obscene words from "Deadwood"

[Lynne Murphy]

--On Wednesday, March 10, 2004 2:10 pm -0500 Jesse Sheidlower
<jester at PANIX.COM> wrote:

> I think that writing letters to the Times or the BBC about
> even very slight inaccuracies in (esp. military) costuming
> in historical dramas is a stereotypical British thing to do.

There's a means of self-deprecatory (or other-deprecatory) humour that
plays on this.  People around here often refer to themselves or another
person as "Outraged of Chichester" or "Miffed of Glynde"--referring to the
way that people sign anonymous letters to newspaper columns, etc.  (The
adjectives and towns change--it's the construction itself that is the
constant.)  It's a way of poking fun at one's own (or another's) tendency
to get on one's high horse about some arguably trivial thing.

The smaller or more provincial the town, the better.

Lynne


Dr M Lynne Murphy
Lecturer in Linguistics

Department of Linguistics and English Language
Arts B133
University of Sussex
Falmer
Brighton BN1 9QN
>>From UK:  (01273) 678844
Outside UK: +44-1273-678844