Archive for the ‘Language play’ Category
October 21, 2018
… diabolus in imaginē, at the tri-state corner (where NY, NJ, and PA are joined), in Milford PA, on Sunday 9/30, funny funny funny. Viewable on tape today. As announced today on Facebook by one of the Three Weird Brothers, Bob Eckstein, using this cartoon of his (from the 5/19/14 New Yorker) as a visual:
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The Milford Readers and Writers Festival in Milford PA (#3 — the first one was in 2016). “New Yorker Cartoonists Talk About Funny!” with Bob Eckstein, Christopher Weyant, and David Borchart, moderated by Carol McManus (tape shown on CSPAN-2 today starting at 2:18 pm ET).
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Posted in Comic conventions, Language play, Linguistics in the comics, Understanding comics | Leave a Comment »
October 15, 2018
(Bonus content: a news bulletin for penises, with two items.)
Today’s Wayno/Piraro combo:
(#1) (If you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Dan Piraro says there are 5 in this strip — see this Page.)
Simultaneously a boy about to bash a rainbow donkey piñata with a bat — a baseball bat, rather than the usual piñata-specific stick or bat (illustrated below) — and a military officer about to execute a prisoner by firing squad. So both in the everyday world and in a metaphorical world systematically mapped onto the everyday world.
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Posted in Comic conventions, Humor, Idioms, Language play, Linguistics in the comics, Metaphor, Phallicity, Rainbow, Toys and games | 1 Comment »
October 6, 2018
Passed on by friends on Facebook, a French dildo / vibrator in the shape of La Tour Eiffel:
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Yes, you can pleasure yourself (vaginally or anally) with a replica of this world-famous landmark. While enjoying its punning name (La Tour Est Folle lit. ‘The Tower is Crazy’, but see below — with the pun pairing Eiffel – est folle).
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Posted in French, Gender and sexuality, Language of sex, Language play, Movies and tv, Phallicity, Puns, Slang | Leave a Comment »
October 6, 2018
Today’s Wayno/Bizarro collab:
(#1) (If you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Dan Piraro says there are 4 in this strip — see this Page.)
A play on the
NO SHOES / NO SHIRT / NO SERVICE
sign in some restaurants. Here enforced by a maître d’ who’s a (serifed) uppercase B. Suitably serifed uppercase diners fill the seats, while a shirted and shod but sans-serif uppercase T realizes he won’t be served.
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Posted in Etymology, Language play, Linguistics in the comics, Typography | Leave a Comment »
October 5, 2018
Currently viral on the net, this punning Humpty Dumpty cartoon:
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The noun fall ‘act of falling or collapsing’ vs. (North American) ‘autumn’, with a corresponding accompanying ambiguity in the adjective great: ‘very large’ vs. ‘of considerably high quality’.
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Posted in Ambiguity, Linguistics in the comics, Puns | 1 Comment »
October 1, 2018
First installment: my 9/30 posting “AZ on imperfect rhyme”, an inventory of publications of mine on half-rhyme and phonological similarity. Today, the second installment, an inventory of postings on this blog that discuss particular examples of half-rhyme. To come: an inventory of publications that cite the 5 papers of mine on imperfect rhyme, especially the first, the 1976 rock rhyme paper.
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Posted in Phonetics, Phonology, Poetic form, Puns | Leave a Comment »
September 30, 2018
Inspired by my 9/26 posting “Angerland”, with its One Big Happy play on Ireland as ire ‘anger’ + land, Nigel Fabb sent on this early 1980s view (apparently a favorite of locals for some years) of a building in Cambridge MA, more or less across the street from MIT’s main building:
(#1) The Metropolitan RAGE / IRE building on Mass. Ave. in Cambridgeport
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Posted in Language and food, Language play, My life | 1 Comment »
September 29, 2018
From the American tv show Gunsmoke, in the episode “Fandango” (S12 E21, first aired 2/11/67), Marshal Matt Dillon (James Arness) to a man he’s taken into his custody for trial:
Mister, you’re going back pig or pork, now make up your mind!
The colorful alliterative figure pig or pork, a version of the formula alive or dead (more often encountered in the version dead or alive, with the monosyllable before the disyllable). And an excellent version it is.
(It appears to have been a creation of the Gunsmoke writers: I can find no occurrences that aren’t quotations of, comments on, or allusions to the “Fandango” cite.)
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Posted in Actors, Figurative language, Formulaic language, Language play, Movies and tv, Race and ethnicity | Leave a Comment »
September 27, 2018
A cartoonist and cartoon enthusiast who hasn’t appeared on this blog before.
The barest of brief Wikipedia information:
Mike Lynch [born January 18, 1962, in Iowa City IA] is a cartoonist whose work can be seen in Reader’s Digest, The Wall Street Journal, Playboy and other mass media markets.
Lynch maintains a substantial blog on cartoons, with material of his own and compilations of other cartoonists. For example, a 9/24 posting on gag cartoons, from Dick Buchanan; a 9/21 posting on women cartoonists of the New Yorker, from Liza Donnelly; a 9/20 posting on cartoonists drawing on the wall at the Overlook Lounge in NYC.
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Posted in Art, Books, Comic conventions, Formulaic expressions, Language play, Linguistics in the comics, Pop culture, Puns, Understanding comics, Words and things | Leave a Comment »
September 21, 2018
To fully appreciate this cartoon (passed on to me on Facebook), you need to have two pieces of pop-cultural knowledge, one originally American, one originally British (though it is the way of such things to cross the Atlantic culturally):
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You need, of course, to recognize — American cultural knowledge — that this is a baseball diamond, with a game in progress, and that there’s an object on first base. Then — further American cultural knowledge — you need to recognize the (note: declarative, not interrogative) sentence Who’s on first as the first move in one of the greatest America comedy routines ever. Then — British cultural knowledge — you need to recognize the thing on first base and connect it to the fact that Who’s on first, both of them elements from one of the most popular British tv shows ever.
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Posted in Humor, Language play, Linguistics in the comics, Movies and tv, Understanding comics | 1 Comment »
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