Archive for August, 2018

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Cultural knowledge

August 4, 2018

Three recent cartoons in my feed that depend on their readers supplying crucial bits of background cultural information: a Rhymes With Orange from the 1st (the eating habits of Japanese movie monsters); a Mother Goose and Grimm from the 1st (the His Master’s Voice dog); and today’s Bizarro/Wayno collab (clergy visiting parishioners).

In each case, the cartoon shows some situation from everyday life (which you have to know about) juxtaposed with, or translated into, another more remarkable world (which you also need to know details of).

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Posted in Clothing, Comic conventions, Language and animals, Linguistics in the comics, Movies and tv, Slang, Understanding comics | Leave a Comment »

Ruthie and the language of doughnuts

August 3, 2018

The One Big Happy from July 5th, in which Ruthie and Joe get some dubious advice from their father:

(#1)

Their dad’s advice will no doubt warm the hearts of language teachers and multiculturalists, but it’s dubious as practical advice for everyday life.

Meanwhile, Ruthie wrestles with the question of how to get a language name from the noun doughnut / donut. Donuttish (with an all-purpose adjective-forming suffix, –ish) would certainly be possible, but, probably on the model of Dutch, Ruthie goes for Donutch, that is, Donut-ch (this is spoken, rather than written, by Ruthie, so it could have been spelled Donutsh, like Welsh).

(It tickles me to think of the language name as Dutchnut, a portmanteau of Dutch and doughnut. Or maybe that should be the name of the food.)

In any event, Ruthie has stumbled slant-wise onto the idea that doughnuts are of Dutch origin — an idea that confuses words and things, labels and the categories they label, but nevertheless incorporates a genuine bit of history.

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Posted in Categorization and Labeling, Derivation, Language and food, Linguistics in the comics, Morphology, Portmanteaus, Rainbow, Words and things | 2 Comments »

The rainbow pillars of Montréal

August 3, 2018

A photo from Arthur Prokosch yesterday:


(#1) “I have arrived at queer station. — in Gay Village, Montreal.”

The occasion was/is the 31st motss.con — annual gathering of folks from the net group soc.motss (lgbt-folk and friends) — in Montréal. (Con Central is the Hotel Le Saint Andre, 1285 Rue Saint-André, a half-block from Rue Ste-Catherine E, at the edge of the Gay Village.)

One notable thing in the photo is the colors of the six rainbow pillars at the station: not the usual saturated bright colors of the rainbow flag, but less saturated and lighter — elegant, fashion colors. We’re here, we’re gay, and we’re stylish.

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Posted in Color, Gender and sexuality, Homosexuality, Language of sex, Rainbow, Style and register | 1 Comment »

Advances in phobology

August 2, 2018

… the science of fear and fears, to which Gary Larson made a sort of contribution in this 1988 Far Side cartoon:

(#1)

It was, of course, a joke: a term for a preposterous fear. Fear of ducks, sure, but fear that a duck is watching you? That’s a wild paranoid phobia akin to Dinsdale Piranha’s paranoid phobia of Spiny Norman, a gigantic imaginary hedgehog, in Monty Python’s “Piranha Brothers” skit.

For the most part, the joke got passed around as a joke —  but without the context of its occurring in a  cartoon, and in the context of the many lists of remarkable phobias you can find all over the place, the funny word and its astonishing definition have taken on a shadow life of their own.

Then, on the quibbling front, there’s the ill-formedness of anatidaephobia as the name of a phobia, any phobia, even a phobia of ducks.

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Posted in Compounds, Language and animals, Linguistics in the comics, Morphology, Names | Leave a Comment »

Male crop tops!

August 2, 2018

The title of a Humans of Tumblr video on June 21st:


(#1) From Sleepaway Camp (1983), Frank Trent Saladino Jr. (b. 1953), playing camp counselor Gene at a baseball game (in full costume: sleeveless crop top, short shorts, and tube socks)

What happened to the male crop top? Male crop tops were all the rage in the ’80s and ’90s [and a rhyming name was especially attractive]. Here are some of the quintessential male crop top moments worth remembering. Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure. Will Smith in The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. And Johnny Depp’s cropped jersey in A Nightmare on Elm Street. Here’s Bruce Jenner rockin’ the crop in Can’t Stop the Music. And Apollo Creed from the Rocky films just had to show off his goods. Cropped tank tops were popular as well. But as we all know, no male crop top was complete without short shorts and tube socks. As seen in this classic scene [a baseball game] from Sleepaway Camp [see the screen capture above].  Should we bring this trend back?

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Posted in Clothing, Fashion, Gender and sexuality, Movies and tv, Names, Shirtlessness | 1 Comment »

Amazing grease

August 1, 2018

A Scott Hilburn cartoon from some years back, a smileworthy garage-mechanic burlesque of John Newton’s “Amazing Grace” text:

Puns on grace / grease, wretch / wrench, and all(eluia) / oil. Visually, there’s the choirstall that’s a tool box and the sacred oilcan in the stained glass window. And of course the various sorts of wrenches.

[Added on 8/2: as with many other cartoons I’ve analyzed here, this one involves a translation from one (usually everyday) world into a metaphorical world — here, between the world of church services and the world of mechanic’s shops. See my 5/22/18 posting “I (just) can’t stop (it)”.]

Posted in Linguistics in the comics, Parodies | Leave a Comment »

Swiss National Day! (with a query)

August 1, 2018

Today, August 1st, is the National Day of Switzerland, a day to fly the big square flag:

  (#1)

On the flag and on the holiday, to come. But first, a query to readers. I ask that you respond only to this e-mail address: arnold.zwicky@gmail.com (so that I don’t have to try to collate responses sent to seven or eight different places). And I ask that you read the query and guve your immediate reaction to it (without looking things up or consulting other people or musing about what the “right” answer would be). Below the fold:

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Posted in Flags, Holidays, Switzerland and Swiss things | Leave a Comment »

Men for men, and perilous translation

August 1, 2018

(Men’s bodies, frankly and openly presented as both objects of desire and objects of pride — but it is definitely Art. Use your judgment.)

Passed on by Arne Adolfsen on Facebook, this work by noted São Paulo artist Francisco (Chico) Hurtz, with accompanying (often baffling) text from philosopher Marilyn Frye — on heterosexual masculinity as male bonding, Bros Before Hos on a grand scale — supplied by Hurtz:


(#1) Untitled, ink on paper 2018 (here, and below, his men are faceless, but decidedly embodied)

” to say that a man is heterosexual implies only that he maintains sexual intercourse exclusively with the opposite sex, i.e. women. Everything or almost everything that is of love, most straight men reserve exclusively for other men. The people they admire; they respect; they worship and worship; they honor; whom they imitate, worship and with whom they create deeper ties; to whom they are willing to teach and with whom they are willing to learn; those whose respect, admiration, recognition, honor , reverence and love they wish: these are, mostly overwhelming, other men. In their relations with women, what is seen as respect is kindness, generosity or paternalism; what is seen as honor is the placement of the woman in a dome. Of women they want devotion, servitude and sex. Male heterosexual culture is couples; she cultivates love for men.” – Marilyn Frye

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Posted in Art, Gender and sexuality, Homosexuality, Masculinity, Philosophy | 1 Comment »

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