Category Archives: Folk speech

You Can’t See the Forest for the Trees

Nationality: American
Age: 83
Occupation: Retired English Teacher
Residence: San Francisco, CA
Performance Date: March 21, 2015
Primary Language: English

Informant: You can’t see the forest for the trees.

The informant (my grandmother) was born and raised in Texas. She spent many years moving from place to place across the world with her husband, a banker, before settling in Connecticut long enough to work as an English teacher at the Greenwich Country Day School. She currently lives in San Francisco, CA.

The informant told me that she told this proverb to her students when they failed to see the bigger picture of her class as a whole. When students complained that endless grammar worksheets were “boring,” she pointed out that they were looking at only a tree in the larger forest; grammar worksheets were an important part of building a greater ecosystem of knowledge of the English language.

This proverb appears in John Heywood’s 1546 collection of proverbs.

Citation: Heywood, John, and Julian Sharman. The Proverbs of John Heywood. London: G. Bell and Sons, 1874. Print.

“Blood Makes the Grass Grow”

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: February 2015
Primary Language: English

Informant: I’m from Oklahoma, and back home at football games, we always chant, “Kill, kill, blood makes the grass grow” whenever we’re winning or, like, about to make a big play.

Me: Like at professional games?

Informant: No, mostly at high school ones. And some college games.

The informant is a student at the University of Southern California and loves to attend and participate in sporting events.

This chant, in the context of football games, seems to mean that a brutal victory over an opponent will serve to make the field look better during the next game. However, variations of the chant also seem to be associated with the US military; it receives a nod in the title of author Johnny Rico’s memoir—and account of the year he spent fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan—Blood Makes the Grass Grow Green: A Year in the Desert with Team America. Another version of this chant appears in the 1987 war film Full Metal Jacket. The Sergeant asks, “What do we do for a living?” To which the platoon replies, “Kill, kill, kill!” The Sergeant continues with, “What makes the grass grow?” And his men reply, “Blood, blood, blood!”

Citation 1: Rico, Johnny. Blood Makes the Grass Grow Green: A Year in the Desert with Team America. New York: Presidio, 2007. Print.

Citation 2: Full Metal Jacket. Dir. Stanley Kubrick. Prod. Stanley Kubrick. By Stanley Kubrick, Michael Herr, and Gustav Hasford. Perf. Matthew Modine, Adam Baldwin, Vincent D’Onofrio, and Lee Ermey. Warner Bros., 1987.

“He Worked for The Queen”- Setting the table

Nationality: American
Age: 21
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 4/28/2015
Primary Language: English

“M” is 21 year old male student at the University of Southern California, where he is a Junior studying Animation and minoring in Philosophy. M is originally from the outskirts of New York state where he describes himself as living in a rural area. He described himself as going to a high school of ~60 students, where cliche formation was rare as students could ‘jump from social group to social group’. He describes his parents as ‘hippies’ that were very relaxed in their parenting style as well as their personal approach towards life. He is of Irish descent on both sides and describes this aspect of his life as very active in his life.

 

Transcript:

“M: My dad did this thing to make me set the table when I was little, I always hated putting the table together but he would always tell me that ‘he worked for the Queen’ so anytime I would challenge him, he’d just tell me that. He told he he’d ‘put out her candles’ and ‘set her tables’, so I would put out candles and set out tables correctly, because he knew how to do it correctly when he told me too.

Me: How long did he use that one for?

M: Until I moved out, it started out as a way to get me to do it, than he’d just use it when I got older to basically tell me to ‘just set the table how he wanted’ ”

 

Analysis:

The phrase seemed to be used as a short way for “M”s father to tell him he knew how to set the table, and as pointed out, originally as a way to motivate him to set it. As the Queen is an authority on proper etiquette, the phrase is simply an appeal to authority to get “M” to set the table.

 

Knock Knocks and Armless Timmy

Nationality: Caucasian
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: 4/03/15
Primary Language: English

Informant: Why did Timmy fall off the swing?

Collector: Why?

Informant: Because he had no arms.

Collector: Oh and then the “Knock knock. Who’s there? Not Timmy!”

Informant: Yeah! Also, say “knock knock.”

Collector: Knock knock.

Informant: Who’s there?

Collector: Who? Oh wait, what? Oh!

Informant: Yeah! That one’s just awkward.

Collector’s Notes: In class, we learned about the growing popularity of anti-jokes, and I think is probably the most common one I’ve heard.  It was cool how the Informant and I were able to add to the joke together and make it a two-sided joke.  It’s interesting that this particular joke, always a swing and always Timmy, is also almost always followed up with the knock-knock anti-joke.  It’s like it’s two-parted.  A young child with no arms is not funny at all, but I think it is a way that we address serious things with humor.  The fact that someone without arms can’t do all of the everyday things that we do is really sad and hard for some people to talk about without it becoming awkward.  This jokes eases some of that tension.

A type of riddle we talked about in class was the “catch” riddle, in which you trick someone into saying the wrong thing.  Most times, it’s supposed to insinuate something inappropriate.  An example that I know off-hand is “What’s brown and sticky?” which makes it seem like the person is supposed to say “Poop,” when actually, the answer is “a stick.”  The Informant’s second joke reminded me of that.  It tricks the person being told to joke into saying something that they’re not supposed to say, therefore putting them in the awkward position of suddenly becoming the joke-teller instead of receiver.

 

!!111!!

Nationality: Caucasian
Age: 21
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA/Chicago, IL
Performance Date: 4/29/15
Primary Language: English

Collector: I consider you as really on top of the trends. (laughs)

Informant: Let’s see, the things that are trending right now…

Collector: What’s that thing you always say?

Informant: Oh. “Am I right, ladies?”

Collector: Yeah that one! And the other was “Fries before guys,” right? I actually saw a phone case that said that.

Informant: Oh really? Yeah it’s just little things like that. Like, things that are trending on Twitter are like “!!1111!!”

Collector: What is that? Like, what does that mean?

Informant: It’s like, if you’re saying something sarcastically, but like with a lot of emphasis. So it’d be like, “wow, I had a really good night of sleep last night !111!” if you’re like, completely kidding.

Collector: Oh! I’ve never even heard of that.

Informant: Oh, really? Yeah it’s something I always do.

Collector: I’ll have to look on your Twitter.

Informant: It just like indicates that you’re being really sarcastic but also very passionate at the same time.

 

Collector’s Notes: It’s really weird and yet interesting to see our culture’s interest switch from the written word to symbols or pictures.  In a society in which we exchange picture via Snapchat all the time and limit our thoughts online to 140 characters or less (Twitter) it makes sense that people would try and find ways around actually writing things out.  From using emojis to convey emotions and thoughts, to simply replying with a selfie, some people find it difficult to articulate how they’re feeling with words like we used to.  This specific one, the !!111!! is a mystery to me.  The fact that the exclamation point and number one are on the same key makes me think that maybe this started off as some kind of typo-turned-joke.  Also, the number 111 can be dialed for a medical emergency “when it’s less urgent than 999” in the UK.  Any correlation? Maybe!

 

REFERENCE: http://www.sparsholtandwestcot.org/content/call-111-healthcare-when-its-less-urgent-999