Frank Rich's NYT column this morning is about gay marriage and related issues. He starts with a riff on American Idol so long that I almost abandoned reading the column. (Sorry, kids, but this trot'em-out-and-put'em-down TV really bugs me.)I was somewhat surprised (but shouldn't have been) to read that Rolling Stone had described one of the finalists as “flam-bam-boyantly queeny". The adjective was once a pretty common name (as in the pic, from here) but has changed with the times, I guess.
But I was more struck by the infixed bam. We've got the famous cases of "fucking insertion" (outfuckingrageous) and "Homeric infixation" (saxomaphone), but could we be getting a new one? Seems like it's driven here by the rhyme and probably has limited contexts where it would work generally. A quick Google search doesn't reveal any hits even for this form.
11 comments:
I'd guess it derives somehow from "wham-bam thank you mam"
Yeah, good point, it's got to be playing with that somehow.
I am against gay marriageI am and proud of it. I am against marriage of any kind. I see this whole issue as idiotic to the point of coma.
Why would gay people want MORE meddling of their affairs? I just don't understand it.
And yes I am sorry to have no linguistic content in my comment. And sorry for venting myself here, but I like your blog and, well, I, too, am a linguist.
Disentangling civil and religious matters would be a very valuable thing, here and elsewhere. In that spirit, I'd be perfectly happy to leave the institution called 'marriage' to organized religion and go with some kind of civil union or something.
But there are real consequences to having some kind of status of that sort, as pointed out often in the debates over gay marriage now -- hospital visits, survivor benefits, etc.
No need to apologize about venting: if you can't do it in the comment section of a blog, then where?
> But there are real consequences to having some kind of status of that sort, as pointed out often in the debates over gay marriage now -- hospital visits, survivor benefits, etc.
I agree but shouldn't we address them as issues in their own right and not bring marriage into it... Just a thought. Maybe we should incorporate all that into marriage but I myself try as much as I can to shy away from marriage as I don't want meddling with my personal affairs. Anyway, this is the end of my posting on this. Even though you are most gracious, I myself want to see linguistics here, not politics. Alas, many comments on linguistic blogs do tend to stray away... And now I am one of the problematical cases. Depressing...
> Disentangling civil and religious matters would be a very valuable thing, here and elsewhere. In that spirit, I'd be perfectly happy to leave the institution called 'marriage' to organized religion and go with some kind of civil union or something.
I promised, but... That is, superficially, what I said. Anyway, talking about marriage does highlight marriage above all. My, and your, viewpoint seems to be nowhere in the public debate. I think that in many countries' legal documents you have a right to name whoever you want as one to deserve your "legal" representative role. I might be quite unclear here, sorry about that, but I think you get the picture. Now, back to linguistics!
Actually, this HAS been in the news, but in a bizarre way: Michael Steele recently said that gay marriage would cost small business money for spousal benefits. That's an argument against ANY AND ALL marriage, of course.
I wish bam would become an infix. It would be cool.
Maybe it's infixing reduplication with a prelinked [b]? That would predict, oh, I don't know, in-bin-credible? Not sure what would happen with an open syllable... re-be-versal? yuck. Anyway, I think we should adopt this and promulgate it. ;-)
May I just suggest that you avoid leading with I am against gay marriageI am and proud of it ? A lot of people aren't going to hear anything but that, no matter what you say next.
hmm, Monica, what if it's infixing reduplication with anticipatory consonant affixation? that would make incredible: in-cin-credible ... maybe even in-crin-credible (???) Maybe it only works if each part is lexically solvent: (flam (from flimflam), bam (from Emeril) and boyent (from buoyant)?
and, Anon., "Why would gay people want MORE meddling of their affairs? I just don't understand it." Well, speaking as a gay man (and linguist of sorts, I guess) I say meddle away! If we could actually create more of a conversation about these issues from both sides, maybe you would understand. Just because some people (including me) are against "marriage," does not mean that others don't dream of walking down the aisle. The OPTION is what we want.
Moreover, we do need to realize that in many traditional homes, marriage and reproduction are still norms and expectations. It would seem to me that many gays and lesbians, in seeking reconciliation with their conservative upbringings and reconciliation with a society that still equates homosexuality with only casual sex might try to gain some legitimacy of a relationship via marriage, that is, via some sort of public (and publicly recognized) ritual.
Perhaps changing the rhetoric would be fruitful. Unfortunately, though, many groups (including pa4marriage.org) believes that a union (both "marriage" and "civil union") should be maintained to the exclusion of same-sex pairs.
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