Added this morning, a Page with lists of postings on the rainbow as a gay symbol: on rainbow food, on rainbow underwear, and on other uses of the rainbow flag. I’ll add to these lists as new postings come in.
Archive for January, 2015
Rainbow postings
January 23, 2015Unintended ambiguity
January 23, 2015Now appearing on many sites, this vintage (1936) promotional ad for the Willesden Electricity Dept. (in northwest London):
The (presumably) intended reading is that it is anaphoric to work; ‘let electricity do the work’. But do it is a VP anaphor as a whole, so that the reading ‘let electricity kill your wife’ is only too easy to get.
The caption identifies the source as the Milne Museum — the Milne Electrical Collection at the Amberley Museum in West Sussex.
Calvin’s genre competence
January 23, 2015A while back, we witnessed Calvin’s competence in writing tabloid headlines. Yesterday he took on talk radio:
“Imagine getting paid to act like a six-year-old!”
Catchphrases
January 23, 2015Yesterday’s Zippy has our Pinhead playing with catchphrases:
More grist for my posting mill; I’m working on a posting about:
Orin Hargraves. 2014. It’s Been Said Before: A Guide to the Use and Abuse of Clichés. Oxford.
Said … Heard
January 23, 2015In Zits, yesterday and today, on what people say and what listeners (well, Jeremy) make of that:
(#1)
(#2)
Two different phenomena here. In #1, Jeremy calculates the consequences of what Sara is saying and concludes that he should escape. In #2, Jeremy suffers from selective attention, editing out the parts of what his father said that he doesn’t want to hear (not unlike the many cartoons of the form: “what we say – what dogs hear”).
xx
Rainbow crudités
January 22, 2015Another in a long series of postings of rainbow food, a platter of rainbow crudités, from its assembler, Benita Bendon Campbell:
Bonnie says it was not a particularly gay gathering — very liberal ladies — but she had all these vegetables and thought why not… Why indeed.
More theme music
January 22, 2015In comments on my posting about classical compositions — Liszt, Rossini, Prokofiev — used as theme music in radio and television, two further cases: the titan Wagner and the little-known von Reznicek.
Stanford news: the Sunday NYT
January 22, 2015Two Stanford linguistics stories in the Sunday (January 18th) New York Times: Tyler Schnoebelen at the American Dialect Society meetings, Will Leben on product naming.
Stanford news: Jane Shaw and Sarah Ogilvie
January 22, 2015From the January/February issue of Stanford magazine, “Breaking Holy Ground: New dean and professor Jane Shaw continues her career of firsts in a field steeped in history and tradition” by Sam Scott:
A historian of modern Christianity, Shaw, 51, arrives at Stanford as both dean and religious studies professor. Previously, she spent 16 years at Oxford, followed by four years as dean of San Francisco’s Grace Cathedral. Her partner, lexicographer and linguist Sarah Ogilvie, also will teach at Stanford.
(#1)
(Photo by Glenn Matsumura.)
