Friday’s Zits returns to some old themes for the strip:
The theme is that women — especially, teenaged girls — talk talk talk, in a rapid, never-ending stream, one sentence flowing into the next, one story into the next, without pause. You can’t get a word in edgewise, the saying goes. (The truth is far from this, of course.)
But Jeremy has found the solution, a very satisfying one: the punctuational kiss.
Today’s Zits:
This is the latest in a series of strips about Jeremy and Sarah: Jeremy seems not to be listening to Sarah at all (and Jeremy’s father is presented as doing the same to Jeremy’s mother), and now, when Jeremy responds, it’s in monosyllables — he’s speaking, but not communicating.
That gives us two stereotypes at once: genderspeak and teenspeak. Males don’t listen, males are uncommunicative (especially when talking to females), and the teen stereotypes are for “laconic guys and gabby guys”.
In the strip above, Jeremy finally produces a minimally non-monosyllabic response. I doubt that it will satisfy Sarah.
Today’s Bizarro:
(#1)
Yet another variant of the “We need to talk” theme, this time involving a parrot.
From Chris Ambidge, yet another contribution to the big pile of bromanteaus: “Broga: Yoga for guys means more Radiohead, less Enya” by Dave McGinn on the Globe and Mail blog (link):
It’s in Somerville, Mass., where a yoga class for men – called “broga”– is helping guys feel macho doing the downward dog.
It seems inevitable, doesn’t it? Nowadays there are more kinds of yoga than there are butts in a yoga class. And we as a culture can’t get enough of dude-tastic portmanteau wordplay – mancation, bromance, a whole new brocabulary, in fact.
I am saddened to pass on this development in the world of bromanteaus (via Tim Pierce on Google+), in “Brogrammers Bring Frat-House Ethos to Geek World of Coding” by Douglas MacMillan on Bloomberg at the beginning of March: brogrammer (and the bronus brotein).
A piece of fluff from Maureen Dowd in the NYT on the 11th, with man-, bro-, and guy- portmanteaus:
Manlashes, Manscara and Mantyhose
Manskirts, manscara, guyliner and guylashes have all had their spurts, especially in Britain. (Yes, that’s you, Russell Brand and Capt. Jack Sparrow.) A British brand called Eylure started selling false eyelashes for men last fall, promising to create a “Hollywood gaze.” Next up: eyelash extensions, already a trend for Japanese men, who tend to have short lashes.
… Franceso Cavallini, the vice president of the Florence-based upscale legwear company Emilio Cavallini, told Women’s Wear Daily last week that there is “a cult following for mantyhose,” also known as “brosiery” and “guylons.”
The old OUT in Linguistics mailing list seems to have died, so I’ve created a Facebook group for this purpose:
The group is open to lesbian, gay, bisexual, dyke, queer, homosexual, trans, etc. linguists and their friends. The only requirement is that you be willing to be out to everyone on the list as lgbt(-friendly); it’s sort of like wearing a pink triangle.
It’s a “closed” group: anyone can see the group, but only members can post and see the postings.
I’m in charge of adding people to the group; mail to me at zwicky@stanford.edu.
(Yes, you need to have a Facebook account.)
In today’s print NYT Science Times, a piece by Douglas Quenqua entitled “They’re, Like, Way Ahead of the Linguistic Currrrve”, about young women as trendsetters in linguistic change. Featuring a sizable cast of experts, starting with Stanford’s Penny Eckert.
The two main points:
Girls and women in their teens and 20s deserve credit for pioneering vocal trends and popular slang, [linguists] say, adding that young women use these embellishments in much more sophisticated ways than people tend to realize.
And, at the end, two points. One, that a bit of linguistic stuff — vocal fry, uptalk, and the discourse particle like are the three examples the article focuses on — is just a resource, which can be used in many different ways by different groups of speakers (that is, there’s no intrinsic meaning to a resource — as I’ve taken to saying, it’s “just stuff” — but only meanings as expressed by particular groups of speakers and meanings as interpreted by others). And two, that the meanings for speakers and hearers can be seriously at variance:
“language changes very fast,” said Dr. Eckert of Stanford, and most people — particularly adults — who try to divine the meaning of new forms used by young women are “almost sure to get it wrong.”
“What may sound excessively ‘girly’ to me may sound smart, authoritative and strong to my students,” she said.
Today’s Zippy (like a number of other Zippy strips) revels in the sheer sound of an expression, in this case a brand name:
That’s Nerf Vortex Nitron Blaster, a line of trochaic tetrameter (with short first foot) — so satisfying to say over and over again, like a mantra.
One last cartoon for today: today’s Zits, on man talk:
Well, it works as coaching on golf. And maybe as sex counseling. But on coping with, say, car problems?