Archive for the ‘Linguistics in the comics’ Category
June 27, 2019
Today’s Rhymes With Orange, combining two familiar cartoon memes:
(#1) A compound, Desert Island + Grim Reaper
Also incorporating a joke formula, the Good News Bad News routine. The good news is verbalized in the cartoon, the bad news is implicit in the figure of the Grim Reaper.
As an extra, the boat that the Grim Reaper is steering towards the little island looks a lot like a gondola, so evoking Death in Venice and Charon the boatman of death, and possibly more indirectly, a Viking funeral boat with an animal-head prow.
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Posted in Art, Comic conventions, Formulaic language, Jokes, Linguistics in the comics, Routines and rituals | 8 Comments »
June 25, 2019
A Mr. Lovenstein comic, on the bagel and the donut hole:
(#1) “Oh, you don’t look Jewish”, said the donut hole to the bagel [AMZ]
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Posted in Art, Language and animals, Language and food, Language and religion, Linguistics in the comics, Movies and tv, Signs and symbols | 3 Comments »
June 20, 2019
First came the Frazz strip from yesterday, sent to me by John Baker because he thought it would be of special interest to me (for reasons that will quickly become clear):
(#1) Frazz, the school janitor who’s also a Renaissance man, copes with the puzzlement of one of the students
And then a visual composition with what is obviously a Magrittean disavowal — a visuoverbal humor form realized variously in (at least) paintings, drawings, cartoons, and web graphics (there’s a Page on this blog about it) — that appeared in numerous slightly different versions on Facebook recently, baffling me:
(#2) Ok, it’s not a moon, but what, I wondered, is it? And what does it have to do with the Magritte original?
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Posted in Art, Linguistics in the comics, Movies and tv, Understanding comics | 3 Comments »
June 18, 2019
Today’s Rhymes With Orange, with a clown facial:
(#1)
From NOAD, the nouning of the Adj facial ‘of or affecting the face’:
noun facial: a beauty treatment for the face.
Then the noun facial ‘facial treatment (for beauty)’ serving as head in the N + N compound clown facial (for a pieing — a pie-in-the-face — involving a clown or clowns), which contrasts in interpretation with the compounds cum facial (for a sexual practice in which semen is ejaculated onto the face) and beauty facial (used to clarify that the ‘facial treatment’ sense is intended).
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Posted in Compounds, Language and culture, Language of sex, Lexical semantics, Linguistics in the comics, Semantics, Semantics of compounds | Leave a Comment »
June 17, 2019
Going the social media rounds, this joke, an ostentatiously playful allusion (OPA) to a bit of popular culture, presented as a texty — a cartoon that’s primarily a printed text, though texties often come with a visual backdrop, which sometimes contributes crucially to an understanding of the joke, as here:
(#1) A texty that lives in two worlds: American political culture of recent years (a reference conveyed visually, through the photo of Paul Ryan); and an ad campaign for an American breakfast cereal marketed to children (a reference conveyed verbally, by the ostentatious play on the ad slogan “Silly rabbit / Trix is for kids!”)
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Posted in Formulaic language, Implicature, Language play, Linguistics in the comics, Pragmatics, Puns, Semantics, Snowclones, Understanding comics | Leave a Comment »
June 11, 2019
Today’s Zippy has our playful Pinhead frolicking and cavorting in the surf, on a water trike:
(#1)
In no particular order: the Aqua-Cycle water trike, seen above churning through the surf (and, quite possibly, several holiday-goers); the verbs frolic and cavort, great favorites of Zippy’s, which tend to come with a sexual tinge; the social custom of pleasurable frolicking and cavorting in the water, easily bent to homoerotic purposes, in displays of the body and playful contact between men; and one particular artist of that scene (from a great many), Keith Vaughan.
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Posted in Art, Gender and sexuality, Homosexuality, Linguistics in the comics, Photography, Toys | Leave a Comment »
