Archive for the ‘Language play’ Category
April 22, 2019
From the 3/30/19 issue of The Economist, in “Reflecting on past sins” about “the clamour to return cultural treasures taken by colonialists” (from Africa), this photo on p. 62 (as captioned here), presumably included to illustrate the cultural, political, and legal issues involved:
(#1) Getting back to where it once belonged.
First, there’s the photo in #1. What does it show? Why this picture — are we supposed to recognize the elements in the picture, or is it just intended as a generic representative of a certain type of situation or event? And what is it doing in a story on the restitution of African art objects removed by colonial powers (mostly in the 19th century)?
Then there’s the Easter egg quotation in the caption, from the Beatles’ song “Get Back”. That’s what caught my eye first (unsurprisingly, given my interests in ludic language in general, and Easter egg quotations in particular), but then I cast a puzzled eye on the photo itself.
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Posted in Art, Language play, Music, Quotation | 2 Comments »
April 16, 2019
A celebrated example of word breaking or splitting (from the 1959 movie High Society), giving a joke turning on an ambiguity in how the the first part of the split word is to be understood: on its own, giving the off-color She got pinched in the ass; or as merely the first part of the split word, giving the less risqué She got pinched in the Astor Bar (in one or another sense of pinched).
Then I note that the first understanding has the in of body location, the second the in of event location — a distinction I’ve explored in three previous postings. This is the fourth, with some illumination in it, I think.
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Posted in Ambiguity, Books, Homosexuality, Jokes, Lexical semantics, Movies and tv, Music, Puns | Leave a Comment »
April 11, 2019
Yesterday in the posting “Crunching the festive rabbits” on this blog, Godzilla consumed Peeps. Just as I posted that, the Mental Floss site came through with more thrilling Peepsiana: “Artist Turns 5000 Marshmallow Peeps Into a Game of Thrones Dragon” by Michele Debczak, with a dragon composed of Peeps:
(#1) A Peeps dragon; so far as I can tell, there are no dragon Peeps (that is, Peeps in the shape of dragons, though there also are no Peeps composed of dragons, no Peeps manufactured by dragons, etc.)
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Posted in Books, Clothing, Compounds, Language and animals, Language and food, Movies and tv, Puns, Toys and games | 5 Comments »
April 1, 2019
From Karen Chung on her (public) Facebook group NTU Phonetics yesterday, this texty cartoon with a pun:
(#1)
The joke turns on the (perceptual) homophony of chants and chance, parallel to the cents / sense and prints / prince cases in my 3/27/19 posting “Two cents, common sense, incense, and peppermints”.
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Posted in Ambiguity, Language play, Linguistics in the comics, Music, Philosophy, Puns, Understanding comics | 1 Comment »
March 27, 2019
The 2/26 One Big Happy, riffing on /sɛns/, in idioms with sense (common sense, horse sense, nonsense), in incense, and in cents (also in an idiom, two cents):
(#1)
Which, of course, leads us inevitably to the psychedelic days of 1967, with their whiff of incense and peppermints (plus some pot).
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Posted in Dialects, Idioms, Language and culture, Lexicography, Linguistics in the comics, Music, Phonetics, Phonology, Rhyme | 5 Comments »
March 24, 2019
This week’s inspiring words on the social progress front, from Gloria Ladson-Billings, circulated on Facebook by H. Sami Alim on the 22nd:
I know that I am 4 generations out of chattel slavery, 3 generations out of sharecropping, 2 out of legalized apartheid, and I’m an endowed university professor. Not because I’m great, but because people kept on pushing the boulder up the hill.
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Posted in Compounds, Euphemism, Language and the body, Language play, Race and ethnicity, Slang, Social life | 4 Comments »
March 17, 2019
(Men’s bodies and tons of mansex — anal, anal, anal — in street language. No actual penises on display, but nevertheless absolutely not for kids or the sexually modest.)
Padraig porn for the day:
(#1) The TitanMen gay porn sale for this weekend: Kiss me, I’m Irish
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Posted in Argument structure, Art, Catchphrases, Dance, Facial expressions, Formulaic language, French, Gay porn, Gaze, Gender and sexuality, Holidays, Language of sex, Language play, Music, Puns, Snowclones | 1 Comment »
March 13, 2019
Yesterday’s Wayno/Piraro Bizarro cartoon:
(#1)(If you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Dan Piraro says there are 7 in this strip — see this Page.)
You need to recognize that the cartoon takes place in a garage and you need to know that detailing is a kind of car care. And you need to recognize that Nick is the Devil (note horns and tail). That’s all pretty easy.
Then you need to know what detailing a car has to do with the Devil — and for that, if you don’t know the saying The devil (or Devil) is in the detail(s), you’re just stuck. You’ve missed a devil of a pun (on detail).
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Posted in Linguistics in the comics, Names, Proverbs, Puns, Understanding comics | Leave a Comment »
March 12, 2019
A long long day getting this handout together; my paper is on Friday afternoon. Ides of March. But first, the doctor is in:
Matt LeBlanc, playing Joey Tribbiani on Friends, playing Dr. Drake Ramoray on Days of Our Lives
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Posted in Conferences, Context, Language play, Movies and tv, Pragmatics, Puns, Semantics, Snowclonelet composites, Snowclones | 1 Comment »
March 10, 2019
Cue from Elizabeth Daingerfield Zwicky yesterday, to a posting by Sandra Boynton on Facebook on the 7th:
(#1)
Day 5,347 of my quixotic project to entirely redraw my seven earliest board books. I’m doing this so that the line and colors will print better, and the layout is better balanced. I hope. (It’s really very fun, in a hyperfocused sort of way.)
EDZ recommended reading the comments, “for adorable linguistic content”. Indeed: on naming conventions and on the cot/caught merger, among other things.
And then a Boynton for Pi Day, coming up this week (on the 14th). With a celebratory pig for the occasion.
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Posted in Books, Holidays, Language play, Linguistics in the comics, Names, Rhyme, Variation | Leave a Comment »
