Category Archives: Humor

Mangia, y’all

Nationality: Dallas, TX
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Language: English

Text:

A ritualistic saying that acts as performative speech to signal that people may start eating (similar to “bon appetit”).

Context:

The informant comes from an Italian family that currently lives in Dallas, TX. Her family emigrated from Sicily 6 generations ago through Louisiana and settled in South Texas; they have lived in the same city ever since. Her generation is actually the first generation that is not fully Sicilian Italian, because her father is from Nebraska. Members of the family will commonly say this phrase before meals.

Interpretation:

Given the family’s deep connections to both Italy and Texas, both places are fundamentally intrinsic to their family identity. This saying is not only a form of performative speech that instructs people to begin eating, but an indicator of a deeply loyal family history as a source of pride. Saying this phrase ritualistically before eating contextualizes mealtimes as a ritual through which to connect with the family through food, in both the past and present.

The Big D

Nationality: Dallas, TX
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Language: English

Text:

Residents of Dallas refer to it as “the Big D.”

Context:

The informant lived in Dallas for 17 years, and grew up knowing this nickname for her hometown.

Interpretation:

Preliminary research points towards this nickname originating from the song with the same name, “Big D” from the 1956 musical The Most Happy Fella. The name popularized when Bing Crosby recorded the song, and stuck when a columnist at Dallas Morning News titled his column “Big D.” Since then, residents of Dallas have continued to call their city “the Big D” without necessarily knowing the origin of the nickname.

The longevity of the nickname may be more due to its function as a double entendre than the timelessness origins. Though the nickname remains the same, the meaning behind it changes, so that new generations believe their hometown nickname is unironically an epithet for genitalia.

ICUP

Age: 21

Text:

Person 1: “Hey, spell ICUP!” Person 2: “I. C. U. P” Person 1: “Hahahaha I see you pee!!!”

Context:

My informant says this is a joke that was told in elementary school, and it was very, very common; everyone was doing it until, finally, everyone caught on, and no one wanted to spell ICUP.

Analysis:

I think this joke was very common; my informant and I grew up in the same area, and both our elementary schools were obsessed with this joke; I don’t know the origin of it, but in southern California, ICUP was a very popular joke in elementary schools.

Grave Jokes: If your hand is bigger than your face, you have cancer

Text: If your hand is bigger than your face that means you have cancer.

Context: My informant – a 25-year-old man from Reno, Nevada – explained to me that this was a trick he learned while in middle school, and he proceeded to play it on his friends and siblings. He would bait his victims by saying “if your hand is bigger than your face that means you have cancer,” and when the gullible victim raised their hand to their face to see if their fingers and palm covered the entirety of their face, he would smack the back of their hand so that their face collided with the front of their hand. He would play on the common fear of people finding out they might have a brutal disease, and in an attempt to self-diagnose, he would leave them with a red, hand-shaped mark on their face.

Analysis: I remember falling for this trick a couple times as a child, and I fear I must admit I played it on some of my friends as well. When a young mind hears “if your hand is bigger than your face that means you have cancer,” the instant panic that you feel over potentially having a disease that has sparked lots of fear due to its brutality takes over, and you most definitely want to see if your hand if bigger than your face to know if you might be sick. After your hand collides with your face and your assailant laughs at their attack, you are left confused: trying to see if you have an incurable disease has only left you with knowledge that your nose is red and throbbing. In the chapter “Jokes that Follow MassMediated Disasters in a Global Electronic Age” by Christie Davies, the author writes that disaster jokes are “jokes felt to be funny because they are playing with someone else’s forbidden notions, albeit ones that are generically similar to those that are the basis of more familiar local disaster jokes” (31). If one was to find out that they had cancer, it would undoubtedly be a disaster, so the trick of telling someone that “if your hand is bigger than your face that means you have cancer” is a play on the common fear of something happening to them that they would never hope for.

My informant expressed that this was a prank he only really saw and played as a child, and as he got older, it vanished. This prank only being present among adolescents is telling of the impressionability of this age group. Cancer has been feared for a long time, but the majority of people know that it would take much more than measuring your face with your hand to receive a cancer diagnosis. Children, however, haven’t been exposed to much, and hearing they might have a disease they know little about prompts them to fall for a trick that is only meant to leave them embarrassed and unsure of their health. In hindsight, it’s clear that the prank’s allure lies not in its realism, but in its ability to tap into our primal fears and evoke an emotional response. It serves as a reminder of the innocence of youth, where even the most serious of topics can be reduced to a momentary source of amusement.

References:

Davies, Christie. “Jokes that Follow MassMediated Disasters in a Global Electronic Age.” In Of Corpse: Death and Humor in Folklore and Popular Culture, edited by Peter Narvaez, 15-34. Utah State University Press, 2003.

Salvadoran Joke – “Mato Tunco Tu Tata”

Context: This folklore is in the form of a Joke that is very common in El Salvador. It is used throughout the country, and seems to be unique to the Central American country,

Explanation of Folklore: I interviewed F about a joke that is commonly told in El Salvador. The joke goes as follows. One asks, “Mato tunco tu tata?” (Did your father kill a pig?) where one then answers yes, then the response is a follow up question “Le tuviste miedo al machete?” (were you scared of the machete?) and then the other person answers no. Finally the joke teller flinches at them as if they were to hit them with a machete, which usually provokes some sort of scared reaction from the other person.

According to F, this joke is super common among the Salvadoran people of all ages. It is also a very old Joke that is commonly known.

Analysis: The Premise of the joke is to prank the other person by following a storyline of a father killing a pig. The Jokester implies that the father used a machete to slaughter a pig, and that the other person was scared of it, which is why they flinch, emulating a machete swing.

F informed me that this joke is old enough that it is very popular among the older generations. It is a joke that has made its way through different generations and still remains relevant. F said that the joke is so popular in the country, that the mainstream media and popular culture in El Salvador have incorporated the joke in marketing, commercials, and even restaurant names. The Joke uses uniquely Salvadoran slang. The word “Tunco” is Salvadoran slang for Pig. It also uses “Tata” Salvadoran slang for father. This joke is uniquely Salvadoran, and is very connected to the countries own cultural identity and expression. F was not sure when the Joke came to be, he only informed me that it was very old, and that generations of his family and country had kept it going

Personal Analysis: This is a Joke I grew up hearing all of the time. I have distinct memories of my grandfather telling it to me, as well as my mom and dad. One of the reasons it stuck out to me is due to its unapologetically Salvadoran perspective. The use of colloquial slang makes it an ode to cultural expression, and that is very fascinating. Due to the specificity of origin, there do not appear to be any regional variations and Oicotypes. In terms of origin, I theorized that this might be a post colonial joke due to its specific choice of language.

Both “tunco” and “tata” are uniquely Salvadoran words, that are based off of the indigenous Nahuatl language. This pre hispanic language was melded with Spanish to produce much of the Salvadoran slang used today. This leads me to believe that the joke has origins in a post colonial El Salvador. Additionally, the mention of a pig implies a post colonial environment as well. Pigs are not native to El Salvador, and were introduced by the Spaniards. Once again these context clues can be utilized to help bring these theories of origin to play.

Folklore as humor is very common, and can be observed all over the world. It is a clear example of humanistic oral folklore that is passed on through word of mouth. In the case of this Joke, it is interesting to see how specific to El Salvador it is, since there are no other accounts of this joke anywhere else in Latin America. It is fascinating to see how this joke stayed within the confines of the Country, and how relevant it remains to this day.