Two recent cartoons: a Zach Kanin on the male body in cartoons (in the 9/28 issue), a Liam Francis Walsh on social media (in the 10/5 issue):
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Archive for the ‘Linguistics in the comics’ Category
Genericization
October 8, 2015Today’s Bizarro:
(If you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Dan Piraro says there are 3 in this strip — see this Page.)
Well, yes, people do misplace these little tubes all the time, so maybe it would be a good idea to make some larger versions (though then they’d be less portable). But what I’m interested in here is the reference to chapsticks, no initial or medial cap. The brand name is ChapStick, the generic common noun is lip balm, but very few people use the “proper” generic, preferring chapstick instead.
Two recurrent themes
October 7, 2015… on this blog: unintended phallicity, penguins. Both encountered yesterday.
Routine and sub-routine
October 4, 2015Today’s Zits:
True, she just asked him to unload the dishwasher, and he did that. But the point of unloading the dishwasher is to put the clean dishes away, so that unload the dishwasher implicates put the clean dishes away. Or to put it another way, the routine of unloading the dishwater has a sub-routine of putting the clean dishes away.
As usual, Jeremy takes what his mother says as literally and narrowly as possible, so as to avoid work.
Sexual advance?
October 3, 2015A Dilbert from a while back (9/23) with co-workers Alice and Ted at cross-purposes:
People are inclined to sexualize social relations between the sexes, to the point where some people are dubious that men and women can have non-sexually tinged friendships, and this inclination seems to be particularly strong among men. The rather dim-witted Ted is a pretty extreme case.
Signage
October 2, 2015Yesterday’s Bizarro:
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(If you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Don Piraro says there are 2 in this strip — see this Page.)
But all bits of language have to be understood in context — the immediate physical context, the immediate social context (who’s speaking, to whom, for what purposes), the larger socioicultural context, and the context of background knowledge about the world. The task of taking all this stuff into account is substantial, but we manage the task pretty well (though by no means flawlessly) all the time. Still, the task is especially complex for highly compressed material, as on signs.
Philip Bonneau
September 30, 2015Posted on Google+ by Tim Evanson yesterday, this image of a half-naked male superhero, Captain Marvel, that is simultaneously sexy and funny — celebrating the beauty of this broad-shouldered model’s body as he assumes a Captain Marvel persona in a gently mocking way.
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From the Flickr account of photographer Philip Bonneau, who’s an ornament of the Atlanta gay community and the creator of a Heroes + Villains series of male photography.
California squirrels
September 27, 2015In the October Funny Times, a cartoon by Cara and Andy Singer, parodying the Beach Boys song “California Girls”. I haven’t been able to find an image anywhere, so I’ll talk you through the thing.
One space or two?
September 27, 2015A recent Bloom County 2015, featuring, from left to right: Milo (a 10-year-old reporter, the politically engaged Milo Bloom), Opus the penguin, and Binkley (Michael Binkley, Milo’s best friend, also 10):
One space or two (after a sentence-final period), a perenially contentious issue.
The power of naming
September 27, 2015Caught in the Funny Times for October, the Tom the Dancing Bug from 7/5/15:
Cute names save lives!