From the American tv series Emergency! S7 E11 “The Convention” (from 7/3/79), a tv movie following the regular series. Two women end up serving as a paramedic team together — female paramedics were a new thing at the time, only grudgingly accepted, and they were normally paired with a male partner — so a male paramedic tells them the watch commander wouldn’t approve of the women teaming up. One of the women good-naturedly but pointedly snaps back at him:

(1a) How would you like a thick lip, to go with your thick head? No offense.

With the idiomatic tag No offense — a shorter version of No offense intended — literally meaning something like ‘I intend/mean you no offense by saying this’, but almost always conveying something more complex than that.

The tag is very often introductory, and followed by but, rather than appended:

(1b) No offense, but how would you like a thick lip, to go with your thick head?

Quite commonly the speaker does in fact intend to offend, criticize, or insult the addressee, but piously disavows these intentions so as to deflect negative reactions by the addressee. What’s going on in (1a) is, however, a bit more indirect than that.

The show. On the (complex) episode of Emergency!, from the IMDb plot summary:

San Francisco firefighters and paramedics rescue a man trapped on the rigging of a schooner. A paramedic convention brings [Los Angeles paramedics] [John] Gage [Randolph Mantooth] and [Roy] DeSoto [Kevin Tighe] back to San Francisco, where they assist a choking victim in a restaurant, then deliver a baby while two female paramedics [Gail (Patty McCormack) and Laurie (Deirdre Lenihan)] treat a sniper’s shooting victims. [more action follows]

It’s a nice touch that John and Roy deliver the baby, while Gail and Laurie treat the shooting victims.

The idiom. Then from the Merriam-Webster on-line dictionary site:

no offense idiom — used before a statement to indicate that one does not want to cause a person or group to feel hurt, angry, or upset by what is about to be said // No offense, but I think you are mistaken. // “No offense, but you’re nutty as a fruitcake.”— Carl Hiaasen

The first example is a simple softening of unwelcome news, but the Hiaasen is a deliberately offensive no offense, with the tag serving as mere deflection. Merely deflective no offense is so common in actual practice that some take it to be the norm, as in this meme:

(#1)

And on the net, merely deflective no offense is so common that it has an initialistic abbreviation:

(#2)

But earnestly softening no offense (as in Merriam-Webster’s first example) isn’t rare, as in this touching example from FOUND magazine:  “No Offense Intended”,  found by Sam in San Francisco:

Just saw this note on the ground after leaving a coffee shop at 18th Ave. and Geary Blvd., and thought it was a pretty fair and balanced proposition for a casual “dudes only” hookup.

(#3)

[Digression on if you’re down (for a hookup). From NOAD:
adj. down: … 4 [predicative] US informal supporting or going along with someone or something: you got to be down with me | she was totally down for a selfie | “You going to the movies?” “Yo, I’m down.”.]

The note-writer did his best on the task of attempting to negotiate a sexual connection while not knowing how his offer would be taken — while recognizing that many straight guys are enraged on learning that some other men might find them sexually desirable. (Presumably because being an object of other men’s sexual desire is being “treated like a woman”, and that’s a deep threat to their masculinity.)

But back to (1a), which is neither earnestly softening nor merely deflective, but something in between. The female paramedic who uttered (1a) was in fact wielding no offense to bring her male colleague into line, by telling him the hard truth that he was behaving badly, but doing this with enough empathy for him as a colleague that he should be able to see that her words weren’t a matter of personal animus against him, and doing this with some humor (the mock-threatened thick lip). She was teaching him a lesson. In the actual story, it seems to have had the appropriately sympathetic but chastening effect. A very nice example of female assertiveness, cleverly and humanely deployed.

(I should note that this episode comes very close to the end of the show, which for years was extraordinarily male-oriented, with only the head nurse Dixie McCall (played by Julie London) playing a major role, as the highly empathetic tough broad at Rampart General Hospital — though she was a truly wonderful character. Now, it’s not fair to criticize this show in particular for its heavy male orientation, since that was pretty much the style of the time, and the show was actually quite good at depicting male friendship, male competition, the sexual marketplace, and symbolic displays of masculinity, all with some subtlety and good humor. But until the late episodes, the character Dixie McCall pretty much had to carry the weight for more than half of humanity.)

Deflections. No offense (intended) is frequently deployed as a deflection, and it’s just one in a whole armamentarium of deflections, among them: I don’t mean to critcize/complain, but … ; Not to criticize/carp, but …; and so on — all going on to express criticism, complaint, and accusation, while at the same time refusing to accept responsibility for these judgments and so trying to avert the weight of their targets’ pain and outrage. The strategy is sometimes referred to as “politeness”, but it’s rarely experienced as such.

The One Big Happy cartoon from 11/26, just up in my feed:

Crucial fact: if the question had been “Are you decisive?”, Ruthie’s answer would have been different: “I don’t know — because I don’t know what that means”. Instead, the question was linguified — it was about what Ruthie would say about her decisiveness, not directly about her decisiveness. So she answered that question.

Linguification. The term is due to Geoff Pullum, in a Language Log posting of 7/3/06, “Linguifying”, where he wrote:

To linguify a claim about things in the world is to take that claim and construct from it an entirely different claim that makes reference to the words or other linguistic items used to talk about those things, and then use the latter claim in a context where the former would be appropriate.

An example, from Geoff’s posting:

It’s difficult to find a piece of writing in the mainstream press which mentions the word ‘bisexual’ without finding that it is immediately followed by the word ‘chic’.

Of which Geoff says:

Instead of talking about mainstream media attitudes, [the writer] linguified the claim, constructing a new statement about obligatory word adjacency in running text.

In this case, the linguified claim is just flat false, so there’s a question about why a writer would choose it.

The OBH case is different, because there’s a genuine connection between the bald query and the linguified one: if you believe you’re decisive, then you should be willing to say that you are.

So the linguified query is a species of question hedging through various forms of indirectness: rather than ask baldly and challengingly, “Are you decisive?”, you can soften the query a bit, make it a bit more polite, for instance by asking about beliefs or opinions: “In your opinion, are you decisive?” or “Do you think / believe (that) you are decisive?”

Or you can use a softening linguification, as above.

The 11/27 One Big Happy strip, which came up in my comics feed recently:

The father’s question, asking for a choice, appears to be an opinion-seeking question, of a sort that adults often exchange amongst one another to make pleasant small talk or as a kind of game. But note the father’s open laptop: the opinion-seeking question is being used here as a form of test question, in which the kids are supposed to display their knowledge of culturally significant people. And the kids are perfectly aware that the exercise is some kind of test.

There is, unfortunately, another variable here: the father’s question offers choices at two points: what person (that’s the question he’s intending to ask) and living or dead (which the father intends to be clarifying the range of persons that could be possible answers, but which the kids take to be the question at issue.

Yes, it’s preposterous. But the environment of test questions of all sorts is highly artificial, especially for older children, like Ruthie or Joe: who knows what sort of absurd questions, ostensibly asking for an opinion, might be thrown at you as a test?

So they opt for the living or dead question as the one at hand, and disagree about what the “right” answer should be.

Earlier on this blog: infoseek vs. test questions. In my 8/22/16 posting “Asking questions and giving commands”, which begins with an exchange between Ezra Beavers, age 3, and his mother, Janice Ta:

Ezra: Mommy, do “boy” and “toy” rhyme?

Janice: Yes, they do! You’re very good at rhyming. Do “boy” and “man” rhyme?

Ezra: No. You’re not very good at rhyming.

Ah, a significant ambiguity in the use of interrogative sentences: between information-seeking interrogatives (infoseek questions, I’ll call them), like Ezra’s do “boy” and “toy” rhyme?; and examination interrogatives (test questions, I’ll call them; they’re also known as quiz questions), like Janice’s do “boy” and “man” rhyme?

(These aren’t the only uses of interrogative sentences. There are plenty more, including several types of “rhetorical questions”: (positive assertion) Am I angry? (You bet I am!); (negative assertion) Can you have ice cream for breakfast? (Hell, no!); (assent) Is the Pope Catholic? (= Yes.))

Infoseek questions are the pragmatically prototypical interrogatives, acquired first and statistically dominant in conversation and texts. In its simplest variant, the speaker lacks some piece of information I (or is unsure about it), wants to acquire I, believes the addressee might be able to supply I, and is requesting the addressee to do so. Infoseek questions are a basic tool in coping with ignorance about things in the world; we are all ignorant of a great many things, small children especially so — so once they have the linguistic resources, they ask an enormous number of infoseek questions.

In test questions, the speaker has the relevant knowledge about I and is asking the addressee to perform by displaying the extent of their knowledge. This performance might be intended as part of a learning routine (the assumption being that the addressee should have I and so needs practice and correction), as an evaluation exercise (about the addressee’s knowledge), as part of a competition, whatever.

Infoseek questions can be directed at a wide range of addressees, but test questions are heavily loaded socioculturally: only certain speakers can direct them at only certain addressees, and only in certain contexts. One of the burdens of being a child in our culture is that all sorts of adults subject you to barrages of test questions, to which you are expected to respond cooperatively. (Similarly for people in an assortment of interview circumstances — for jobs, for school admission, to receive awards, in medical evaluations, etc. — where infoseek questions and test questions are likely to be mixed together.) Ezra has (apparently) not yet twigged to this fact: he asks infoseek questions and expects that others are doing the same. So if his mother asks if boy and man rhyme, that must be because she doesn’t know whether they do, which means that there’s a lot about rhyming that she doesn’t know.

Then there are opinion-seeking questions, which kids use (of course) amongst themselves much as adults do. But the landscape shifts seriously when opinion-seeking is wrenched into the test-question context, and Daddy is taking your answers down on his laptop..

The grilling of the One Big Happy kids on their social / cultural knowledge as evidenced in their language use continues in the 11/30 strip (previous episode: my 12/20/20 posting “What question are you asking?”):

(#1) Note the context. One person could ask another whether they used sarcasm, just as chat or small talk, but that’s not what’s going on in the strip. This is some kind of test — note the dad’s laptop — and Joe is perfectly aware of that, though he has no idea what’s being tested.

Then there’s something of a trap in the question “Do you use sarcasm?” It’s perfectly possible to know how to use sarcasm without knowing that the contemptuous verbal practice you’re engaging in is in fact called sarcasm: you know how, but you don’t know what it’s called. As turns out to be the case for Joe: he can wield sarcasm just fine — he uses a sarcasm-devoted linguistic form in Like I know what X is, conveying that you don’t know what X is and expressing contempt for someone who expects that you should.

An analogy without the contempt: it would in principle be possible to adore the  Canadian dish poutine without knowing that that’s what it’s called — so that an honest answer to the question Do you like poutine? would be I don’t know; what is poutine? — a non-contemptuous counterpart to Joe’s Like I know what sarcasm is.

I have no idea of the range of sarcasm-devoted linguistic forms in English, but it includes at least Like I know what X is (how to do X, who X is, where X is etc.)– and its expanded version Do I look like I know what X is?

Two examples of the expanded version (from American popular culture).

— from the Know Your Meme site (in Texan):

(#2)

“Do I Look Like I Know What a JPEG is?” is a memorable quote uttered by Hank Hill in season 9 [episode 11] of the American animated television series King of the Hill.

Origin: On April 10th, 2005, Fox aired the King of the Hill episode “Redcorn Gambles with His Future.” In the episode, Hank Hill is tasked with organizing the Strickland Family Fun Day event by his boss, Buck Strickland. In one scene, Hank, at a print shop, irately asks the clerk if it looks like he knows what a JPEG is before telling the clerk that all he wants is a picture of a “god-dang hot dog”.

— from the Look Mamma! site, this badge / pin / fridge magnet:

(#3)

A Boxing Day cartoon by Wayno (with Dan Piraro at Bizarro studios North):

(#1) Wayno’s title:”New Year, New Symbol: Introducing the Pipe of Ambiguity”

Here, this picks out, or points to, the image just above it, which is indeed a symbol. In general, this has no fixed meaning, instead gaining its meaning from the context it’s in.

Expressions that work this way are called deictic expressions. NOAD offers the further examples

here, you, me, that one there, next Tuesday

The particular usage in #1 is a subcase of what I called Deictic Predication in my 5/2/20 posting “This is a pipe”:

My nonce name for a clause construction in English (also usable for its close parallels in French and some other languages), with default form and interpretation:

Deictic Predication:

Subject: a demonstrative (this / these / that / those)

Predicate: a PRS form of be + a Pred(icate) NP

Interpretation: the Subject overtly (when accompanied by a pointing gesture to some target) or covertly (by being juxtaposed to some target) refers to the target, and the clause asserts that the Pred NP applies to it

So: I stand close to some creature, and either point to it or just announce This is a wolf, thereby asserting that this creature is a wolf. Or I stand close to some person, and either point to them or just announce This is Joe, thereby asserting that this person is some contextually salient person named Joe.

That posting continues:

These are straightforward examples of Deictic Predication. But it’s a flexible construction, and a major conventional extension of its flexibility — this is absolutely everday English usage — is for demonstratives as used with simulacra or reproductions: drawings, paintings, photographs, sculptures. As far as I can tell, the demonstrative in Deictic Predication in such cases can always be used to refer not to the simulacra but to the the things those simulacra represent.

(#2) Ceci est une pipe

This is a pipe, in conjunction with a drawing, painting, photograph, or sculpture of a pipe, straightforwardly can always be an assertion not about the image but about the thing itself. (In fact, such locutions most often are.) That is a brute fact about usage. It’s a systematic metonymy.

So, in fact, the image in #1 could also be captioned This is a pipe.

Further examples from that posting:

(#3)

(#4) This is me at the hardware store

The surrealist paradoxical variant: the original Magrittean disavowal Ceci n’est pas une pipe ‘This is not a pipe’:

(#5) from 7/10/17 “Taking the Magrittean Disavowal at face value”: “In Magritte’s The Treachery of Images, the text disavows the image … so you have the choice of trusting the image (in which case, the text is false) or trusting the text (in which case, the image is counterfeit).”

(There’s a Page on this blog about postings on Magrittean disavowals.)

But #1 and #2 are in not paradoxical or in any way remarkable.

An academic masterpiece. Return now to the larger topic of deixis (NOAD: “noun deixis: Linguistics the function or use of deictic words, forms, or expressions.”) Here there’s a source that I view as a masterpiece of academic writing (from linguistics), something that should be much more widely known, in part because it’s great fun. From John Lawler’s webpages:

Fillmore’s 1971 Santa Cruz Deixis Lectures

In the summer of 1971, Professor Charles Fillmore delivered a set of six lectures at the University of California, Santa Cruz on the topic of Deixis, which was at the time a new idea in linguistics. Fillmore’s lectures have become classics of linguistic writing — clear, fascinating, full of familiar facts put together in surprising ways, and (as I can attest, because I was in the audience) delivered with great charm, and perfect comedic timing.

The lectures were later distributed for many years as samizdaţ by the Indiana University Linguistics Club, and finally published as a book in the 1990s. Every linguist is or should be familiar with them, but practically nobody else has ever heard of them.

Therefore, as a public educational service, I have scanned my old IULC copy and put them up on the Web, so that I and other teachers can link to them. The quality of reproduction is lousy, but — in my estimation, and that of many others — they’re the best linguistic writing of the 20th century. They’re worth it.

There are six lectures, available either as a single (3 MB)  or as individual PDFs, around 500 KB each

This is the crude, but cheapest possible, version.

There’s also the more durable (but costly) version from CSLI Publications at Stanford Univ. Summarized on that site:

Lectures on Deixis by Charles Fillmore (1997)

Every language has lexical items and grammatical forms which can be interpreted only when the sentences in which they occur are understood as being anchored in some social context. This context must be defined in such a way as to identify the participants in the communication act, their location in space, and the time during which the communication act is performed. Aspects of language which require this sort of contextualization are known as deictic forms.

These forms are the subject of this series of lectures given by Charles J. Fillmore. The lectures reprinted here were given in Santa Cruz in the summer of 1971. Fillmore begins this series of lectures with the thorough examination of one simple English sentence, “May we come in?” He then devotes two lectures to non-deictic conceptions of space and time. Spatial and temporal notions that have no connection to the observer’s points of view are examined as a preface to the examination of deictic conceptions of these notions. Deictically anchored conceptions of space and time are then addressed with special attention to the motion verbs “come” and “go”. Finally, Fillmore takes up the topics of discourse and social deixis. Discourse deixis. Discourse deixis examines the choice of lexical and grammatical elements which indicate of otherwise refer to some portion or aspect of the ongoing discourse. Social deixis studies that aspect of sentences which reflect or establish or are determined by certain realities of the social situation in which the speech act occurs.

These ideas and thoughts are presented in their original and highly readable forms. These lectures will serve, as they have for the past twenty-five years, as a foundation for the study of deictic forms.

All this starting from simple everyday examples like This is a symbol and This is a pipe.

A while back on Facebook, the following exchange — call it X1 — appeared out of the blue:

Dennis Lewis: In Hyacinth’s defense, I doubt many natives of Britain know the Super Bowl is being played tomorrow.

It’s like Mrs. Bucket’s American counterpart asking if the World Cup [AZ: the World Cup, the soccer contest, has a trophy, but it’s not in the form of a cup] has hand-painted periwinkles [AZ: flowers suitable as decorations on teacups].

Hyacinth Bouquet > Dennis Lewis: Sheridan has a large collection of sports cups.

I could recognize familiar stuff in there, but was also baffled by parts of it. Gamely, however, I responded to the developing discussion of ambiguities in cup:

AZ > Hyacinth Bouquet: sports cups (for insertion in an athletic supporter / jockstrap) are rarely made of bone china, for obvious reasons. Sometimes, beauty must give way to practicality.

So I’ll start with that.

Three (families of) senses of cup. Among those in NOAD:

— a small bowl-shaped container for drinking from, typically having a handle (to appreciate some of the complexities concealed in typically here, see William Labov’s famous study “The boundaries of words and their meanings”, in Bailey & Shuy, New Ways of Analyzing Variation in English (1973), on the boundaries of CUP)

(#1) A Royal Worcester Sheridan teacup

— an ornamental trophy in the form of a cup, usually made of gold or silver and having a stem and two handles, awarded as a prize in a contest; (Cup) a contest in which an ornamental trophy in the form of a cup is awarded

(#2) Trophy cups

— a jockstrap having a protective reinforcement of rigid plastic or metal [AZ: or such a reinforcement]

(#3) An athletic / sports cup (a plastic reinforcement for insertion in a pocket in a jockstrap)

Identities. Hyacinth Bucket / Bouquet was certainly familiar to me. From Wikipedia:

(#4) Patricia Routledge as Hyacinth Bucket in Keeping Up Appearances

Keeping Up Appearances is a British sitcom created and written by Roy Clarke. It originally aired on BBC1 from 1990 to 1995. The central character is an eccentric and snobbish lower middle class social climber, Hyacinth Bucket (Patricia Routledge), who insists that her surname is pronounced “Bouquet”.

Call this identity tvHB, for the tv character Hyacinth Bucket / Bouquet. She hasn’t appeared at all in this discussion. Instead, we have some person or persons posting on Facebook under the name Hyacinth Bouquet. Call this identity pseudoHB. We know absolutely nothing about this character, since Hyacinth Bouquet is a pseudonym, and pseudonymous writers are free to conceal any facts about themselves and to invent any nonsense they wish about themselves. (On the net, pseudonyms are often used to cloak malicious postings, but there are other possibilities.)

On their FB page, pseudoHB identifies themselves as “Hyacinth Bucket, Comedian” — as distinct from “Mrs Hyacinth Bucket, Fictional Character” (tvH), thus suggesting that whatever they write is sheer invention, for fun.

At this point I wondered where Dennis Lewis’s opening contribution to X1 —  “In Hyacinth’s defense, I doubt many natives of Britain know the Super Bowl is being played tomorrow” — came from, in particular who the Hyacinth was, and why the Super Bowl was relevant to the conversation. So I wrote Dennis, who told me that pseudoHB had posted X2:

an image of Hyacinth Bucket having tea al fresco with the Dowager Countess of Grantham [from the tv series <em>Downton Abbey</em>] and the text: “The Super Bowl? Is it Wedgwood?”

I never saw this material, and it seems to have disappeared irretrievably from FB. After a bit of research, it became clear to me that this image and text were not from the tv show (you can search all episodes of the show), though there is a brief (1:06) telephone exchange between tvHB and the Dowager Countess: “Hyacinth Invites The Dowager Countess to a Candlelight Supper” from S2 E3, viewable here.

That is, pseudoHB’s X2 is sheer invention, a kind of cartoon, presumably a matter of image manipulation by software. The Hyacinth Bucket in it is yet another identity, a character I’ll call cartoonHB. The exchange in X1 is about cartoonHB.

Bullshit artistry. The background is Harry Frankfurt’s 2005 book On Bullshit; according to Wikipedia, the book

defines the concept and analyzes the applications of bullshit in the context of communication. Frankfurt determines that bullshit is speech intended to persuade without regard for truth. The liar cares about the truth and attempts to hide it; the bullshitter doesn’t care if what they say is true or false, but rather only cares whether their listener is persuaded.

I see the bullshit artist, a bit more broadly, as aiming only at a performance (at moving their audience  in some way or another, not necessarily by persuading them), and see them as not only failing to care about truth and falsity, but also failing to care about consistency. Maybe it’s all a joke — “just pulling your chain” —  but it’s some kind of show.

I’ve come to suspect that pseudoHB is a bullshit artist, passing off their invented scene X2 as a moment from the tv show and claiming in the final bit of X1 that “Sheridan has a large collection of sports cups”, when Sheridan is not a china company (instead, it’s the name of vaguely similar patterns from many different china companies), and when I haven’t found any bone china that comes in sports patterns. I’ll expand on these factual observations below, but if pseudoHB is a bullshit artist, then what I say is beside the point; the bullshit artist makes no factual claims, just puts on their show.

Addendum: Sheridan china. In any case, for the record: there is no Sheridan china company. Instead, many different china companies have produced Sheridan-pattern china at one time or another.

In #1 above, a Royal Worcester Sheridan teacup. From the Microwave Cooking for One site:

Royal Worcester Sheridan was produced from 1993 to 2001.

From the same site:

(#5) Noritake Sheridan (69533) teacups

Noritake Sheridan is the name of two discontinued patterns. Noritake Sheridan (69533) is a vintage pattern orginally introduced around 1921. Noritake Sheridan (5441) was produced from 1953 to 1958.

And from the Replacements, Ltd. site, this Minton Sheridan footed cup and saucer set:

(#6)

There are more.

Yesterday’s Wayno/Piraro Bizarro (Wayno’s title: “Arm of the Beholder”):

(#1) (If you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Dan Piraro says there are 6 in this strip — see this Page.)

Then, to appreciate what Wow Man says (and also to find one of the Bizarro symbols), consider this inverted version of his image:

(#2) Wow Man, upside down; now, you see what he sees

T-shirts and tattoos both function as kinds of everyday performance art — t-shirts more straightforwardly, since they’re usually available for inspection by anyone the wearer comes across; tattoos more subtly, since they’re usually covered by clothing, and are then made available for certain audiences by removing the clothing. (Note the usually: t-shirts can be concealed by shirts or jackets and revealed only to select audiences; and tattoos on the hands, neck, and face are available to everyone.)

In either case, the display is for other people. In #1, however, both the tattoo and the t-shirt message are intended for the person whose body they adorn, and are placed where this person can see them (and aren’t located, say, on their back) and oriented so that this person can read them (which means that they’ll be upside-down for other people). The inverted heart says WOW for other people, but the right-side-up heart bears the tattoo cliché MOM for the guy whose arm it’s tattooed on.

It’s a matter of point of view, in this case quite literally.

Three previous postings. First, a posting with what I’ll take to be the model, or paradigm example, of a point of view difference.

—  from my 5/2/15 posting “Point of view”, on:

A photo sent by a friend, with a note referring to “the man in the uniform behind the left shoulder” of Barack Obama…

There are two men in uniform right behind Obama; how are we to interpret “left shoulder” here? From Obama’s point of view (in which case the man in question is to the right of Obama in the photo)? Or from our point of view, looking at the photo?

Left and right in photographs is determined by the viewer’s point of view (like house left and right), which (for subjects facing the camera) is the reverse of the subjects’ orientations — the person to my right when the photo was taken is on my left in the photo (compare stage left and right). [Note: I had the theater terminology wrong in the first version of this posting; thanks to reader Mitch4 for correcting me.]

Second, a posting about a more abstract use of point of view (but not so abstract as to refer to any difference in background assumptions, as point of view so commonly does).

— from my 5/23/18 posting “The art class”:

(#3) A Steed cartoon with four art students, three people and a tree, painting a skull on a stool

It’s about point of view (pov), especially as this reflects selective attention, an inclination to focus on certain things in the context over others.

… The human art students attend to what is human in the material offered as a model for still lifes, the dendral art student attends instead to what is wood in this material. From the three people’s points of view, what’s worth painting is the skull on the stool; from the tree’s point of view, what’s worth painting is the [wooden] stool the skull is resting on.

Third, back to less abstract cases, this time a difference between some person’s (literal) point of view in the context and some conventional, absolute frame of reference.

— from my 7/26/20 posting “Before or after”:

(#4) A One Big Happy strip in which Ruthie is on the phone with the homework hot line lady

Ruthie wrestles with a workbook question, apparently something along the lines of “Does 4th Street come before 6th Street or after it?”

… Crudely. the strip is about what before conveys, and that turns out to be dependent on the context. Ruthie takes before to refer to the ordering of a particular 4th and 6th Street in her own actual neighborhood, taking herself to provide the point of view for the spatial ordering (every spatial ordering via before rests on some point of view). But what’s the point of view of a workbook exercise?

The exercise assumes a conventional, absolute frame of reference in which numbered streets are viewed in numerical order, beginnng with the lowest number.

Absolute frames of reference turn up in other contexts as well: the right and left banks of big important rivers are often determined from the point of view of someone going downstream — regardless of where a particular observer happens to be standing. (There are exceptions; the Right and Left Banks of the Seine in Paris, for instance, are named by convention, and those names run opposite to the downstream generalization.)

The 3/14 Zippy strip shows Claude and Griffy (and eventually Zippy too) caught up in what seems to be affixoid attraction (similar to word attraction), an irrational appreciation of or enthusiasm for a particular word-part — in this case, the word-final element –o (whatever its source might be):

(#1) All of the panels except the fourth are framed as two-person exchanges, in which the second is a response to the first: offering a competing alternative (panel 1), trading insults (panels 2 and 3), or expressing appreciation (panel 5)

One of the words is a clipping within English (disco < discotheque), some are extensions with -o in English (cheapo < cheap, wino < wine, perfecto < perfect (assuming this is not a reference to a type of cigar; it could, however, be Spanish perfecto ‘perfect’)), and the rest are words that in modern English just happen to end in -o, though their history in another language might involve clipping (metro ‘subway’, a clipping in French) or the -o might represent an inflectional affix in another language (castrato ‘eunuch’ (above) or specifically ‘a male singer castrated in boyhood’; and maestro ‘a distinguished musician, esp. a conductor’ or (more generally) ‘a great or distinguished figure in some field’ (above) in Italian, both with masc. sg. -o).

Note that common nouns in –o can be the result of either clipping (a type of abbreviation) or extension. Further discussion in Michael Quinion’s page on -o on his Affixes site (with material in square brackets from me):

(A lot about dildos and their uses, so probably not for kids or the sexually modest.)

The mail header on today’s Daily Jocks ad. DTF was new to me, but then I’m far from plugged into things — WTF I know, but DTF not, though I guessed the F is for fuck — so I had to look it up. From NOAD:

abbreviation DTF: vulgar slang down to fuck (used, typically on dating websites or apps, to indicate that a person is willing or eager to engage in sexual activity).

(Side query: how to tell when a use of fuck is narrow — a penis is inserted in a sexcavity — and when it is pragmatically broad, conveying (in the context of the moment) merely ‘engage in sexual activity’ — for which a frequent euphemism is ‘play’, which is easily understood too broadly, as covering things short of counting as sexual activity? It’s all a delicate verbal balancing act.)

Then there’s the fact that Mitch is a dildo, so it’s a bit of a stretch to talk about Mitch as always being enthusiastically ready to fuck.

(#1) [text on DJ site:] Cast from a real model, this incredibly lifelike 7.5″ dildo will leave you gasping for more.

Main text in the mailing (not edited):

TAKE MITCH HOME TODAY

With a firm but flexible shaft and a realistic feel, it is so close to the real thing you’ll barely notice the difference.

Made from a high-grade body friendly silicon thats odour free.  Once you’ve tried him out, we guarantee you will come back for more, time and time again.

7.5″ length, 5.5″ girth

Mitch will set you back $50. But then you only have to pay for him the first time.

Digression: DTF at OkCupid. From The CUT site (“Fashion, Beauty, Politics, Sex and Celebrity”) at New York magazine , “OkCupid’s New Subway Ads Rethink ‘DTF’” by Emily Sundberg on 1/19/18:

(#2) (photo: Maurizio Cattelan)

“You know what? I knew DTF meant Down to Fuck, but then I met Melissa and she said ‘No, you silly boy!’” Artist Maurizio Cattelan turned to Melissa Hobley, OkCupid’s CMO, and gestured to a row of seated guests at the party. “Did Frank Gehry design these benches too?”
Cattelan was at OkCupid’s New York City launch party last night for the dating site’s latest provocative ad campaign, which riffs on that phrase shared on Tinder and in texts, “DTF.” Cattelan and Pierpaolo Ferrari, the Italian artist duo behind Toiletpaper Magazine, shot the photographs. Coming to a subway near you, each ad features a new version of “DTF” like “Down to Fall Head Over Heels” and “Down to Filter Out the Far Right,” with cheeky pairings of words and images: “Down To Four-Twenty” appears next to a grinning couple on a floating couch.
… New Yorkers will start seeing the OkCupid ads on subways in the coming months.

On OkCupid, from Wikipedia:

OkCupid (often abbreviated as OKC, but officially OkC) is a U.S.-based, internationally operating online dating, friendship, and formerly also a social networking website and application. It features multiple-choice questions to match members. Registration is free. OKCupid is owned by Match Group, which also owns Tinder, Hinge, Plenty of Fish, and many other popular dating apps and sites.

OkCupid is decidedly liberal in its politics, and it screams that it’s NOT a hookup site.

Note: In a comparison of 43 online dating services on Wikipedia, all say they support same-sex dating (see #2 above), several exclusively — except for two (Facebook Dating and Right Stuff, which are marked ?).

A tale of two Mitches. But back to dildos, for those of us who, for whatever reason, are going the synthetic route. It turns out that there’s a second Mitch in town. On amazon.com (and many other sites), there’s Hung Rider Mitch from Blush Novelties; the description on Amazon:

(#3) 9″ Long Thick Realistic Dildo – Cock and Balls Dong – Suction Cup Harness Compatible – Sex Toy for Women – Sex Toy for Adults (Beige)

… Sized for those who want more. At 9.5 inches Mitch will definitely satisfy your needs [the description above says 9 inches, the Blush Novelties package says 8 inches; at least some of this difference no doubt comes from whether the testicles are included in the measurement]

… Made of Body Safe Non Porous PVC

[and priced at $22.64]

On the materials: for Hung Rider Mitch, PVC (polyvinyl chloride, a synthetic plastic polymer, available in rigid and flexible forms; the flexible form is used in many applications replacing rubber); vs. for DJ’s Mitch, silicone (a family of polymers based on silicon — which are highly unreactive and very long-lasting, and also more expensive than most plastics).

Head to head comparison: Silicone Mitch is more realistic in many ways (including, apparently, feel as well as appearance; the look you can see for yourself) than PVC Mitch, but is also only about twice as expensive, and also seems to be more realistic in size, though still of (extravagant) pornstar dimensions.

(On the cost of dildos: roughly comparable dildos from similar materials, all without vibrators built in, range in list price from about $20 to about $100.)

A Twitter comment on yesterday’s posting on dildos, the sex toys — entitled “Mitch is always DTF”  (Mitch is a dildo) — reminded me that the word dildo has developed a use as a slur or term of abuse, and that — despite this blog’s long-standing attentions to dildos as sex toys, to slurs in general, and to the development of vocabulary in the sexual domain into terms of abuse — I hadn’t previously recorded this development here. So here comes a gang of fuckin’ stupid dildos.

From GDoS:

1 a general term of abuse: a fool, an incompetent [clear examples are 20th century; in American slang dictionaries in the 1960s, e.g. College Undergraduate Slang Study 1967-8 Dildo A person who always does the wrong thing; 1998 what a pair of fuckin dildos] …

Plus a few recent examples scraped up on the net:

I was making a joke, you stupid dildo (Twitter link)

Ethel Hubbard: You dumb dildo! (from Friday the 13th, Part V: A New Beginning)

(from the tv show F Is for Family)

From Wikipedia on the show:

F Is for Family is an American adult animated streaming television series created by Bill Burr and Michael Price for Netflix. … The show follows a dysfunctional suburban Irish-American family, and is set in the fictional town of Rustvale, Pennsylvania in the early-to-mid 1970s.

Deeper into dildonics. Whoa! The noun dildonics in the relevant sense (‘having to do with dildos (the sex toys)’) isn’t in the OED yet. But…

Paraphrasing the definitions somewhat, Urban Dictionary has the innovative dildonic ‘referring to or resembling a dildo (the sex toy)’ and ‘referring to or resembling a dildo (a fool)’ and dildonics ‘the study of or manufacture of dildos (the sex toys)’

(Other sources have (tele)dildonics ‘technology enabling people to engage in sexual activity remotely’. From OED3 (June 2018; latest version published online March 2019) has the noun dildonics < dildo (in the sex toy sense) + –onics (as in bionics, electronics, etc.): With singular agreement. The use of computers to mediate sexual interaction; (in later use sometimes) spec. = teledildonics … [1st cite 1974])

— The etymology of dildo.  I once imagined, fancifully, that dildo was originally a Greek word — certainly the objects were in use in ancient Greece and Rome — borrowed into Latin as dildō (nom sg), in the third declension (with gen sg dildōnis), like dracō (nom sg) ‘dragon’, with gen sg dracōnis (note the Engl adj draconian).

Nice story, but it’s pure classicist fantasy, with no evidence for it at all. Instead, all the authoritative dictionaries in effect lament that the word appears around 1600 without any evident plausible source: a straightforward case of etymology unknown, or OOO (“of obscure origin”).

But wait. The entry in OED3 (June 2018; latest version published online December 2020) comes in two main subentries, A, the interjection dildo (a nonsense syllable in songs, similar to hey, diddle diddle); and B, the sex-toy noun dildo. The connection between the two initially struck me as tenuous, though the OED suggests a possible parallel in the use of the nonsense material nonny nonny / nony nony in songs as a euphemism for the vulva (marked as Obsolete. rare.), in

1611 J. Florio Queen Anna’s New World of Words  Fossa… Vsed also for a womans pleasure-pit, nony-nony or pallace of pleasure.

The idea is that to avoid some taboo item you call on a bit of conventional nonsense, in this case from folksong — perhaps parallel to the recent use of hoo-ha as a euphemism for vulva or vagina.

According to the OED, A and B appear in the historical record at about the same time, around 1590. However, their relationship is unidirectional: a nonsensical bit from popular song gets pressed into service to refer to an edgy artifact, previously referred to simply by a vernacular word for penis (cock, pillicock, prick, pintle, etc.), which then became multifunctional, though with the ‘artificial penis’ use more shameful and therefore crying out for a substitute — but it would make no sense to take a taboo word and use it as filler nonsense in popular songs.

So the OED has then in fact suggested an etymology for sex-toy dildo — in nonsensical dildo. And, fa la la la la, nonsense material doesn’t have to, ooby dooby, have an etymology at all: it’s just sounds, some of them syllables in the language of the song.

— From sex toy to generalized abuse. Here there seem to be three stages, laid out in OED3:

B. 1. a. An object shaped like an erect penis, used for sexual stimulation. Also (less frequently): a (real) penis. [1st cites around 1600; 1598 J. Florio Worlde of Wordes  Pinco, a prick, a pillicock, a pintle, a dildoe.] …

2. colloquial. Originally [cites from 17th cent.] as a general term of abuse for a boy or young man. In later use [20th cent.: Wentworth & Flexner 1960 Dict. Amer. Slang etc.]: a stupid, inept, or ridiculous person.

The development of a word for penis substitute to a general term of abuse would parallel the development of words for penis to general terms of abuse for males (dick, prick, maybe tool) and then (a development still in progress) to terms of abuse for people in general (She’s a stupid dildo, She’s a nasty dick) — perhaps facilitated by the idea that a dildo is a mere inanimate object used as an instrument (cf. tool).

Two Calvin and Hobbes cartoons recently — yesterday and today (originally from 4/8 and 4/9/91) — in my comics feed, in which Calvin takes on a title (the epithet the Bold) and adopts illeism (referring to himself in the third person):

(#1)

(#2)

Yes, it’s all about linguistics.

Epithets. In particular, those of the form the + Adj and the + N as extensions of a personal name, especially personal names of rulers and other notable figures: Charles the Bald, William the Conqueror. That’s the pattern that Calvin wants to use for his new name. Calvin the Bold will rule with an iron hand.

There are a number of similar patterns, for example the one in Frank “The Enforcer” Nitti (a Mafia boss) — in which the epithet The Enforcer can stand on its own as a name for Nitti (You’ll have to see The Enforcer), while the Bald is very peculiar as a name for the ruler (??You’ll have to see the Bald).

And there are prenominal epithets as well, as in Fatty Arbuckle.

In fact, English has quite a profusion of epithet patterns, with different syntax and different uses in discourse (distributed in different sociocultural contexts, at different times and places).

I was hoping that someone had systematically mapped out a substantial portion of this onomastic territory, and maybe someone has, but I’ve been unable to find no such discussion available on-line.

Illeism. Another set of usages often associated with grandiosity, though again there’s an assortment of patterns and functions (and sociocultural concomitants). For some discussion, see my Language Log posting of 7/29/07 “Illeism and its relatives”.

I was somewhat surprised that the six-year-old Calvin knew the technical term third person, but then the character is often precociously knowledgeable.

Not Frog and Peach, but Elephant and Plum, in a kid joke as told by Ruthie in the One Big Happy strip from 2/22 (in my comics feed on 3/21):

(#1)

Four things: kid jokes, of which the Elephant and Plum variant above is a particular clever example; the saying about elephants on which it depends; elephant jokes, of which the joke above is not the classic Elephant and Plum exemplar; and the ambiguity of “When did you laugh at it?”, which turns on the defining property of deictic elements like the interrogative when.

Kid jokes are high on absurdity; they’re often very silly. It strikes me that this makes the genre easier for kids, since there’s so much leeway in what they can get away with.

On the other hand, kid jokes can allow kids to display bits of knowledge, usually implicitly, as the one above does: getting the joke requires knowing the saying “An elephant never forgets” (which is unspoken).

The saying . From Gary Martin’s Phrase Finder site, posted by ESC on 11/25/00, a survey of sources on the saying:

AN ELEPHANT NEVER FORGETS – “First attested in the United States in ‘Blue Ridge’ by W. Martyn. The proverb is probably of Greek origin. The Greeks sometimes say, ‘The camel never forgets an injury,’ according to Burton Stevenson. ‘To have a memory like an elephant’ is used as a figure of speech.” From Random House Dictionary of Popular Proverbs and Sayings … 1996).

A second reference adds to this and has an earlier citation date: “Said of someone with a prodigious memory, usually for slights and wrongs. It was not the memory of the elephant but that of the camel that was renowned amongst the Greeks long ago. A Greek proverb ran ‘Camels never forget an injury.’ Proverbial reference to the elephant’s memory is relatively recent. In ‘Reginald: Reginald on Besetting Sins’ , the camel is usurped by the elephant: ‘Women and elephants never forget an injury.’ The author, Saki, was no stranger to elephants having been born in Burma and lived there, and would have appreciated the intelligence of the animal. The working elephant memorises a large number of commands given by the mahout and recognizes many other animals and people, thus remembering both kindnesses and injuries. Since its life-span is 50 or 60 years these memories are long-lived. Usage: Usually said of a person who does not forget injuries, but an ‘elephantine memory’ could just be a good one.” From the “Dictionary of Proverbs and their Origins” by Linda and Roger Flavell (… 1997).

Elephant jokes and this elephant joke. From Wikipedia:

An elephant joke is a joke cycle, almost always an absurd riddle or conundrum and often a sequence of such, that involves an elephant. Elephant jokes were a fad in the 1960s, with many people constructing large numbers of them according to a set formula. Sometimes they involve parodies or puns.

… [History:] In 1960, L.M. Becker Co of Appleton, Wisconsin, released a set of 50 trading cards titled “Elephant Jokes”. They were recorded in mid-1962 in Texas, and gradually spread across the US, reaching California in early 1963. By July 1963, elephant jokes were ubiquitous and could be found in newspaper columns, and in Time and Seventeen magazines, with millions of people working to construct more jokes according to the same formula.

Both elephant jokes and Tom Swifties were in vogue in 1963, and were reported in the US national press. While Tom Swifties were marketed to literate adults and gradually fell out of fashion over subsequent decades, elephant jokes have lasted among younger audiences, circulating through generations of schoolchildren.

… [Structure:] Elephant jokes rely upon absurdity and incongruity for their humor, and a contrast with the normal presumptions of knowledge about elephants. … One key to the construction of an elephant joke is that the joke answers are somewhat appropriate if one merely overlooks the obvious absurdities inherent to the questions.

There are just so many ways in which an elephant is different from a plum that it seems absurd even to ask the question. (And then the answer! No inanimate object has a memory, so plums don’t forget, but then they don’t remember, either.)

As it happens, there is a classic silly Elephant and Plum joke, but it’s not about memory, it’s about color. The color resolution of the elephant/plum query appears in collection after collection of (mostly kid-directed) elephant jokes, in a variety of forms:

Q: How is an elephant different from a plum?

A: A plum is purple. / An elephant isn’t purple. / They’re both purple … except for the elephant. / An elephant is grey. / Their color.

Note: the purple elephant has taken on something of a life of its own, as an unexpected and remarkable object that can then serve various symbolic functions. In icon form, from the IconsDB site:

(#2)

Deixis and interrogative when. In the last two panels of the OBH strip, Ruthie notices that her grandfather didn’t laugh at her excellent elephant joke, asks him about that, and he objects that yes, he did — about 50 years ago (which would be during the fashion for elephant jokes). Ruthie’s asking about when during their recent exchange he laughed at the joke, but his answer is about when during his lifetime he laughed at it. An ambiguity, or something like it. (Actually,  a lack of specification.)

The thing is, interrogative when (like interrogative where) is a deictic element, which crucially picks up its meaning from the context of use. When can be asking with reference to mere seconds around this context, or to geological eras around it, or anything in between; the participants in the conversation have to work that out. (Similarly, an appropriate answer to the question “Where are you?” could be anything from “Sitting at my computer” to “In the Northern Hemisphere”, or anywhere in between.)

(On deixis in linguistics, see my 12/28/20 posting “this” — titled with yet another deictic element.)

The 2/16 One Big Happy, in which Ruthie tries to make sense of an interaction between her grandmother and her Uncle Andy:

Several layers of indirection here, starting with

(1) You couldn’t pick up a phone?

instead of

(2) Couldn’t you pick up a phone?

Ruthie correctly picks up (1) as strongly suggesting (more strongly than (2)) that the addressee couldn’t pick up the phone, so she took her grandmother to be implicating that her uncle was in fact incapable of picking up a phone; he was real puny and weak.

In fact, (1) is intended to convey, in this context:

(1′) You couldn’t pick up a phone and call me?

And that question is really about the addressee’s ability to call the speaker (picking up a phone is just a preliminary step to making a call). And asking about this ability implicates that the addressee didn’t call, which further implicates that he should have. So (1) is accusatory.

But (1) apparently asks only about Andy’s (in)ability to pick up a phone, something he’s clearly able to do, so it seems to be mocking him. And that’s sarcasm.

This is very far from a full and careful analysis, but it should give you the flavor of the thing (which is several levels of indirect, and sarcastic as well). And it begins to show how Ruthie’s literal understanding of a question about picking up a phone leads her to miss her grandmother’s aim in uttering (1).

All of this led me to wonder about children’s acquisition of sarcasm (both producing it and understanding it), at least in the simple case where a declarative or exclamatory sentence A (like That’s a great idea or What a great idea!) is intended sarcastically, to convey contempt for what A apparently asserts, and so to assert (indirectly) the contrary of A. No doubt there’s some literature on this acquisition, but I am unfortunately ignorant of it.

A Mark Stivers cartoon from 4/20/19 (first encountered in the Funny Times for May 2021):

(#1)

Dogs also can’t interpret pictographs, certainly not such abstract ones as the slash of prohibition, the NO symbol (seen here in a non-standard orientation and missing part of its conventional accompaniments). It’s doubtful, in fact, that they can recognize dog pictographs, highly stylized representations of a dog — and incredibly doubtful that they can recognize a pictograph of a dog taking a poop, and understand that a prohibition against dogs pooping applies to them. In fact, it’s beyond doubtful that even if they recognize the sign above as a prohibition against dogs pooping, they understand that the sign is locationally deictic, applying not just to the spot where the sign is planted, but to some contextually (and socioculturally) determined area around the sign — in this case, applying to the whole strip of lawn on this side of the fence (but not to any larger area).

On the prohibition sign. From Wikipedia:

The general prohibition sign, also known informally as the no symbol, ‘do not’ sign, circle-backslash symbol, nay, interdictory circle, prohibited symbol, don’t do it symbol, or universal no, is a red circle with a 45 degree diagonal line inside the circle from upper left to lower right. It is overlaid on a pictogram to warn that an activity is not permitted,

(#2) Prohibition sign superimposed on smoking-cigarette pictograph, to convey the abbreviated message “No smoking (here)”, that is “There will be no smoking (here)”, conveying  that smoking is prohibited / banned / not permitted (here)

or has accompanying text to describe what is prohibited.

(#3) Prohibition sign superimposed on a capital P, the P serving as a stand-in for a parked car pictograph (or the word PARKING), the combination standing for “No parking (here)” (and so conveying that parking is prohibited / banned / not permitted (here)), in combination with the explicit (but abbreviated) text NO PARKING

Comments on this passage:

— as is standard in discussions of pictographic signage, the terms sign and symbol are used interchangeably

— as is general in English usage, the terms pictograph and pictogram are used interchangeably; note the NOAD entry:

noun pictograph (also pictogram): a pictorial symbol for a word or phrase.

On the formative element –gram, see the passage from Quinion’s Affixes site below.

— as is common in discussions of pictographs, the NOAD entry treats them as standing for linguistic expressions (words or phrases), but surely they stand instead for semantic content, which could be expressed in linguistic expressions in many ways; note the Wikipedia entry’s careful wording “[the prohibition sign] is overlaid on a pictogram to warn that an activity is not permitted”

— the Wikipedia article treats the NO sign only as a prohibition on activity, while in fact it has it has two uses: one with the slash of prohibition (banning some activity), another with the slash of exclusion (barring some things from entry into a location and hence from presence there), as in signs barring dogs:

(#4) A NO DOGS sign, announcing that no dogs are admitted / given entry or allowed / permitted (here)

Or this one barring penguins:

(#5) A fanciful NO PENGUINS sign

— though the conventional NO sign has a backslash, there are occasional variants with a forward slash, like this NO PARKING sign:

(#6)

— though the conventional NO sign has a red circle, there are occasional variants without it, as in Stivers’s pictograph in #1 (which also has a non-standard forward slash).

— though the NO sign is usually fused with a pictograph conveying what is prohibited or excluded, sometimes the NO sign conveys merely something like ‘This is a prohibition / an exclusion’ with the banned activity or things conveyed separately, as here:

(#7) (tipping here refers to tipping rubbish into a place

From Michael Quinion’s Affixes site. On the formative –gram / ‑gramme.

 Something written or recorded in a particular way. (Greek gramma, something written, from graphein, to write.)

A few examples came into English through French and retained the French spelling ‑gramme. Modern usage prefers ‑gram and this is now standard in scientific terminology and US English. The only common word in British English that retains the longer form is programme, and not even then in computing.

In many cases, a word in ‑graph (see ‑graphy) refers to an instrument that produces a written record described by ‑gram — a cardiogram is produced by a cardiograph, and a seismogram by a seismograph. A telegram is a message sent by telegraph. In other cases, they are different names for the same thing, as pictogram or pictograph, a pictorial symbol for a word or phrase. More rarely, the members of a pair have different senses: a hologram is a three-dimensional image formed using laser light but a holograph is something hand written by its author; a monogram is a motif formed by intertwined letters, while a monograph is a detailed written study on a single specialized topic.

A comic gem from the very first episode (“Give Me a Ring Sometime”) of the American tv show Cheers (S1 E1 9/30/82).  An exchange (call it the D&C exchange) between the character Diane — at this point, merely a patron sitting in the bar Cheers — and Coach, the bartender on duty:

Diane to Coach: Excuse me. Where is your bathroom?

Coach in response : Uh, next to my bedroom.

The character Coach  turns out to be empathetic and warm-hearted, but regrettably slow and defective at calculating people’s intentions in speaking as they do. In this brief exchange with Diane, Coach is faced with several linked tasks in understanding deictic elements: the locative deixis in where, the person deixis in your.

Deictic expressions have no fixed meaning, but get their meaning from the context they’re in. And that fact means that if you misjudge what context is relevant to the conversation you’re in, they can be badly deployed or incorrectly interpreted.

For example, with locative (and temporal) deixis, it’s easy to misjudge the appropriate scale. If I call the Palo Alto police to report gunshots, and the dispatcher asks me, “Where are you?”, the answer “At my desk” is at too fine a scale for the purposes of the exchange, while the answer “In northern California” is at too broad a scale. (Both answers might be true, but neither is helpful.)

Things are more complicated in the D&C exchange: there, how where is understood interacts with how your (directed by Diane to Coach) is interpreted.

First, easy, thing: you and your are ambiguous between sg. and pl. reference — referring to a single addressee vs. to more than one addressee or to a collection including the addressee and one or more people associated with the addressee (speaking, for example, to the addressee, but also to absent members of their family, work group, or whatever).

Second, harder, thing. Background here from my 12/8/06 LLog posting “Plural, mass, collective”:

Still another way [beyond PL nouns (like shrubs) and one type of M[ass] noun (like shrubbery)] in which a noun can “mean more than one” can be seen in the C[ount] noun GROUP. This lexical item has perfectly ordinary SG and PL forms, group and groups, with unremarkable meanings.  But the lexical item itself denotes a collectivity, in the sense that its referent has individuals as members or parts. This is the sense in which [a cited source] saw “troop” (and “bunch”) as “plural”.
The standard technical term here is “collective” (vs. “non-collective”) noun

Now we’re almost home in understanding Diane’s use of your in your bathroom in the D&C exchange. Your here (also you in Do you have clean restrooms?) is a personal pronoun vaguely reminiscent of a collective noun, referring, sort of, to the bar and its staff as a collectivity.

More precisely, Diane’s Where is your bathroom?  is roughly paraphrased as Where is your bar’s bathroom?; the reference to Coach is a kind of short version of a reference to Coach’s bar, the one he works in. And that relationship, between Coach and the bar he works in, is association, one of the types of metonymy.

That analysis makes the whole thing sound exotic and complex, but such metonymies are very common and unremarkable. Nevertheless, the straightforwardly referential use of your (roughly ‘belonging to you, the addressee’) is even simpler; and this is the understanding Coach gets of Diane’s question, so he tells here where his own bathroom is — disregarding entirely why Diane is asking the question in the context of their interaction in the bar.

Note. As usual, my discussion of matters of semantics is abbreviated and unsophisticated. I am not a semanticist, and I am now cut off from access to most sources of relevant information, so my metonymy analysis here might just be a pale echo of well-known treatments in the technical literature.

In yesterday’s mailbox, this indirect attempt to get me to post (about) something on this blog (untouched except for suppressing its header and the link):

With all do the respect,

I am hitting your inbox without any introduction, sorry for that.

BUT…. we did put around 230+ hours into this article about the most popular dog breeds in the world. (scanned 96 countries)

So check it:

[link]

What you think?

Paws UP or Down?

So: check it for check it out, What you think? for What do you think? And the wonderful  double nonstandardisms in with all do the respect for standard with all due respect, a combination of a due/do eggcorn and a nonstandard variant with all due the respect of the idiom of polite disagreement with all due respect, showing interference from the respect someone is due: so, the adj. due ‘appropriate, required, owed’ in the idiom vs. in the more open combinations of

[for someone] to be due respect / honor / acclaim / etc.  (McCain is due respect for his service)

and [for] respect / honor / acclaim / etc. to be due to [someone] (Respect is due to McCain for his service).

The nonstandard syntax. To my surprise, it turns out that the nonstandardism with all due the respect is pretty common, with many thousands of ghits.

On my surprise: as an ordinary speaker of English, there are tons of things I happen not to have heard or read; but then as a linguist, I note that I haven’t found any literature about it. (Of course, that just might be a reflection of my poor searching skills; I would be delighted to hear about relevant discussions in dictionaries, dialect notes, etc.).

Examples of the nonstandard variant of the idiom:

I mean this with all due the respect. (link)

with all due the respect[,] juanita (link)

Lakers Vs. Dallas? with all due the respect, but that’s the most boring christmas game ever (link)

The double nonstandardism (with the do eggcorn), in contrast, is genuinely rare — just a handful of ghits, among them:

With all do the respect to the community, this is PURE SHIT (link)

Pragmatic note. From the Oxford Languages site:

phrase with all due respect: used as a polite formula preceding, and intended to mitigate the effect of, an expression of disagreement or criticism. | “with all due respect, Father, I think you’ve got to be more broad-minded these days”

As a politeness marker, the idiom is used quite often as a purely conventional formula, with no actual respect or concern for the addressee intended; it’s just what you’re supposed to say when you’re disagreeing with someone. But you are in fact expressing a negative judgment, so the idiom has steadily devolved into serving, on some occasions, as a vehicle for rudeness and open contempt: I’m saying this because I’m supposed to, but in fact I have no respect for you at all, actually I think you’re a worthless piece of shit.

And, finally, the eggcorn. From the Eggcorn Database, eggcorns from people who presumably have do and due as homophones (which these days includes a great many, probably most, Americans):

#342: do » due (link), chiefly in: make due, due or die (by Arnold Zwicky, 5/7/05)

#471: due » do (link), chiefly in: do diligence, do process, do to (the fact, etc.), give credit where credit is do, give (someone) his/her do (by Ben Zimmer , 7/20/05); and also with all do respect

It starts with my 2/19/22 posting “A regular genius”, on quintessential regular (NOAD example: this place is a regular fisherman’s paradise), vs. run-of-the-mill regular (NOAD example: it’s richer than regular pasta).

Which elicited this Facebook comment from Joel Levin:

I get a sarcastic note from he’s a regular genius, in that one might so describe a person who had done something particularly doltish. I thought I might see a mention of that sense in the column.

And then AZ > JL:

In some contexts I get that note too, but I think that’s just an example of the generalization that any compliment can be used sarcastically, not a fact specifically about regular.

And then a comment from Ben Yagoda, making the Jewish connection: it’s probably relevant that JL’s Jewish and I’m, so to speak, Jewish-adjacent; we’re more inclined than a random person to detect a sarcastic or ironic tone in he’s a regular genius. The tone is available for anyone to pick up, but some of us are predisposed to detect it (and to convey it in our own speech).

Ben in the Chronicle of Higher Education‘s Lingua Franca blog, “In Which I Make Like a Regular William Safire” on 11/13/18 (note the Yinglishism make like a):

For reasons not relevant to this post, someone in a recent online discussion brought up a line by Allan (“Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah”) Sherman, the bard of [American] Jewish postwar suburban life. In his 1962 song “Sarah Jackman,” an imagined telephone conversation to the tune of “Frerè Jacques,” one of the call-and-response couplets goes, “How’s her daughter Rita?” / “A regular Lolita.”

It reminded me of a question I’ve pondered for years: How and why did “a regular X,” where X is a person famous for specific characteristics, become a standard formulation in Jewish-American lingo? I decided to make like a regular Samuel Johnson or William Safire and apply myself to discovering the answer. My first finding was surprising: The phrasing, which I would rhetorically categorize as a kind of simile, is definitely not of Jewish or Yiddish origin.

… I searched Google Ngram Viewer for some popular variations [regular Einstein, regular Romeo, regular James Bond]

… the Jewish association [of regular Romeo] arrives mid-[20th-]century. …  I asked [a] friend, Andy Cassel, a student of Yiddish, and he said none of the Yiddish words that translate as regular fit this sense. … Andy went on to point out that in Jewish use, the expression is usually less glorifying than deflating. That is, calling someone “a regular Rockefeller” suggests not that he is fabulously wealthy but rather that he acts like it. He concluded, “I’m leaning toward the idea that it existed pre-Yiddish immigration, and just acquired that connotation because of Jews’ affinity for irony and pretense-puncturing.” What’s not to like about that explanation?

(Finishing with another Yinglishism, what’s not to like (about)? Meanwhile, my thanks to Ben for providing me with an ad-free copy of his Lingua Franca piece.)

My response to Ben:

I think your point is right on; putting it in somewhat different terms: it’s not that the linguistic expression regular (or real, which works similarly) has a (sarcastic or ironic) sense, roughly ‘pretend, feigned’, especially in American Jewish usage, but that irony and pretense-puncturing in talk are cultural practices of American Jews (and those influenced by these practices, like me).

The distinction I’m drawing here is between conventions of a language — in this case, the (conventional) meanings of lexical items, like the adjective regular — and cultural practices involving language, that is, conventions of language use (in a culture) — in this case, the common practice (in the American Jewish subculture) of using complimentary linguistic expressions sarcastically or ironically, to convey the opposite of their normal use, and so to convey contempt for the referent. In brief: the noun genius doesn’t have a sense ‘dolt’ in addition to the sense ‘person of exceptional intelligence or creativity’; but it is always available for creative use in this way, and is especially likely to be so used in certain subcultures.

(There’s a ton of complexity here, some of which I hope to address in a long-dormant posting on so-called Neg-Raising in English, should I live so long. But I do need to point out that what counts as a convention of language can change over time and can differ for different groups of speakers. Hypothetically, it would be possible for genius to be used sarcastically, within some group, with such frequency that some speakers would conclude that it had a sense ‘dolt’. There are attested developments parallel to this hypothetical one.)

I had two postings in preparation about moments of great joy from yesterday: one from the music that greeted me on awakening in the morning; the other from the plants in Palo Alto’s Gamble Gardens, visited yesterday morning on my first trip out in the world for many weeks.

Then fresh posting topics rolled in alarmingly, and a search for background material led me by accident to a great surprise, a link to a tape of a public lecture (a bit over an hour long) at Iowa State University on 4/11/90, 32 years ago. Title above. The subtitle: Thinking about language theoretically.

I listened transfixed as the lecturer, speaking to a general university audience, took his listeners into the wilds of modern theoretical syntax, along the way deftly advancing some ways of thinking that guided his own research. An admirable bit of teaching, I thought. With some pride, because that lecturer was, of course, an earlier incarnation of me.

I remember the visit to Ames — I have actually managed to give invited lectures at both the University of Iowa (in Iowa City) and Iowa State — and the very nice audience, but I thought that all the physical evidences of the talk (my notes, the handout, any computer files) had long ago vanished in moving across the country and compressing the contents of four large offices into a desk in the bedroom of my little Palo Alto condo. But here was an artifact from that time — you can listen to it yourself, I’m not at all ashamed of it — and one that is rather poignantly of significance to me in my present intellectual life, because one of the leading ideas in that lecture figures centrally in a blog posting I assembled materials for half a year ago: the distinction between grammar and the user’s manual (in less metaphorical but still quite technical phrasing, between (tacit) knowledge of regularities in language and knowledge of regularities in language use).

That idea became the subject of my 1999 Forum Lecture (as the Edward Sapir Professor) at the Linguistic Society of America’s summer Linguistic Institute at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign: “The grammar and the user’s manual” (the handout — formatting flaws, typos, and all — is available for reading here).

(The other leading ideas in my Iowa State Talk — the centrality of syntactic constructions; constructional interaction via defaults, invocations, and overrides — became the main subject of my 1992 presidential address to the Linguistic Society of America (given on 1/9/93), “Mapping the ordinary into the rare: Basic/derived reasoning in theory construction”. The handout for that paper is available in my 2/7/20 posting on this blog “The BDSR file”.)

But the current relevance of all this cropped up, unexpectedly, in this Wayno/Piraro Bizarro cartoon from 9/24/21:

(If you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Dan Piraro says there are 4 in this strip — see this Page.)

What’s the issue?

Point 1. It might conceivably be true that the Potato Heads don’t live in a world where they’d want to raise (tater) tots, but that’s not what Mrs. Potato Head intends to convey: she’s saying that they live in a world — a world of mass frying of potatoes allowed by law — where they (and other Potato Heads) would not want to raise tots. A dangerous world for potato kids.

Point 2. She utters something with the apparent meaning:

NEG + [_Cl we  [_VP live in a world where [_Cl  I [_VP would want to raise tots]]]

intending, however, to convey:

[_Cl we  [_VP live in a world where NEG + [_Cl  I [_VP would want to raise tots]]]

That is, the sentence has the negation associated with the higher clause (negating the V of that clause: don’t live), while the conveyed meaning has the negation associated with the lower clause (negating the V of that clause: wouldn’t want). Actual syntax, higher negation; conveyed semantics, lower negation.

Point 3. This is a familiar configuration in English, standardly seen, however, in examples much simpler that Mrs. Potato Head’s sentence. A classic example:

I don’t believe you understand me conveying ‘I believe you don’t understand me’

actual syntax: negation associated with the higher clause, negating the V of that clause: don’t believe

conveyed semantics: negation associated with the lower clause, negating the verb of that clause: don’t understand)

The standard name for this configuration — Neg-Raising — uses a processual metaphor, the image being that the negation figuratively originates in the lower clause (where it belongs semantically) and is then moved up into the higher clause (where it actually occurs syntactically). But, as I argued in my work on constructional syntax — see the Iowa State lecture and my presidential address — Neg-Raising can be seen more profitably as just a name for a construction in which negation on a higher verb is associated with the semantics of lower-clause negation.

And this is in fact the position taken by the modern authority on the semantics, pragmatics, and syntax of negation, Laurence (hereafter, Larry) Horn, notably in his monumental A Natural History of Negation (expanded edition 2001), which has a section specifically devoted to Neg-Raising. (Larry’s thinking on the construction goes back more than 50 years.)

Point 4. All is not, however, quiet on the Neg-Raising front in examples like Mrs. Potato Head’s. Larry’s Neg-Raising section of NatHistNeg provides a classification of the higher-clause predicates that conventionally sponsor Neg-Raising. His summary table:

There’s some variation as to which particular predicates in a class can sponsor Neg-Raising, but the classes themselves seem to be essentially fixed

Well, there’s your problem. The predicate in Mrs. Potato Head’s example is the verb live, whose semantics is hugely remote from  the predicate classes in the table (all of which code semantic modality or (mostly) “mental action”).

As it turns out, Mrs. Potato Head’s usage might be unexpected, but it’s not unparalleled (Larry has a small collection of similar usages). It can be seen as her creative exploitation of the conventional resources of the language, as in fact — wait for it! (but you probably suspected this was coming) — a phenomenon of language use rather than the language itself, something from the user’s manual (in a volume about how you can creatively but systematically extend the material provided by the grammar for various purposes).

Yes, the other leading idea in my Iowa State lecture, and the subject of my 1999 Sapir Lecture for the LSA.

There’s obviously a lot more to be said about this approach to

We don’t live in a world where I’d want to raise tots.

(as Mrs. Potato Head uses it), and Larry Horn and I have talked together about how to say it. But that’s a topic for another posting.

A note about teaching as a calling. I was still a kid when I realized that I was meant to be a teacher (eventually, I thought, of mathematics or chemistry; meanwhile, I flirted seriously and not unrealistically with the ideas of being a journalist — well, some kind of writer — or a professional musician); it was a calling, a vocation in the etymological sense, and then a profession (also in something like the etymological sense), an affirmation of identity. I was a college freshman when I realized that I was also meant to be a linguist, a scientist devoted to studying language, in the very same way.

But I understood about the teaching from early on. I thoughtfully examined how teachers of all kinds did their thing. I practiced teaching, by helping my classmates learn, consciously attending to improving my skills, learning from my mistakes, and so on. And I made it into a career. The wonderful thing about having a calling and a true profession is that, though you end up being driven to long hours (trying to get it right) and being riven by agonies of self-doubt, the activity can be enormously satisfying — on a good day, downright exhilarating.

I could have gone on to a career of tutoring — I’m good at working one-on-one with people, it uses my notable empathy — and teaching small classes as if they were conversations, while doing the more public teaching in print, but of course actual teaching careers (with salaries and stuff) pretty much require that you engage in performing for audiences, and this didn’t come easily to me at all. The anxiety of actors and other performers dogged me all of my academic career, right up through my valedictory public lecture, early in 2019 (after some years away from the lectern), at the 20th Stanford SemFest, which I somehow managed without embarrassing myself.

But I did the lecturing creditably. In fact (as I saw, listening to myself from 32 years ago) I developed an effective stage persona and style of presentation (amiable, informal, regular-guy — in the real world I am truly not a regular guy — and pleasantly self-mocking), while crafting complex ideas into carefully organized long-form discourses. Mostly, it seems, I aced it. Well, some days you just can’t get things to work right, and some audiences are inert or hostile, but I think I became genuinely good at these performances, and I got to talk about things that genuinely excited me.

Of course, I continued teaching on the page (where I can take as much time as I’m willing to invest, for revising, recasting, reorganizing, redoing, rethinking). Which is what I do in all of my blog postings, but especially the longer ones. Like this one, which uses the hook of memoir to engage shamelessly — though openly — in teaching about a few of the ideas that have engaged my passions.

If you wanna be one of the guys, you gotta talk like one of the guys. The lesson of this masculinity cartoon by Hartley Lin in the New Yorker of 4/25 & 5/2:

Being one of the boys here is fitting into (what I’ve called) a male band, a group of mutually supportive, like-minded, and like-acting bros. (See the section on “The social organization of men in modern America” in my 1/6/21 posting “Another 1996 Superbowl moment”.) Like-acting because the band monitors its members’ behavior and enforces the band norms, which the band members see as matters of masculinity display.

Two kinds of masculinity display. A core type that I’ll call negative masculinity display, characterized by avoidance of anything that smacks of women or girls. And a more purely conventional type — positive masculinity display — characterized by adhering to local norms of behavior that are simply “how guys do it” — stuff that males pick up from other males. (The terminology is loosely based on negative and positive politeness; see the Wikipedia section on the politeness types, following Brown & Levinson.)

Green Hand (who’s a green ‘inexperienced’ ranch hand) has come up short on a linguistic bit of positive masculinity in this band of ranch hands: as the older hand explains to him in an avuncular way, the appropriate bro-xclamation there for expressing exuberance is yee-haw, not yahoo. Now, if Green Hand had used yoo-hoo, he would have been off on two linguistic counts: in negative masculinity (yoo-hoo is fairly strongly gendered, for use primarily by women); and in actual semantic content, yoo-hoo being a call, not an expression of emotion.

Lexicographic notes. From NOAD:

excl. yee-haw (also yee-hah): North American an expression of enthusiasm or exuberance, typically associated with cowboys or rural inhabitants of the southern US. ORIGIN natural exclamation: first recorded in American English in the 1970s. [AZ: strongly gendered, as masculine]

excl. yahoo-2: expressing great joy or excitement: yahoo — my plan worked! ORIGIN natural exclamation: first recorded in English in the 1970s. [AZ: my impression is that this one is gendered too, as masculine, but more weakly]

excl. yoo-hoo: a call used to attract attention to one’s arrival or presence: Yoo-hoo! — Is anyone there? ORIGIN natural exclamation: first recorded in English in the 1920s.

Hartley Lin. The cartoonist, who was new to me. From the Pope Hats / Hartley Lin site, with minimal information.

Hartley Lin (formerly known by the pseudonym Ethan Rilly) is a cartoonist based in Montreal, Canada. Young Frances, the first collection from his ongoing comic book Pope Hats, [appeared in 2018]. He has drawn for The New Yorker, The Hollywood Reporter, Slate, Taddle Creek and HarperCollins.

The publisher’s blurb for Young Frances:

After insomniac law clerk Frances Scarland is recruited by her firm’s most notorious senior partner, she seems poised for serious advancement – whether she wants it or not. But when her impulsive best friend Vickie decides to move to the opposite coast for an acting role, Frances’ confusing existence starts to implode…

An intimate study of work chaos and close friendships over time.

And (on the Amazon site) from the New York Times:

Young Frances is half coming-of-age story (female-friendship variety), half office novel. Lin’s line is both romantic and scrupulously composed, with precise framing that can recall a Wes Anderson tableau. The dialogue ranges from deadly accurate corporate jargon (“How long do you think you can survive without deliverables?”) to the kind of stuff you’d utter only to your closest friend (“People can get tapeworms in their brain, right?”). And Lin knows precisely when to let a few panels of premium Canadian silence sink in. (One character is shown reading – wait for it – Alice Munro.)

Well, of course, Alice Munro.

From yesterday’s posting “Three responsibilities”:

— p. 11, Douglas Howard Pierce (Democratic), candidate for Senate full term: begins by greeting the readers — Hello, California 2022 Voter! — and continues in the 1sg with a big list of specific policy concerns, in what I think of as a Salesman presentation (framed as if this were an exchange between intimates, full of factual sales points) — a candidate presentation used by men but very rarely by women (mirroring the fact that the aggressive salesperson role is largely reserved for men in the wider culture)

— p. 12, John Thompson Parker (Peace and Freedom), candidate for Senate full term: brief statement of high-level policy concerns (Higher Purpose), no reference to the candidate; this is a distanced statement, authoritative in tone (Just the Facts) — another candidate presentation used by men, very rarely by women.

— p.  12, Alex Padilla (Democratic), candidate for Senate full term:  begins:

With California facing multiple emergencies from wildfires, Covid and the dual homeless and housing crisis, I went to the U.S.Senate to fight for California.

Continues in 1st-person with shirtsleeves-rolled up for action, policy-wonk stuff: Hire Me for the Job. In my experience, used equally by women and men.

— p. 13, Chuck Smith (Republican): candidate for Senate full term. In its entirety:

America must be governed according to the Constitution; For the People and By the People. I am a Marine Veteran, Retired Law Enforcement Professional and Patriot. I am also a Christian and I believe God wants to use me to help Him make America Righteous Again.

Wow. Higher Purpose, plus Life Experience, in this case the high-masculinity experience of the military (double points for the Marines) and law enforcement. (Women use Life Experience presentations, but usually not these experiences.) Plus Called by God (used much more often by men than by women).

— p. 13, Akinyemi Agbede (Democratic): candidate for Senate full term. In its entirety:

Rescue America!!! America must be Revived from collapsing. Therefore, electing Dr. Akinyemi Agbede, for the United States Senate is the answer.

Sui generis. A deeply felt call to action, but framed not in the 1sg, instead as if it came from some concerned party rather than Agbede himself, so that Agbede is referred in the 3sg, by his full name.

— p. 14, then two statements from candidates for Senate full term, with maximum-sized statements, of two very different sorts. In an image:

— Cordie Wiliams’s statement is a Hire Me For the Job with a bunch of extra stuff.

He begins by introducing himself, using the 1sg formula I’m FullName. In the information guide, Mike Schaefer (Democratic candidate for the District 4 Board of Equalization) also uses the formula; as does Michela Alioto-Pier (Democratic candidate for the District 2 Board of Equalization), in the uncontracted form I am FullName. And two candidates use the related formula My name is FullName: Matthew Harper (Republican candidate for the District 4 Board of Equalization) and Sally Lieber (Democratic candidate for the District 2 Board of Equalization).

These formulas function here as social glue rather than information, since they come right under the candidate’s name in the guide.

Williams then loads up on Life Experience points, four of them, all functioning to present him as strongly masculine (and dependable), leading with husband. I can’t imagine a female candidate identifying herself with I’m a wife, ...

Then comes father (both a proven stud and dependable), an identifier that is so important to Daniel R. Mercuri (Republican candidate for governor), that he actually puts it on the ballot as part of his occupation: Father/Business Owner.

Then the military, the Marines again. and then the occupation, doctor, one conventionally filled by men.

— Grundmann’s statement is unclassifiable looniness (in 1sg). (No qualified party preference means that he gave an affiliation that the elections board doesn’t recognize) As I said in yesterday’s posting,

an anti-vaxxer, climate-change denier, stolen-election, anti-abortion, and transgender-hostile raver. Hard to beat.

— p. 20, Robert C. Newman, II (Republican candidate for governor), with a big list of Higher Purposes:

I am Pro-God, pro-life, traditional marriage, U.S. and State Constitutions, Pro-second Amendment, military, legal immigration, agriculture, small business, truckers; School Choice, a patriot honoring veterans. [verbatim quote]

— p. 20, Jenny Rae Le Roux (Republican candidate for governor), begins:

Jenny Rae Le Roux is a business owner, mom, and entrepreneur who will revive the California Dream. … Under Jenny Rae’s leadership, California will again be known …

Framed in 3sg, with references to her by her first name (a naming practice that conveys either solidarity / intimacy or subordinate status). The only female candidate to identify herself as a mom (or mother). Otherwise, Hire Me For the Job.

— p. 23, Mariana B. Dawson (No Party Preference candidate for governor), the statement in its magnificent entirety:

F all politicians.

— p. 24, Daniel R. Mercuri (Republican candidate for governor), the statement in its entirety:

We are sovereigns, not serfs, with God-given constitutionally protected rights. I’m in this race to stop the erosion of our freedoms and put oath violators behind bars! With Jesus as my foundation, I’ll bring accountability back into our government, God back into our country, and stop treating the state like a business which enslaves Californians to meet a profit margin.

I have to confess that I’m not sure about the nature of the serfdom / slavery he inveighs against.

— p. 25, William Cavett “Skee” Saacke (Democratic candidate for lieutenant governor), another statement in its entirety (three masculine Life Experience points):

Husband, Father, Trial Attorney for 25 years [plus link]

— p. 31, Steve Glazer (Democratic candidate for controller), notable for 3sg usage:

Senator Steve Glazer is the Legislature’s toughest fiscal watchdog. … he demonstrated … Senator Glazer took on … He fought …

— p. 39, Veronika Fimbres (Green candidate for insurance commissioner), again the statement in its stunning entirety:

Nurse. Black Trans Woman. Single payer universal healthcare.

(plus a really fine photo)

— p. 44, Braden Murphy (Democratic candidate for the District 1 Board of Equalization), who leads with two masculine Life Experiences:

I’m a proud middle-class husband and father of four. While property taxes …

Quadruple stud attacks the property tax system.

That will do for this posting, though there’s plenty more there.