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In this downbeat economy, some advertisers are reaching for upbeat language. Take the new Quaker Oats catchphrase, "Go humans go," or Coca-Cola's current slogan, "Open happiness." Martha and Grant discuss whether chirpy, happy ad copy can go too far. Also this week, why New Yorkers insist they stand on line instead of in line. And who is William Trembletoes? And what's a zerbert?
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(The title of this post is taken from a routine by comedian Bill Hicks.)
Here's a New York Times article about perky ad copy in a sluggish economy.
"William Trembletoes, he's a good fisherman. Catches hens, puts 'em in the pen…" If you recited this rhyme growing up, you're probably tapping your foot along with its singsong cadences right now. The rhyme accompanied a children's game, and is the source, by the way, of the title of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. A caller who played the game as a child wonders if its roots lie in her Cajun heritage.
It's an easy way to separate New Yorkers from non-New Yorkers: Do you stand on line or in line? A Midwesterner who relocated to the Big Apple wants to know why people there are adamant about waiting on line instead of in line. See a map showing the dispersal of both forms across the U.S..
Quiz Guy John Chaneski conducts a word puzzle involving musical instruments hidden in various sentences. Try this one: "My cousin is a Santa Monica zookeeper whose specialty is hummingbirds." (Keep saying it over and over until you hear this instrument's name.)
If you're doing a hasty, haphazard job, you're said to do it with a lick and a promise. What's the origin of that expression?
Who put the piping in the expression piping hot?
Oh, that gives me agita! A Connecticut native says her Midwestern colleagues office were flabbergasted to encounter this expression, which she's known all her life. Grant and Martha discuss this word for "upset" and its likely linguistic roots. Hear the song about "agita" from the movie Broadway Danny Rose.
When somebody cuts you off in traffic do you feel all stabby? Grant discusses this slang term.
You know the sputtering, raspberry-like noises you make with your lips on a baby's tummy so he'll giggle? Many people call that a raspberry, but some people call that a zerbert. A caller's husband insists that Bill Cosby coined the term on his popular sitcom. She begs to differ.
The expression over yonder isn't just the stuff of Carole King songs and old-timey hymns. To many Southerners, it's everyday English. The hosts discuss this poetic-sounding turn of phrase.
For tech-savvy types, saying "ping me," meaning "contact me," is as natural as grabbing a snack while waiting for your computer to boot up. The hosts disagree about whether the verb to ping has already moved into common parlance in the larger world.
It's a grammatical question that trips up even the best writers sometimes: Is it who or whom? A physician says he likes the sentiment in a colleague's email signature, but he's not sure it's 100% grammatical. The sentence: There are some patients whom we cannot cure, but there are none we cannot help, cannot comfort, and none we cannot harm."
I'm looking forward to the next podcast, to hear you and Martha discuss ad language. I'm thinking that advertisers operate in a special realm (the nearly sacrosanct realm of capitalism and consumerism). Their aim is to push product, not to worry about "going too far." If it weren't illegal to market cigarettes to kids, there would be kids smoking in Saturday morning cartoons. Yu-Gi-Oh, Pikachu, and the Ninja Turtles would smoke. And yes, there would be a cartoon based on the Joe Camel character. I'm not criticizing advertisers; I'm just stating facts.
If there's a public radio program that you'd like to hear, and none of the stations in your own market carry it, you can find a very thorough list of online streams at http://www.publicradiofan.com. That's how I was able to keep following "Schickele Mix" all across the country until they finally quit broadcasting it altogether.
Ping: I wonder if the submariners came up with the term PING from the table tennis game, ping-pong. The ping of a sonar does go out and come back just like a ball in ping-pong. I do wonder if the "ping" sound we hear in movies is actually audible.
Go, Humans, go. I was taken humored by Martha's interpretation of Quaker Oats new catch phrase. I thought it meant, "if you eat oatmeal you will have the energy to go do things." Not the BM kind of having to go.
I would be sorely disappointed if the famous sonar "ping" in all of the submarine movies turned out not not really be audible. I think that the sonar "ping" was used to memorably eerie effect in the movie Das Boot (best submarine movie ever), so I would be disappointed if that sound isn't really audible to human ears.
Re: “Agita.â€
It's mainly from the Sicilian dialect in New York and the tri-state area. It probably does come from “acita†as Grant theorized, because the “c†before an “i†is pronounced like a “ch,†giving us the sound of “achita.†The New York Sicilian dialect tends to slur the “ch†sound into “g,†which would lead right to “agita.â€
I can think of two major uses before “Broadway Danny Rose.†I can't remember which antacid it was — I want to say Tums — ran a commercial in at least the New York and Philadelphia markets with a stereotypical Italian/Sicilian complaining about his agita. I know for decades my family were always repeating the slogan “Tums prevents agita,†but this is second hand at best.
One other case I can definitely point to is from the comedy team of Fisher and Marx, who performed back in the 1950's, and did a parody of the song “Shortnin' Bread†in their act. (The song was included on their LP “Rome On The Range.â€) The lyrics went….
Mama's little baby loves pizza, pizza
Mama's little baby loves pizza pie….
Leave off the mushrooms, leave off the cheese,
Skip the anchovies and pepperonis.
Leave off the garlic, the marinara
They always give me agita.
Grant and Martha, what a tease! This week's show has made me feel stabby, on a Monday morning no less! You got me all worked up for a discussion about the excesses of ad copy, and what we got was barely a two minute mention of the topic.
Grant paraphrased one of the more inane points of the New York Times article: “Part of the common strategy for selling things to people in a recession is to use upbeat language.†But in good times or bad, it is always a common strategy to use upbeat language. Grant then pointed out that, “You're not going to buy a product from someone who says, ‘Life sucks,' right?†Well, wrong, at least sometimes. It depends on what's being sold. Just about every ad for pain and illness medication plays up on the “painful†side of life. Take a drug and your life won't suck quite as much. How about all the ads for products to make us look better, get skinnier, or smell better? In other words, our bodies suck! Ditto for ads related to home security systems. The world - indeed, your own neighborhood - is a dangerous place: it sucks! You need to buy expensive security systems to keep your family safe! It's wonderful how the ads often show a wife all alone in a nice, big house at night (her husband is away on a business trip), and there's a burglar trying to break in. And then there are the ads with the same unfortunate wife whose car has stopped working in the middle of a stormy night in the middle of nowhere - thank God that her husband was thoughtful enough to install the OnStar car security system! People who write books about vegetarianism will tell you how much life sucks for people and the world when we subscribe to a meat-centered diet. Computer protection companies will tell you that, without their software, life on the internet sucks. Mercedes and BMW ads tell you that you suck if you don't drive their cars. Jewelry company ads say that husbands suck if they don't continuously purchase diamonds, rubies, and sapphires for their wives. Republicans, in their ongoing efforts to “sell†their brand, will tell you how Democrats make life suck. Al Gore et al say that life is going to suck big time, unless . . . and so on.
The NYT article itself points out that ad campaigns include charitable or philanthropic aspects to increase their feel-good appeal to feel-bad consumers. But again, this is a common strategy in good or bad times. Nothing in the article, and nothing on Grant and Martha's show this week, offer any evidence that ads are more upbeat in down economic times than otherwise. Likewise, no evidence is offered that ads “go too far,†any more than they always do. And the article devotes far too much time on Quaker Oats, as if they are a prime example of this “phenomenon.†The article almost serves as an ad for Quaker Oats.
Perhaps I don't watch enough commercial television to judge how ads have changed their approach and tone in the current recession. But the “chirpy†ads I have seen in recent months don't seem any chirpier than “normal.†(It's hard to think of marketing as normal, in any case). What I have noticed is a predictable increase in the number of ads that emphasize incentives of one kind or another.
Grant and Martha, your show was great, as usual, but you really let me down on the ad discussion! You need to look at the “spin†in your own advertising.
I haven't found evidence yet, but "stabby" sure sounds like classic "Slayer Slang." I found several references to fans using the word,in a more literal sense ("then Buffy got all stabby") but I have a dim memory of it being used in the show directly in way that also carries the meaning Grant uses (Buffy being irritable and being described as "stabby"). I suspect the show popularized this meaning.
Grant, if you had been able to see and hear me I don't think you would have thought of my post as a "frank assessment." Alas, emoticons and using words like stabby can convey only so much levity. Sure, I wasn't kidding that I was in the mood for a bigger discussion, because it's great when you and Martha get going on a topic, but I'm not really complaining. Like Robin Williams said in Good Morning, Vietnam: It's only a radio show!
Regarding the sentence “There are some patients whom we cannot cure, but there are none we cannot help, cannot comfort, and none we cannot harm.†I would say “whom†— to my (Great Lakes region) sensibilities, for that sentence to be grammatical using “who†in place of “whomâ€, it would have to read something like “There are some patients who cannot be cured by us…†Funny thing is, the underlying rule has been long since forgotten, so I'm not precisely sure why I feel this way...
On the sentence, "There are some patients whom we cannot cure, but there are none we cannot help, cannot comfort, and none we cannot harm," you gave a gold star. Now the question was about the "whom," which is correct as the objective form, but you failed to criticize the "are" in "...there are none we cannot help..." I always thought that "none" is singular. Shouldn't this be "...there IS none we cannot help..."?
-jim
The American Heritage Book of English Usage has a listing for “none.†(You can access this on line via bartleby.com. Select Modern Usage.) They encourage matching the verb number to the context, allowing a choice of singular or plural. They mention evidence for alternation of number in the King James Bible, earlier, and consistently since. The singular verb rule is the byproduct of overzealously proscriptive teachers.
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