Archive for the ‘Conversation’ Category
September 12, 2026
A while back I lamented to Sacred Harp singers Leigh Cooper and Mark Godfrey (wife and husband; some of us come in couples) over no longer being able to sing face to face, in one another’s company (instead, having to sing along alone at home via Zoom). Leigh took my lament to Paul Kostka, who acts as arranger for our twice-monthly singings in Palo Alto, and they picked a day (9/10) and time (11 am). That turned out to be the exact time I was scheduled to get flu and covid vaccinations, and Mark’s schedule that day precluded his taking part at all. (Juggling schedules is hellish).
But the plan eventually came together, with many singers invited to take part, but only four actually able to turn up on 9/10 : Leigh, Paul, Lorraine Sohlberg Kostka (yes, another couple), and me. Four is the magic number — SH is 4-part a cappella music — and together the four of us could cover the treble, alto, tenor, and bass lines. I’m a male treble; in the world of ordinary vocal music, I’m a natural baritone (roughly corresponding to SH tenor), but astonishingly I can do this other stuff too and love the lines I get. And when I have a voice (various degrees of laryngitis have dogged me in recent weeks), I am wildly, fiercely shake-the-windows loud.
But what is so touching is that the whole event was a gift to me. Causing me to spill over with joy at being back in the community — SH is communitarian, elaborately egalitarian, and comfortable with difference (I am often adorned in way-gay apparel) — with these wonderful people.
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Posted in Conversation, Homosexuality, Language and religion, Music, My life, Social interactions, Social life | Leave a Comment »
August 1, 2026
🐇🐇🐇 rabbit rabbit rabbit to inaugurate August, with a leporine shout-out to remember 1291, the traditional date of the formation of the Swiss federation: Hail, Helvetia!
Now to dive into today’s topic in medias res, with this 7/30 Facebook greeting from Pietro Giovanni to Aaron Broadwell on the occasion of AB’s 64th birthday, somewhere around that time:
Many returns of the day to my favorite linguist
AB is George Aaron Broadwell (known as Aaron Broadwell), Elling Eide Professor of Anthropology at the Univ. of Florida (Gainesville). PG is AB’s husband Peter Marino under the pseudonym Pietro Giovanni. For further complexity, since there are a regrettably large number of men named Peter Marino, some of them famous in their fields, Peter Marino uses the nickname Piet as his professional name; Piet Marino is the author of young adult novels (Dough Boy and Magic and Misery):
(#1) The Piet Marino logo
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Posted in Academic life, Conversation, Events and occasions, Friendship, Gender and sexuality, Homosexuality, Indigenous peoples, Language and the body, Language of sex, Linguists, Logos, Marriage, My life, Phallicity, Professional names, Pseudonyms, Speech acts, Switzerland and Swiss things, Teaching | 3 Comments »
April 13, 2025
[4/25 disclaimer. In the constant upheavals of my life and the world around me, I’m now just picking random stuff to post about, from the 60 or 70 items in my ever-expanding queue — whatever catches my fancy at the moment. Don’t try to make sense of it as a whole.]
That’s unbuttoned ‘relaxed, less inhibited’. There will be no removal of clothes.
This is a little human-interest piece reproducing postings (three of them) from past years reporting on Aaron Broadwell and me chatting as two gay men about cultural matters (pretty much negligently folding Gay Interest into everyday chat). The genre is a type of Friendly Conversation, in this case between two gay men who share a fair amount of background knowledge, have trust in and regard for each other, and are not pursuing any explicit goal beyond maintaining the bond of friendship, keeping in touch; it’s “just talk” — but it’s still structured in complex ways (which would become obvious if I offered parallel exchanges with other people of other sorts in different social contexts, and more strikingly, if I showed you exchanges that ran aground).
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Posted in Conversation, Discourse, Gender and sexuality | 2 Comments »
October 13, 2024
The cartoon. Today’s Zippy strip is a translation of an everyday family drama into a surreal Dingburg version, in the household of Zippy and Zerbina and their children, the boy Fuelrod and the girl Meltdown:
“Eat your Froot Loops, Meltdown, or th’ force field will remove your topknot”
Just think of that as how Dingburgers say “Eat your spinach, kid, or the lack of iron will make you weak” — but much much more dramatically. Or as the song “You’ve Gotta Eat Your Spinach, Baby” (from the 1936 movie Poor Little Rich Girl) puts it:
You’ve gotta eat your spinach, baby
That′s the proper thing to do
It’ll keep you kind of healthy too
And what it did for Popeye it’ll do for you
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Posted in Acting, Conversation, Implicature, Language and food, Linguistics in the comics, Movies and tv, Music, Pragmatics, Relevance, Semantics, Speech acts | Leave a Comment »
March 8, 2020
(On facial expression and gaze in sexual negotiations between men, definitely mansexually raunchy, so not for kids or the sexually modest.)
Yesterday’s ad from Next Door Studios (specializing in regular-guy boy-next-door types — twinks and swimmer-body young men — enthusiastically engaged sexually with each other, covering a range of acts from vanilla mansex on out to moderately kinky stuff). In it, Dakota Payne is preparing to slip his cock (fuzzed out here) into a deliciously sling-bound Alex Tanner. But these next-door boys aren’t focused on each other; they are instead staring penetratingly into the eyes of their audience, who are pantingly stroking their dicks in appreciation of their performance. This particular image now exploited to illustrate a dialogue for learners of the Spanish language; the by-ways of kink are strange indeed.
(#1) Alex y Dakota, Diálogo 17: ¿Dónde está el pescadero?
Alex: ¡Ay caramba! / Dakota: No lo creo.
Alex: ¡Que desastre! / Dakota: No importa.
Alex: Pero te deseo, mi querido. / Dakota: ¡Vete a la mierda!
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Posted in Ambiguity, Context, Conversation, Discourse, Facial expression, Gay porn, Gaze, Gender and sexuality, Pragmatics, Spanish | Leave a Comment »
February 5, 2019
Conversations typically drift in topic, as one thing suggests another. (Occasionally, the conversation is reset when one of the participants introduces a new topic or external events intrude with fresh things to talk about.) On-line threads similarly drift, sometimes in unexpected directions.
Case in point. I posted enthusiastically on this blog (with links elsewhere) about John McIntyre’s book The Old Editor Says: Maxims for Writing and Editing (2/2/19, “The crusty old editor speaks”), and John then noted my review on Facebook. I expected the Facebook discussion to continue with more observations about John’s little book, but since my name had entered the thread, several commentators shifted the topic to me. Whoa!
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Posted in Conversation, Linguists, Proverbs, Quotations, Snowclones | Leave a Comment »
May 21, 2018
Jason Adam Katzenstein in the New Yorker — from a 1/11/18 posting on my blog, “The triumph of confidence over expertise”
Happening on Friday: a PhD oral dissertation defense by Katherine Hilton: What Does an Interruption Sound Like?, Friday, May 25th
(AMZ: About the subjective experience of interruption in conversation and how you might investigate it.)
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Posted in Conversation, Sociolinguistics, Stanford | Leave a Comment »
