Today’s Zippy:
(#1)
The grotesque Power Dogs figure is (of course: this is Bill Griffith’s work) from real life: outside the Power Dogs Inc. fast food place in the Inner Harbor of Baltimore:
(#2)
(On-line reviews of the hot dogs are at best lukewarm.)
In any case, more food phallicity.
Posted in Language and food, Linguistics in the comics, Phallicity | Leave a Comment »
In the NYT yesterday, an August 1st letter from Pamela Shifman and Gloria Steinem in response to a July 30th op-ed essay on “The Girls Obama Forgot”. The letter-writers are identified in the Times as follows:
Ms. Shifman is executive director of the NoVo Foundation, which focuses on girls’ and women’s rights. Ms. Steinem is the writer and activist.
Both identifcations are semantically (or pragmatically) definite, conveying uniqueness in this case. The first has an anarthrous (article-less) title: executive director of X ‘the executive director of X’; in fact, the executive director of X would have been an entirely acceptable alternative, but the anarthrous version is shorter.
The second has the definite article, in a context where an indefinite article would have been entirely acceptable;
Ms. Steinem is a writer and activist
is not only syntactically well-formed, but also true. Why the definite article?
Posted in Definiteness, Names, Pragmatics, Semantics | 1 Comment »
Today’s Zippy has our frazzled Pinhead hero reveling in the pleasures of synonyms:
On deploying Roget, see this Language Log posting on thesaurisizing (my preferred form) or thesaurusizing (Mark Liberman’s), with links back to 2004 postings.
Posted in Linguistics in the comics, Synonyms | 2 Comments »
Posted in Ambiguity, Derivation, Language play, Linguistics in the comics, Morphology | 2 Comments »
A few weeks ago, I found myself having lunch next to a table of two men (speaking Dutch; this might be relevant), one of whom was wearing a t-shirt that said quite clearly
PEED EVIL
in large bold letters. Puzzling slogan; what could it mean?
Eventually, I got a closer look and discovered that there was an initial letter in each word, in a fancier, much lighter typeface. The slogan was
SPEED DEVIL
But what was Speed Devil? Something automotive, maybe.
But no: a plant variety. A strain of Cannabis, in fact. Marijuana, pot, weed. And very potent.
Posted in Language and plants | Leave a Comment »
Today’s revisiting of Calvin and Hobbes:
The song sparrow segues into a bit of kidlore (beloved by campers and scout troops), and that gets Calvin thrown out of the house by his mother.
A lot of kidlore has no traceable history, but this one has an official story.
Posted in Linguistics in the comics, Music, Parodies | 5 Comments »
(Mostly about art. Also: penis alert (below the fold)!)
Recently in my mail, a postcard from Christopher Walker showing the bronze sculpture Freunde (Friends) by Gerhard Marcks, from the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston:
Posted in Art/lit/music/film, Gender and sexuality | Leave a Comment »
Today’s Zippy, back in Dinerville:
(#1)
The diner in question is pretty much instantly identifiable as being in Truckee CA, though Bill Griffith has obscured its full name. In its current incarnation:
(#2)
And there’s a story.
Posted in Language play, Linguistics in the comics | Leave a Comment »
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