age of aspirational marketing, when even a smoothie can be spun as a status symbol. The case is locked and the bottles are beyond reach, but you can press your nose to the glass.

The piece is a hoot.

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Posted in Art/lit/music/film, Language in advertising | 1 Comment »

Book notice: Visual Language of Comics

June 11, 2014

Arrived yesterday, Neil Cohn’s The Visual Language of Comics: Introduction to the Structure and Cognition of Sequential Images (Bloomsbury, 2013). Central thesis:

drawings and sequential images are structured in a similar way to language … comics are written in a visual language of sequential images that combines with text.

(Blurbs from linguists Ray Jackendoff and Dan Slobin.)

I haven’t read the book yet (though I find the thesis congenial), but the very first sentence (in the Introduction, p. xv) is of linguistic interest.

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Posted in Comic conventions, Danglers, Linguistics in the comics, Modification | Leave a Comment »

whoa!

June 10, 2014

Two whoa cartoons this morning, a simple Bizarro and a complex Zippy.

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Posted in Linguistics in the comics, Names, Pragmatics | 2 Comments »

goldilocksian

June 10, 2014

Several correspondents have written to compliment me on the content and organization of the “About (academic)” page on my website (here). One went so far as to refer to the goldilocksian mean — not too small, not too big, and (though this isn’t in the Goldilocks fairy tale) “everything easily discoverable”.

These nice comments inspired me to spend yesterday adding to the “Handouts for conference papers” section of the page, adding links to handouts from four Stanford Semantics Festivals.

And then there’s the nice derivational formation goldilocksian ‘just right’, a useful (and, given that you know the fairy tale, easily comprehensible) innovative adjective, moderately frequent (on the order of 6k ghits, dupes removed) but not in the OED.

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Posted in Academic life, Derivation, Innovations, Morphology, Pop culture, This blogging life | 3 Comments »

Getting the message across

June 9, 2014

Three cartoons today on some version of this theme: a One Big Happy, a Bizarro, and a Zits.

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Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »

Parts of the body: the handout

June 9, 2014

I discover that I never posted the handout for my 2012 Stanford Semantics Festival talk, “Parts of the Body”. Here it is, somewhat belatedly (and with somewhat awkward formatting):

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Posted in Language and the body | Leave a Comment »

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