JFK (Just For Kerry)

[Beverly Flanigan]

OK, I yield.  BTW, the book Homo Ludens, by Johan Huizenga, is good; I read
it for a course with Walter Ong 35 years ago or more (we called our field
Onglish, of course--more word play).  Don Nilsson at Arizona still does
this stuff too, I believe.

At 09:19 PM 2/8/2004 -0600, you wrote:
>At 12:46 PM -0500 2/8/04, Beverly Flanigan wrote:
>>What does this story have to do with dialects or word etymology?  Are
>>personal initials now to be antedated?
>
>
>    The humorous reinterpreting of what initials stand for is a
>legitimate subject of linguistic interest.  HMO's (How Many Others?),
>TWA (Teeny-Weeny Airlines) are two that come to mind; more examples
>were once given in a series of ads-l messages about three years ago.
>A compilation of these items into an article might be worthwhile.
>Anyone interested?
>
>    We deal here with humor/playfulness in language, and Allen Walker
>Read once gave a linguistic address in which he emphasized this
>feature.  The address was published and I have it somewhere in my
>office. I remember that he quotes someone as referring to man (woman
>too, of course) as homo ludens--Man at Play."
>
>    Btw, does the humorous reinterpreting of what initials stand for
>occur in other languages?
>
>Gerald Cohen