Archive for the ‘Language in politics’ Category
June 1, 2023
(In contrast to some of my postings on notable found expressions, this one builds hardly at all on my previous work, and I feel uneasily out of my depths here. But I have pressed on, into several areas I’d never before contemplated, trying to make sense of things as best I can.
From Ana Cabrera Reports on MSNBC, on 5/23, about Tina Turner (on the occasion of her death):
She wanted to sell out like Mick Jagger. (call this example TT)
Tina Turner’s contention was not (as you might have thought without further context) that MJ had betrayed himself (or his fans, or his principles) for gain, but that MJ had sold out an arena — that, is, had gotten every single ticket for a concert at a (gigantic) arena sold. Tina Turner expressed a desire to pull off a similar feat.
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Posted in Argument structure, Language in politics, Metonymy, Syntax | 2 Comments »
March 31, 2023
🐅 🐅 🐅 tiger tiger tiger for ultimate March, a month that seems to have lasted forever, through meteorological disasters, the daily devastation of mass shootings, and the profoundly dangerous paranoid ravings of the moral monster Grabpussy. Oh yes, and the latest chapters in the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the event that, quite by accident, relocated two artists from Kyiv to Chattanooga TN (in a state that is currently contending fiercely for the title of Gun Capital of the United States).
This is about one of them, Denis Sarazhin, who came to me through a reproduction of some of his remarkable paintings on Pinterest. In particular:
(#1) Pantomime No. 22 (2017); note the painfully contorted poses
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Posted in Art, Language and the body, Language in politics, Poetry | Leave a Comment »
September 20, 2022
(Warning: a vulgar term for the primary female sexual anatomy will end up playing a big role in this posting.)
Where this is going: to an alternative name for an American President (#45, aka TFG); and to an alternative name for a classic American novel (by J.D. Salinger) — both names being exocentric V + N compound nouns, the first in English, the second in French. (I’ll call them exoVerNs for short.)
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Posted in Architecture, Art, Books, Compounds, Derivation, French, Language and gender, Language and plants, Language and the body, Language in politics, My life, Synthetic compounds, Taboo language and slurs, Writers, Writing | 1 Comment »
December 14, 2020
(I’m trying to catch up on postings from before my hospital time, just the few for which materials were already on my desktop. This is the first.)
From, I think, Ann Burlingham, this Octopi Wall Street t-shirt, based on Ray Troll’s 2011 political cartoon (one of a number he did):
The t-shirt, with the slogans “Less Inc More Ink”, “Bail Out Boats Not Banks”, and “Eat the Rich”
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Posted in Language in politics, Linguistics in the comics | 3 Comments »
September 3, 2020
In a NYT Magazine piece on Grabpussy Jr., an arresting mid-page teaser quote:
I searched my mental banks for relevant senses of winger, working my way through wingman first, eventually discovering that the intended sense was the one I came to last. You really have to have the context: in particular, who is speaking, for what purposes.
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Posted in Ambiguity, Gender and sexuality, Language and sports, Language in politics, Sociocultural conventions | 2 Comments »
January 3, 2020
Lauren Hall-Lew writes on Facebook:
2020 is here and #WWIII is the new Twitter hashtag.
Crystal Patterson Muneau follows up:
I need an emoji reaction button to indicate how terrified I am.
You could, of course, just press Edvard Munch’s The Scream into service, or one its its many variants, like this Bizarro version:
(#1)
But actual emoji have been designed.
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Posted in Emoji, Facial expression and gesture, Language in politics, Signs and symbols | Leave a Comment »
September 30, 2019
From the Washington Examiner, “[REDACTED] campaign calls Biden ‘Quid Pro Joe’ and says whistleblower is ‘in favor of one of the corrupt 2020 Democrats’” by Mike Brest on 9/29/19:
The [Helmet Grabpussy] campaign flipped the script on allegations of a “quid pro quo” between President [Grabpussy] and Ukraine, instead labeling former Vice President Joe Biden as “Quid Pro Joe” and alleging the whistleblower is politically motivated.
Ah, a political pun, based on what was once a Latin term mostly from the legal and political worlds, but is now a more generally used plain English noun /kwɪdprokwó/ (with a regular plural, /kwɪdprokwóz/.
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Posted in Language in politics, Language play, Lexical semantics, Puns | Leave a Comment »
July 30, 2018
Caught on re-run tv yesterday, in the Law & Order S19 E10 episode “Pledge” (from 1/21/09):
Your entire case rests on this girl’s testimony. If her only impetus to cooperate is greed, you’re in trouble. Who dangled money in front of her in the first place?
The cops. They knew she was in debt, so they pressed her pretty hard.
It’s going to look like we bought her testimony. What a mud sandwich this is turning into.
And only a few months before that, in an emotional 9/29/08 speech on the floor of the U.S. Congress by Rep. John Boehner in support of the TARP bill bailing out big banks:
None of us came here to have to vote for this mud sandwich!
(You can watch it here.)
Yes, mud sandwich. A euphemism for shit sandwich.
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Posted in Catchphrases, Euphemism, Idioms, Language and food, Language and race, Language in politics, Linguistics in the comics, Metaphor, Movies and tv, Music, Race and ethnicity, Slang, Taboo language and slurs | 1 Comment »
