whipping words

[Bill Palmer]

I'm off topic, but the discussion reminds me of my favorite bumper sticker:

BANK TELLERS DO IT WITH INTEREST.  PENALTY FOR EARLY WITHDRAWAL.

Bill Palmer

----- Original Message -----
From: "Laurence Horn" <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
To: <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
Sent: Thursday, December 10, 2009 11:47 AM
Subject: Re: whipping words


> ---------------------- Information from the mail
> header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: whipping words
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> At 10:41 AM -0500 12/10/09, Joel S. Berson wrote:
>>Can you rule out that it's the imperative?
>
> I think we can given the intonation.  Plus the general cultural context:
> The form of the statement is precisely that of the bumper sticker
> meme, as in the classic:
>
> RUGBY PLAYERS DO IT WITH LEATHER BALLS
>
> where the statement is invariably generic (not imperative), X denotes
> a class defined by occupation or some other relevant property, and Y
> is a manner adverb or prepositional phrase.  Let's see--ah, good,
> here's a web site with countless examples of such "actual" bumper
> stickers, with double entendres ranging from the subtle to the
> strained to the obvious to the gross:
> http://www.devonavenue.com/entertainment/humor.htm
> (Linguists are included in a fairly predictable way--I'd have gone
> with "with recursive embedding" myself--but you'll have to supply
> your own bumper stickers for how dialectologists and lexicographers
> do it.)
> No entry for Dominatrix (singular or plural), but there are a few
> indirectly relevant ones:
>
> COMPUTER SCIENTISTS DO IT ON COMMAND
> PROGRAMMERS DO IT ON COMMAND
> SOLDIERS DO IT ON COMMAND
>
> (Not officers, you'll notice.)
>
> Plus, as I mentioned, one doesn't give commands to a dominatrix--that
> would pretty much defeat the whole point of a dominatrix and turn her
> into a submittrix.
>
> LH
>
>>"Dominatrix, do it on
>>command!"  Possible, given Larry's next-to-last sentence (a question)
>>below?  Is there a command to the dominatrix?
>>
>>Unlikely, I assume, but mustn't we eliminate all other hypotheses?
>>
>>At 12/10/2009 12:09 AM, Laurence Horn wrote:
>>>>From a current TV commercial for, it appears, "Wonderful Pistachios":
>>>
>>>A woman dressed in a dominatrix outfit with a pistachio-green bustier
>>>(if that's the right word)
>>
>>and don't play innocent with us!
>>
>>Joel
>>
>>>holds a coiled whip in her hand and places
>>>a nut on the seat of a straight-back chair. She then stands back at
>>>arm's length from the chair and nut, presumably a pistachio.
>>>Voice-over:
>>>
>>>"Dominatrix do it..."
>>>
>>>[she unleashes the whip, which neatly cracks the nut in half with a
>>>loud snap]
>>>
>>>"...on command.  Wonderful Pistachios.  Get Cracking."
>>>
>>>The interest is, of course, not just another run-of-the-mill
>>>S&M-infused nut commercial but the reanalysis of "dominatrix" as a
>>>plural. Of what, one wonders--"dominatrick"?  And don't dominatrixes,
>>>or dominatrices, standardly make *others* do things on command rather
>>>than doing things on command themselves?  Clearly, mangling the
>>>morphology is just the first step on that slippery slope...
>>>
>>>LH
>>>
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>>>The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>>
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>>The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>
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