Language Log

Andrew Clegg asks "Is this true?"

Yesterday, most of the comments on The communicative properties of footwear dealt with the gender associations of the word cute. This linguistic stereotype is often used as the basis of comic-strip humor, frequently in the context of shopping, as in this Foxtrot strip from a few years ago:

And (with a twist) in this Preteena from 6/24/2009:

But in fact, the word cute really is used much more often by women than by men, in modern American culture.

Two Cathy strips on this topic that I've been saving up:

Weasel-speak, as featured in today's Tank McNamara:

There's clearly money in it — and quite a bit of training material out there.

When I tried to read Dilbert this morning, comics.com showed me this instead:

The latest xkcd is a brilliant way to introduce the topic of child language acquisition and cognitive development:

A recent xkcd:

Today's Zits:

Today's Dilbert:

(Click on the image for a larger version.)

I'm not going to quibble about this one.

Today's Dilbert:

Today's Sally Forth:

The next-to-latest xkcd:

Yesterday's 9 Chickweed Lane: