Summary Details
| Query: |
Speaking without teeth
|
|
| Author: | Mai Kuha | |
| Submitter Email: | click here to access email | |
| Linguistic LingField(s): |
Phonetics
Phonology |
|
| Summary: |
re: LINGUIST 11.207 Dear colleagues, A week or two ago, I asked whether an articulatory problem was presented accurately in a cartoon, and asked for other examples from pop culture that might be discussed in introductory classes. A summary follows. I received helpful comments from: Karen H. Baumer Peter T. Daniels Georgia Green William Morris Chad D. Nilep I.R. Warner Caroline Wiltshire Part I. My question: I have a cartoon that shows a man at a cinema holding in his hand his false teeth, which are stuck together with candy. He is saying to a companion: "Yesh, yesh, sho jujubeesh were a loushy choish." I'm wondering whether I can have my intro to linguistics students discuss the cartoonist's assumptions about how consonants are articulated. They can probably notice that the interdental fricative in "the" is correctly portrayed as being problematic, and question why alveolar fricatives are rendered as palatals. If the effect of teeth on speech sounds is much more complex than this, though, maybe I shouldn't bring this up in class. Could anyone enlighten me? Responses: Baumer, Daniels, Morris, and Nilep point out that "sho" was probably intended to be "so", not "the", the intended utterance being "Yes, yes, so jujubees were a lousy choice". This means the cartoonist is consistent in portraying all alveolar fricatives as getting mispronounced. Sadly, voiced and voiceless alveolars are not distinguished. To what extent is the cartoonist accurate in portraying alveolars, but not other sounds, as being influenced by the absence of teeth? No clear answer to this question emerged yet. All things considered, I might as well use some of the other ideas (see below) in my class. One reason I'd rather not use the cartoon is that some students (perhaps especially the nontraditional ones) might be offended-- loss of teeth is probably not the best thing to joke about. Part II My question: I would also be interested in hearing about other portrayals of articulatory phonetics in pop culture that could be critiqued by beginning students. For instance, Bill Cosby has a routine about excessive anesthesia at a visit to the dentist, in which he complains (I think) "My libidib is in my labadap". It might be instructive and fun to consider whether numbness could really have this effect on bilabials. Responses: Georgia Green has her students find linguistic problems in Samuel Delany's sci-fi novel Babel-17. For example, some characters "have mouth structures that prevent them from making a bilabial closure. So they can't make [b] and [p], and their absence is represented by an apostrophe. But they can pronounce [m] with no difficulty!" Caroline Wiltshire has a similar exercise: "In The World According to Garp, by John Irving, there is a group of women who have had the front part of their tongue cut out (to make a political point), and they are fond of chanting the slogan "Fucking Pigs". Irving transcribes it, however, as "ucking igs". I ask the students to give me three reasons why this is inaccurate, and some come up with more." I.R. Warner mentions a cartoon by Knife & Packer, "set in a pretentious cafe in North London in which a typically trendy customer orders from the waiter, "PLISH CANNI ASH A CHACHUCHINO" and is congratulated on impressive progress in his Catalan lessons. His companion explains it isn't Catalan, it's that his tongue-stud has gone septic." Chad Nilep provides the following examples: In the first season of "The Drew Carey Show", the mouth movements of the cartoon face singing the theme song did not match the words: for example, "the teeth are clearly visible while apparently articulating the onset of 'Parma'". "Systematic violation of phonological rules was used to humourous effect in Saturday Night Live's (NBC [USA] television program, c. 1985-1990) "Super Fans." Characters meant to parody Chicago sports fans systematically devoice the plural morpheme /z/ to produce [d@bers] "the Bears," [d@bUls] "the Bulls," etc." "A less contemporary example can be found in Mummer's plays such as "Punch and Judy." Punch was traditionally portrayed by a pupeteer using a "swazzle," a silver instrument worn inside the mouth to give the typical "squeaky" voice. Punch's speech removes consonant clusters in onsets, some inflectional morphemes, etc." Reference: Green, Thomas A. (1989) 'Linguistic Manipulation in the Punch and Judy Script.' *Lore and Language* 8(2), 33-41 On a related note, Nilep also points out some sources for portrayals of speech errors, such as spoonerisms: Lederer, Richard (1987) *Anguished English: An Anthology of Accidental Assaults upon Our Language.* New York: Laurel/Dell. Nilsen, Don L.F. and Alleen Pace Nilsen (1994) 'The Appeal of Bloopers: A Reader-Response Interpretation.' *Humor* 7(2), 127-137. -Mai _____________________________________________ Mai Kuha mkuha@bsuvc.bsu.edu Department of English (765) 285-8410 Ball State University |
|
| LL Issue: | 11.303 | |
| Date Posted: | 13-Feb-2000 | |
| Original Query: | Read original query | |
|
Back |
||
|
|
||
|
Sums main page
|
||
|
About LINGUIST
|
Contact Us
|
Report Broken Link
While the LINGUIST List makes every effort to ensure the linguistic relevance of sites listed on its pages, it cannot vouch for their contents. |
|
