The baddest a** diner around

Filed under:Words & Phrases — posted by squires on 5/30/2005 @ 12:08 pm

Somewhat recently, a diner here came under new ownership and, with it, a new name. The name, on the sign to the diner, reads:

” *@# ” Earl’s Diner

When one wants to talk about this establishment, how ought one do so? My father has suggested “F’ing Earl’s” (aka “Effing Earl’s”), but the gerund doesn’t seem right. When I see an expletive marked typographically like this, usually I assume the word is shit, fuck, or a general, nonspecific phatic (same as using “!!!” or “?!?!” or even, as it’s becoming lexicalized, “WTF!”). But “Fuck Earl’s Diner” or “Shit Earl’s Diner” just does not make sense, at least not for someone who enjoys eating there.

So I think the key is in the quotes. The expletive is supposed to be a quote from Earl himself and act as an epithet (apparently Earl likes to curse a lot), like “Tiny Tim” or “Proud Mary” or “Bitter Betty.” But it’s confusing because the “*@#” modifies Earl, so having it be anything but an adjective seems wrong. Hence my dad’s suggestion for “F’ing,” which would seem to resolve the problem though without making literal sense: Earl is presumably not fucking or shitting; he just says “fuck” and “shit” a lot. I’m not sure we can win here when saying the name rather than reading it - there’s just too much else going on.

How would you say it? Any other similar examples you can think of?

25 countries under one top-level domain name

Filed under:ICTs, Words & Phrases — posted by squires on 5/25/2005 @ 4:47 pm

Furthering my fascination with top-level domain names, the first .eu site went live a few months ago, though you can’t register for one yet (thanks to Wainer Lusoli on the AoIR listserv/blog for this heads up). Here’s who will presumably be able to get one:

EC Regulation No 733/2002 states that only the following categories of companies, organisations and individuals will be able to register a .eu domain:

1. undertakings having their registered office, central administration or principal place of business within the European Community;
2. organisations established within the European Community without prejudice to the application of national law;
3. natural persons resident within the European Community.

So I wonder whether the .eu will be more popular than the currently active domain names that specify individual countries within the EU (.pl, .de, .uk, etc.). Also this is interesting because in the US, it seems there’s a trend to differentiate among sectors of websites, so you have the .us, which is really uncommon, but then we have .gov, .edu, .org, which all carry connotations of a given KIND of site. Whereas the .eu would seem to be an effort to generalize, not specify. We shouldn’t underestimate the importance of domain names as they relate to perceptions of nationalism or unified/differentiated clusters of websites - this is a big step for the EU.

Meanwhile, Blogos writes about an effort to introduce domain names in Greek characters - but they still have to use the top-level, country-connotative .gr. Soon to be .eu?

Domain names shall one day prove themselves as worthy an object of serious sociolinguistic study as have place names. I’m waiting…

AoIR Conference: T minus 5 months

Filed under:CMC — posted by squires on 5/24/2005 @ 6:48 pm

I haven’t yet posted about the Internet Research 6.0: Generations conference in Chicago, but since Emerging Communications did, and Netwoman did, and probably every other AoIRer with a blog did the same, I may as well.

So, I’ll be presenting a paper at IR 6.0, and you can read about the session I’m in, chaired by Naomi Baron, here. It’s called “Rethinking Discourse in Cyberspace: The Role of Speed in Shaping CMC Behavior,” and it should be great fun. The (I should hedge, rather hastily composed) abstract for my paper goes:

This paper examines gender and linguistic variation in English-language instant messaging (IM) conversations. Within a theoretical framework of variationist sociolinguistics (e.g., Labov 1994), the study analyzed the presence or absence of apostrophes in contractions and possessive nouns. Female subjects were significantly more likely to include apostrophes than were men, and female-female conversations contained a higher percentage of apostrophes than did male-male or male-female conversations. The paper discusses these findings with respect to dichotomies of spoken/written and standard/nonstandard language (cf. Baron 2004, Voida et al. 2002; Trudgill 1974) and suggests ways of applying these traditional notions of discourse to CMC.

Yes, a paper on apostrophes. I love my job.

The ringer’s a ringer

Filed under:ICTs — posted by squires on 5/21/2005 @ 4:46 pm

Overheard last week in an airport:

A: I love that ring.
B: What ring?
A: That ring, that cell phone ring that sounds like a real ring…
B: What?
A: Didn’t you hear that cell phone ring? It sounds like a real ring.
B: That was a real phone.
A: Huh?
B: There’s a real phone over there behind the counter.
A: Oh. Well some people have that cell phone ring that sounds like a real ring? You know?…

Not sure why this struck me as so funny at the time, but I wrote it down so I must’ve thought I was onto something. I think it’s for at least two of the following reasons:

1. It seems to demonstrate that cell phones have become the ‘default’ phones that we expect to hear ringing.
2. Despite (1), cell phones are not considered “real” phones.
3. We like the rings of “real” phones best.
4. Due to (2) and (3), we have [or ringmakers have] tried to make cell phones seem more like “real” phones, and one way of doing that is through their rings being made to sound alike.

My feeling is that we dislike ringtones, as much as we’re sometimes proud to find an especially “good” one, and prefer the old-fashioned landline ring whenever possible. This could be for social reasons, as in we’re used to the ring and it has some sort of symbolic meaning that ringtones don’t yet have. It could be for practical reasons - the old-fashioned ring is pretty unique, distinctive, and cuts through noise better than most ringtones. Or it could be quite simply part of the “real”/”unreal” perception: despite using cell phones more than landlines, people still consider landlines more “real” than cell phones. Ringers are one way we could make them seem more “real,” like what we’re used to, which is perhaps also a way to bring uniformity to our General Phone Experience.

Legalese vs. Leetspeak: a speak-off

Filed under:CMC, Sheer Cleverness — posted by squires on @ 11:45 am

Blinger was writing about how everyone was writing about the new Star Wars and Blinger hadn’t even seen the trailer, or wanted to see the trailer. So I was going to post a comment saying, you know, at least Blinger should see the leet-translated trailer. But behold! The leet-subtitled Star Wars trailer, taken down by LucasFilm!

But there’s fun to be had at the site still: the cease and desist letter from LucasFilm, translated into leet:

But we still totally pwn those flix. Those movies are mega ph4t lewt and we even found some sploitz that let us re-release them and make MAD BANK!

MangledWordMonger blames advertisement in magazine that is already pure advertising, just by a different name

Filed under:Words & Phrases — posted by squires on 5/17/2005 @ 11:04 pm

Last week on a US Airways flight, I picked up the Attache magazine, in which I found this headline in a special advertising section (love those things! they’re so brilliantly tricky - is it a REAL story about the newly renovated condos in South Florida, or is it just an advert?!) run by the Philadelphia Meeting & Conventions something-or-other:

It’s name is synonymous with history and food.

Oh, advertising. In the text, it’s (!) right:

Philadelphia. Its name is synonymous with history and food, from the Declaration of Independence to soft pretzels with yellow mustard.

I also had a little trouble with synonymous being used in this way, but then I looked it up at MW and the example sentence for sense 2 is:

to runners, Boston is synonymous with marathonRunners World

Durn.

[I'm sorry, I just realized this piece is a "special advertising feature," not a "special advertising section." This seems to mean that in some way, Attache is implicated in the production of the feature. Even more shame is due! Yay!]

For fans of Magnetic Fields and words

Filed under:Media, Words & Phrases — posted by squires on 5/15/2005 @ 12:22 pm

Check out last week’s installment of Use It or Lose It on The Next Big Thing. Stephin Merritt was charged with using the following words in song:

drury - illicit love; a beloved person
amorado - one who is in love
Capgras Syndrome - mental problem where you wake up thinking everyone in your life is an imposter

(paraphrase of definitions given by OUP’s Erin McKean)

He is one-third successful, singing “My dreary drury from Drury Lane…” I am shocked that the person who created “69 Love Songs” hadn’t yet succeeded with amorado, but I suppose one has to be properly inspired, and maybe “Amorado” wasn’t quite there (but come on, couldn’t it be a companion piece to “Desperado”?).

Validated!

Filed under:Words & Phrases — posted by squires on 5/13/2005 @ 10:25 pm

[Pre-post apology for potentially crappy phonetic transcription]

I say the word measure like /meyÊ’É™r/, something which has brought more than a few chuckles from my East Coast friends the past years, who generally say /mɛʒər/ and don’t understand saying it the other way. That’s right, I pronounce measure like MAYzhur, and I say /eyg/ instead of /É›g/ for egg, too. And I’m proud of it. From what I’ve experienced this is typical of Midwesterners, or at least Missourians.

I became aware of another manifestation of this pronunciation when I had a professor in college who I heard say pleasure like /pleyʒər/, which I say /plɛʒər/. After hearing him say it, I asked him where he was from, and sure enough - my hometown in Missouri! Remarkable.

Anyway, so the other day I heard this song on the radio which takes the pattern even further than I ever expected. It’s by Blanche, it’s called “Garbage Picker,” and there is a line that goes:

You measured your pleasures by my treasures

In which the singer says /meyÊ’É™rd/, /pleyÊ’É™rz/, and /treyÊ’É™rz/. Now, this is the only time I’ve ever heard treasure said this way. The band is from Detroit, but I don’t know from where individual members hail. Needless to say, I’m intrigued, and happy that this pronunciation is going public.

*This post is in loving memory of my pure Midwestern grandma, Anna Gertrude Ash (1917-2005), whom I loved immayzhurably much.*

Forwardese: Which you’s on first? (or, Email Deixis)

Filed under:CMC — posted by squires on 5/7/2005 @ 12:50 pm

Arnold Zwicky had a post up on the Log a few days ago that caught my attention, about “Replyese.” He describes an email written to him, then forwarded to another, who got confused about the referent of you included in the original message. Since the original message was written to Zwicky, the you obviously referred to him: You, Arnold Zwicky, did such and such. But when Zwicky forwarded the message to someone else, the referent somehow got lost, despite (and this is what gets Zwicky) having the relevant information about original participants in the forwarded header to the message (”To…From…Re…”).

He asks whether the person who couldn’t interpret the you is speaking a different language:

B is treating e-mail as an instance of a special register of English, Replyese, while A and I are reading it as an exchange in everyday English, supplemented by a variety of extra information (like times in GMT). In particular, A and I think that since A was writing to me — a fact made clear by the “From:” and “To:” headers — the pronoun “you” refers to me, just as it would in a note to me or a phone call to me. B, on the other hand, expects (I surmise) that persons will be identified by their full names (and e-addresses) in the body of the message; the headers are irrelevant.

He explains the instance in terms of B expecting proper names to be used instead of pronouns like you, more formally identifying whoever was involved. But instead of looking at this as a case of B speaking Replyese, I think Zwicky may not speaking “everyday English” either - he’s speaking Forwardese, which B isn’t fluent in. To speak Forwardese, one must be a communication historian. If someone forwards you an email, don’t you look for the history of where that email has been? Where it originated, and who passed it on to you, and all stops made along the way? And in Forwardese, as Zwicky points out, the headers are crucially relevant.

In an everyday conversation you have A saying to B:

I (A) told you (B) I’d go to your mom’s (C) house later, and I meant it.

Later, B tells his mom:

Mom, A’s coming over to your house later.

There’s no equivocation about pronoun reference here; even on the phone, it’s pretty clear who you and I are. Now, let’s do this in Forwardese.

To: B
From: A
Re: your mom’s house

yo -

i told you i’d go to your mom’s house later, and i meant it.

a.

Say that B wants to tell his mom that A is coming over, but B is lazy. So he forwards the message to his mom:

To: Mom
From: B
Re: FWD: your mom’s house

—Forwarded message follows—-
To: B
From: A
Re: your mom’s house

yo -

i told you i’d go to your mom’s house later, and i meant it.

a.

Now. Mom might reply:

To: A
From: Mom
Re: Re: FWD: your mom’s house

sounds good A, any special requests?

—B wrote:
…….[etc.]……..

Or Mom might pass the email on to Dad:

To: Dad
From: Mom
Re: FWD: FWD: Re: your mom’s house

—Forwarded message follows—

To: Mom
From: B
Re: FWD: your mom’s house

—Forwarded message follows—-
To: B
From: A
Re: your mom’s house

yo -

i told you i’d go to your mom’s house later, and i meant it.

a.

To interpret all those pronouns, you have to know a) who sent you the forwarded email, and b) who sent the email that’s being forwarded to you. So you must be adept at “matching up” names with pronouns based on explicit textual clues, but they’re clues that may not be obvious (even though they are explicit - the email addresses are right there, you got your “To From Re,” etc. - they might also be hidden, embedded in more text). In everyday conversations this is taken care of; you and I have no leeway (unless you’re talking the general you, but that’s different altogether). In email, on the other hand - forwarded emailing in particular - it can be slipperier (?) when you have to put yourself in a different position relative to who’s addressing you directly, who may be addressing you indirectly, and who they may be addressing directly or indirectly, knowingly or unknowingly. And so on.

Coming soon: The Sociolinguistics of CC, courtesy of PolyCon. (You think I’m kidding? CC and BCC add, like, exponential complications, ripe for elucidation.)

There’s a chewy linguistic nugget in the middle

Filed under:Outliers — posted by squires on 5/6/2005 @ 8:05 pm

In the middle of my friends’ very short film, that is, which was part of the 48 Hour Film Project - DC style. The nugget has comically to do with pharmaceutical industry naming practices. If that’s not enticement enough, check out their required elements for the film, in the genre of “mockumentary”:

R. Moellering, hypochondriac
bottle of wine
the line “It was like that when I got here.”

= Recipe for awesome.

(My friends are the tap dancers.)

(The above link is for QuickTime. If you ain’t got QT, try this.)


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