Archive for the ‘Linguistics in the comics’ Category

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The ants are my friends?

July 28, 2018

Through friends on Facebook, a 7/30/12 Captain Scratchy cartoon (by Chuck Ingwersen) “The Wiener Dog Is Annoyed”, in which a dachshund and a pug are transfixed in panel 1 by small black dots on the ground between them, from which these sounds are emanating:

🎶Just like me, they long to be … close to you. 🎶

🎶Rainy days and Mondays always get me down. 🎶

🎶We’ve only just begun. 🎶

— upon which, in panel 2, the dachshund growls:

CRAP, WE’VE GOT CARPENTER ANTS.

(To get this, you need to know that carpenter ants are a real thing — not a stretch — and you really need to know about Karen and Richard Carpenter and their songs from 1970-71.)

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Posted in Language and animals, Language and food, Language play, Linguistics in the comics, Mishearings, Music, My life, Puns, Understanding comics | 1 Comment »

Hi-g pun for Xmas in July

July 26, 2018

(Friendly warning: this posting will end up with some ads for gay porn, with some mildly raunchy text.)

… in today’s Bizarro/Wayno collaboration:


(#1) (If you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Dan Piraro says there are 3 in this strip — see this Page.)

I’ve been inundated with hi-g (high groan-producing) puns this week, but this one plugs into other e-mail I’ve been getting this week, for Christmas in July events of various kinds — though not, in my experience, marathon re-playings of the melancholy-saccharine holiday song “White Christmas” made famous by Bing Crosby in the 1942 movie Holiday Inn:

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Posted in Gay porn, Gender and sexuality, Holidays, Linguistics in the comics, Movies and tv, Music, Puns, Shirtlessness | Leave a Comment »

Death by staircase

July 25, 2018

This week’s Drunk Cartoon from Bob Eckstein:

(#1)

It is in fact Discovery Channel’s 30th SHARK WEEK — they always use all-caps — running from Sunday July 22nd through Sunday July 29th. (I’ve avoided it so far, but I’m sure to be sucked in again soon.)

And then there’s the Death by Staircase mystery trope in the movies and (especially) on tv. Were they pushed, did they commit step-suicide, or was it an accident? If pushed, by human hands or by supernatural forces?

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Posted in Gender and sexuality, Language and animals, Linguistics in the comics, Movies and tv, Pop culture | Leave a Comment »

It’s all foreign to Ruthie

July 25, 2018

The 6/28 One Big Happy:

BrE loo ‘bathroom, toilet, etc.’ and the (phonologically very similar) name of the Paris museum the Louvre are both unfamiliar to Ruthie. Her mother glosses the first for her, and then locates the Louvre, but that doesn’t get her all the way to enlightenment. Only to French bathrooms.

Posted in Linguistics in the comics | Leave a Comment »

Death by verbing

July 23, 2018

From Facebook friends, this distressing recent Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, featuring a malevolently uberpeeving personification of the English language:

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Posted in Conversion, Linguistics in the comics, Peeving, Usage attitudes, Verbing | Leave a Comment »

Rubber and glue

July 23, 2018

The June 26th One Big Happy, with an updated version of a bit of childlore:

(#1)

It starts out traditionally, with a retort to insult beginning “I’m rubber and you’re glue…”, but then it takes a modern-tech social-media turn (while preserving the glue … you rhyme).

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Posted in Folklore, Insults, Language of children, Linguistics in the comics, Movies and tv, Pragmatics | Leave a Comment »

Aspectual distinctions in the comics

July 22, 2018

Today’s Zippy involves a distinction in the interpretation of the VP own thirty-one muu-muus:

Does Zippy happen to own (only) 31 muu-muus at the moment? Griffy asks how many muu-muus Zippy owns, and that’s what Zippy apparently says in reply.

Or is Zippy’s way of life such that he always has (only) 31 muu-muus in his possession? That would indeed predict that Zippy has (only) 31 at the moment, but it would also predict that if you took one away, he’d have to get a new one to replace it, and that if you gave him a new one, he’d have to get rid of an old one — all to maintain the stable state of owning 31 muu-muus. That’s what Zippy says in his reply.

The distinction is aspectual, corresponding very roughly to the circumstances in which you’d choose a ‘to be’ verb in Spanish: estar (roughly) for temporary situations, not necessarily extending beyond the reference time period (hence mutable, contingent), ser (roughly) for enduring, even permanent situations, extending through time before and after the reference time period (hence unchanging, even necessary).

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Posted in Aktionsart, Linguistics in the comics, Spanish, Tense-aspect-mood | Leave a Comment »

Bewitched, bothered, and bedeviled

July 20, 2018

From Chris Waigl, this 2/10/14 cartoon by wordplayer Scott Hilburn:

(#1)

The Exorcist, the novel and the film; and deviled eggs, the hors d’oeuvres, picnic food, or party food, very popular in the US.

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Posted in Language and food, Linguistics in the comics, Movies and tv, Puns | 2 Comments »

Taking the trolley

July 20, 2018

Background: this Facebook posting on the 18th by Chris Hansen:

My online friend Arnold Zwicky is a kind of chronicler of comic strips, from a historical and a linguistic perspective. A transit group to which I belong recently reprinted a large number of cartoon panels from the Toonerville Trolley series. Aside from the very exacting drawings, the hand lettering is a beautiful example of what lettering can be. Here’s the link to the website; there’s a lot of trolley stuff in front of the comics and some afterward, but these cartoons are an intriguing collection of history and comedy from the 1920’s.

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Posted in Eye dialect, Linguistics in the comics, My life, Puns | 2 Comments »

Beheaded pizza

July 20, 2018

Today’s Rhymes With Orange:

The order presumably involved  the C(ount) Ns regular pepperoni ‘regular pepperoni pizza’ and extra deep-dish ‘extra-pepperoni deep-dish pizza’. But the Joe’s delivery involves the C N extra-deep-dish ‘extra-deep-dish pepperoni pizza’ (not just an ordinary deep-dish pizza, but a really deep deep-dish pizza).

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Posted in Ambiguity, Beheading, Ellipsis, Linguistics in the comics, Truncation | Leave a Comment »

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