Wow.  Just ... no.  Do they actually think this will convince anyone?



Yeeeeeaaaaahhhh ... I think I'll wait on responding to this one. Something tells me my email address won't be rendered deactivated any time soon.

... or, Attack of the Footnotes and Odd Analogies:

To discuss the thoughts and motivations of “the real Rush Limbaugh” would require expertise in
both the psychological sciences and the psychic arts, neither of which are within the disciplinary
purview of this paper. The truth is that “the real Rush Limbaugh” – the flesh-and-blood human
who opens and closes the studio door and has mental processes which are not translated into speech
for the radio-listening public – is entirely unavailable for analysis.

Instead, this paper deals with the character named “Rush Limbaugh,” the primary on-air
embodiment of the message-persona created by the off-air human Limbaugh. Much as the novelist
Philip Roth created a character named Philip Roth to serve as the protagonist of The Plot Against
America (2004)4 , the political entertainer Rush Limbaugh has created an eponymous character to
serve as the protagonist of his eponymous show. Although the name will not appear in quotes
throughout the paper, it is important to remember that, unless explicitly stated otherwise, “Rush Limbaugh” in this paper refers to the character, and not to the entertainer who portrays him.5









4 (and created two different “Philip Roths” for a previous novel)

5 Of course, just as Roth’s “Roths” are semi-autobiographical figures, Limbaugh’s “Limbaugh” no doubt bears
some resemblance to the man himself. It is, after all, difficult to imagine a die-hard liberal who would be willing to
carry on such a seamless and influential charade for so long. Still, any attempt to determine the extent or nature of
that resemblance is nothing more than unproductive speculation.

A-yup. I've well and truly lost it. The "previous novel" to which I allude, by the way, is Operation Shylock (1993), but I'm damned if I'm going to have two Philip Roth novels in the bibliography of a paper that's really not at all about Roth. Like, at all.

Also, if this feels kind of like staring into the looking glass for too long ... well, all I can say is, be grateful I didn't paste my next paragraph about how the Rush character creates other characters.

Hey, smart people!  I've recently had an idea that I can't actually flesh out without knowing something about blackface - its construction in modern media, its meaning/effects, that sort of thing.  And I don't, really.

My question to you-all is this: what should I be reading about (modern) blackface?  Classics, new cutting-edge stuff, anything that I'll look stupid talking about blackface without having read.

My darling checks my 6-minute-and-change transcript of Rush Limbaugh for accuracy against the sound clip - despite being utterly uninterested in How People We Disagree With Do Fascinating Things With Language.

In return, I take out the bathroom trash.  And the kitchen trash.  And the not-very-sorted recycling.  In the snow.


Sounds about right to me.  ;c)

To the few people on my friends list who:

a) use ASL as their primary language,

and

b) haven't seen this yet, even though it's been cross-posted shamefully ...


I'm looking for people to participate in a study I'm running, which looks at newly-created signs.*  As part of this study, you will watch video clips of signs and rate them on a scale of 1 to 7 based on how well they would work as signs of ASL.

There are 30 signs, and the study shouldn't take longer than 20 minutes.  (Some of the video clips may take a little long to load, depending on how much traffic YouTube is experiencing, but the clips themselves are very short.)

If you finish the survey, you can enter a drawing for a $20 gift certificate to any online store you choose.  I only need about 20 people to take the survey, and I'll be giving out two gift certificates, so your chances are actually pretty good.  :c)

Click here to take the survey.



*Details:  This study is being conducted for classroom purposes, which means it is not governed by the Institutional Review Board for research on human subjects.  However, you should know that there are no known risks in this project (except maybe boredom).  If you have concerns about the way the survey is being run, please feel free to contact me at nnicola@uchicago.edu.  Or, you know, leave me a comment.

"By the law of the excluded middle, either 'A is B' or 'A is not B' must be true. Hence either 'the present King of France is bald' or 'the present King of France is not bald' must be true. Yet if we enumerated the things that are bald, and then the things that are not bald, we should not find the present King of France in either list. Hegelians, who love a synthesis, will probably conclude that he wears a wig."




In entirely related news, I am a big nerd.

I hardly know whether to use my "language" icon or my "crazy dog lady" icon for this one, since my great love of Get Fuzzy stems from my great love of very silly dogs.  The strip in question here (from two days ago - hat tip to Barbara for pointing it out), though, only features Bucky Katt (and not Satchel Pooch), so "language" icon it is.

(original here)

I'm way too tired to write a really good analysis at the moment, but I wanted to scoop LanguageLog with an interesting linguisticky cartoon.  ;c)

Non-linguists, note that the reason this is funny is the following:

- Rob (the human) is asking Bucky to envision a world in which Bucky [did not think about killing things] and [did not think about eating things]. 

Under this reading, thoughts are ok if they involve neither killing nor eating.*

- Bucky is perplexed by what he interprets as Rob's suggestion that he not think about [killing-and-eating things]. 

Under this reading, thoughts are ok if they do not involve both killing and eating things.  So, thoughts that involve on or the other (in this case, killing without eating) should be fine.


This, my friends, is what linguists do with our free time.


*Also note that I'm simplifying a lot.  I don't get the sense that Rob objects to Bucky eating things other than the carcasses of his latest prey.  Which means that, in addition to combining "killing" and "eating," the word "and" also implies a temporal relationship, maybe even a causative one.  Homework for non-linguists: why are (1) and (2) a not like (1) and (2) b?

(1) a.  Two and three make five.
      b.  Three and two make five.

(2) a.  She got married and had a baby.
      b.  She had a baby and got married.

I'm presenting at LSA!!!

(more details to follow, after I finish my syntax homework...)

So, I now know several people who have heard back from the LSA about papers they've submitted.  Still waiting for news about mine ...

Actually, that's far more melodramatic than the truth, but when else am I going to get to use a Jewel quote as the title of a post?

Readers may notice - with varying degrees of surprise, most of them fairly low degrees - that I haven't updated in a while.  Well, since my last post, the only really noteworthy thing I've done is be recumbent on a couch in rural Virginia and recover from a car crash while having no access to internet.



In the meantime, I'm just very sore and not capable of lifting much.  (And no, that does not help me unpack stuff in my new apartment.)

Anyway, that's my latest Lame Excuse For Not Updating More.  Hopefully, my next lame excuse will be less dramatic.  ;c)

It's a Walt Whitman kind of day today. More precisely, it's a "Song Of Myself 18 & 19" kind of day: a day when we can, and should, forgive ourselves our own failures, real or imagined, and take our deserved place among the multitudes.

( I might not tell everybody, but I will tell you )

I don't know if I've posted this before. I've been trying not to repeat previous poem-posts, even ones that didn't occur this month - which is the absolute only reason I haven't posted this yet.

In any event, I haven't found this in my archives, so I hope it's new to you.

( Villanelle If You Want to Be a Bad-Ass )

Today is Easter, if you're not Orthodox. (Ok! I get it! I'm wrong!  *smile*  Happens.) And although Easter was celebrated on April 23rd in 1916, I still think W.B. Yeats' requiem for that day is the most appropriate thing I can post.

This is one of my favorite poems - of Yeats', and in general - and I could probably recite it from memory if called upon to do so. But I won't make this a voice post. Let Yeats speak for himself.*

( I write it out in a verse ... )


*with a few exegetic hotlinks

So, owing to a fabulous early-afternoon spent with museumfreak as she passed through Chicago, today's poem comes later in the day than it otherwise might have.

Still, in my time zone, I have an hour to go before it's actually late.

While I was trekking around town, I started reading Dog Years, the poet Mark Doty's memoir of life with his golden retriever, Beau, and his black lab, Arden. In honor of the book - which any dog-lover should read, and will love - I give you "Golden Retrievals," by Doty.

Beau Doty, that is.

( Golden Retrievals )

... because every time you make a definitive statement of The Only Type You're Attracted To, lo and behold, you meet someone fabulous who doesn't fit. ;c)

Today's poem:

( A Ballad of Two Knights )

-Sara Teasdale

Ah, but it's not.

Something I've been wondering about - in fact, something which managed to wake me up in the middle of the night, in a cold sweat. (I suspect someone in my dream made me analyze this on penalty of ... I dunno, penalties.)

(1) If I were a three-eyed pirate queen, my lover would find me sexy.

Does this mean:

a) The person who is currently my lover would find me sexy if I were a three-eyed pirate queen.

or

b) In a reality where I was a three-eyed pirate queen, the person who in that reality would be my lover would find me sexy.


Incidentally, I know this lends itself to both readings; I'm curious as to which leaps out at you first, or which seems in your gut to be a "better" reading. There is no right answer.


HOWEVER:

What about

(2) If I were a doctor, my mother would be proud of me.

a) The person who is currently my mother would be proud of me if I were a doctor.

versus

b) In a reality where I was a doctor, the person who in that reality was my mother would be proud of me.

(versus, I suppose,

c) In general, people who are mothers of doctors are proud of their doctor offspring.)


Do you have a different preference in case #2?


ETA: ( linggeek spoiler alert! )

Further proof, I guess, that some linguists - either my classmates or my LJ-friends - are the world's most worstest native speakers. (I want that shirt...)

Today's poem is "For What Binds Us," by Jane Hirschfield. While I love her description of love, let's be honest - I chose this poem because, as a former fencer, I love the idea that scars and other physical wounds are marks of pride, of something you've been through and survived. I always kind of wanted a dueling scar right down the side of my cheek, to prove that I'd been in a real live duel. If I had known the term "proud flesh" then, I probably would have used it. A lot.

Also, I'm a big nerd. Y'know.

( For What Binds Us )

Today's poem is "Bette Davis," by Hazel Nolan.

( Bette Davis )

Today's poetry post comes courtesy of Hafiz, a 14th-century Persian Sufi. It also comes courtesy of my aunt and cousin, who sent me photocopies of Hafiz poems with my birthday present this year.

They know me too well ... ;c)



... as a note, I might post another Hafiz poem later this month, because although I'm trying to limit myself to one work per poet, I also really like "Dog's Love." *smile*

I have been informed all over my friends list that April is National Poetry Month, and that it is customary to celebrate by posting a poem a day. I'm already late, though this should not surprise you if you know me at all.

In any event, this means that I'm posting yesterday's poem-of-the-day along with today's. Subsequent days should be a little more in line with the Rules. ;c)

We begin with a love poem by e.e. cummings, and an anti-love poem by Dorothy Parker, which I had the good fortune to be able to quote on my pragmatics qualifying exam. 'Cause Dorothy Parker is just that cool.


( 'As we lie side by side' )


( Comment )