Author Archives: Bryan Oliver

“Knock Knock, Who’s there?………..”

Nationality: Jewish-American
Age: 24
Occupation: Student, Part time facilities attendant at on campus gym
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 4/27/13
Primary Language: English

This is another seemingly popular “knock knock joke provided me by my informant:

Informant: say “knock, knock”

Me: knock, knock

Informant: Who’s there?

[a long pause followed by laughter]

Informant: Yep, that’s the joke!

 

In this joke, the teller attempts to invert the knock knock sequence, by attempting the get the other party to tell him a joke without having a joke in mind, thus being rendered dumbstruck. It adds an interesting twist of deception to the otherwise predictable “knock knock” pattern.

A Grammatical “Knock Knock” Joke

Nationality: Jewish-American
Age: 24
Occupation: Student, Part time facilities attendant at on campus gym
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 4/25/13
Primary Language: English

In the following, the informer tried to tell a grammatical Knock Knock joke:

I = Informer, M = me (interviewer)

The 1st Attempt:

I: Um, knock knock?

M: Who’s there?

I: Whom is there

M: No…

I: Wait no that’s not right!

 

The 2nd Attempt:

I: Wait, knock knock, sorry, okay got it, knock knock?

M: Who’s there?

I: Wait, no…

 

The 3rd Attempt:

I: Oh! Knock knock, got it! It’s knock knock, who’s there, they say a name and then they say “that name who” and they say that name…. Maybe? It’s a grammatical, oh it’s slipping my mind right now, wait! knock knock?

Me: Who’s there?

I: To

M: To who?… too whom! Ah I get it!… That took a lot of trial and error

I: Yeah it did

 

While, at least by the third attempt, the joke is essentially self-explanatory, attempting to  trick the person who answers second into using a nominative case interrogative pronoun (who) rather than the grammatically correct accusative case (whom), perhaps the amount of difficulty it took to tell the joke accurately suggests a limited usage of technically precise grammar in every day life.

Nothing Drops Faster Than an Anchor

Nationality: Armenian
Age: 22
Occupation: Student, Part time facilities attendant at on campus gym
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 4/26/13
Primary Language: English
Language: Armenian

The informant provided the following when prompted for a folk saying or proverb:

Informant: “Nothing drops faster than an anchor”

Me: Where’d you hear it?

Informant: I heard this at a frat party

Me: Cool, what does it mean?

[long silence followed by laughter]

Informant: I think it stands for, it’s… certain individuals from a certain sorority are not the hardest people to… please, to put it politically correct.

 

Upon further examination, the informant revealed the” anchor” as being a metaphor for the Greek letter Delta as it appears in some sorority. The sexual innuendo which follows needs no further explanation.

“Bro Code” in the Gym

Nationality: Armenian
Age: 22
Occupation: Student, Part time facilities attendant at on campus gym
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 4/26/13
Primary Language: English
Language: Armenian

I asked my informant for a proverb or colloquial axiom and he thus provided:

Alright, there are things in the Gym called “bro code,” and some of the bro code and bro sign stuff are, basically, “curls for the girls,” um, [laughter] “pecs for sex,” um, just meat-head stuff like that and um, they’re just insiders for the Ducheiest of Douchers, [laughter].

Although my informant defined such aspects of the “bro code” as, “for the Duchiest of Douchers,” such sayings seem to be largely prevalent in both the gym and other highly masculine gathering. Their prevalence suggests that they do not represent actual Misogynous values as often as they simply indicate masculine heterosexual bonding in male dominated environments.

She Wants the D

Nationality: Armenian
Age: 22
Occupation: Student, Part time facilities attendant at on campus gym
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 4/26/13
Primary Language: English
Language: Armenian

I asked my informant to provide a tradition or saying and he gave this:

“Okay, there are… certain sayings amongst articulate men that go along the lines of: “She wants the D.” What this “she wants the D” means is basically if she does something, which is arbitrary, I mean, you could put anything, then she wants the D.”

The informant revealed that he hears most of the “she wants the D” variations he knows in his fraternity. He also indicated the use of such vernacular is most common among the Greek System. However, given that I gathered this piece of folklore from my informant while he was working out at the gym, associations between working out and masculinity may have influenced his decision to narrate this particular piece of folklore, and to embellish its masculine elements.