Comedy skit in language description! Talking body parts!

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Sorry we've haven't been posting for a while. Apologies offered, sent of into the blackness that is broadcasting into the internets - with hopes of acceptance and forgiveness.

Also, hello to new followers on twitter, tumblr, blog and the book of faces!! If you would like to ask us something, comment or just share whatever, don't hesitate to contact us.

This time I've got at goodie from grammar reading for ya! It's an excerpt from a corpus of Samoan, a language spoken on the pacific islands of Samoa. The excerpt is from this PhD dissertation: Mayer, John. F. (2001) Code-switching in Samoan: T-style and K-style. University of Hawai'i.

This is only the beginning, in this text the different actors play different body parts and they all complain at a government of the body meeting about 'stomach' (he smells, he makes noises, because of him the gums have to chew and she doesn't like that etc etc). Many motion for the removal of the stomach, but they later decide to not remove him, but just not feed him. And then, because the body doesn't get any energy the all become weak and they have to call a meeting again and decide to start feeding stomach again. 

At the end of the play the actors encourage the audience to contribute to the church and school, to like the body work together. Isn't that nice? 

I want more comedy in language description!

To illustrate this skit I'm going to give you some screenshots from the Swedish children's show "Biss och Kajs" where, well... the hosts "poo-poo" and "wee-wee" teaches little children about the body by interviewing anthropomorphized body parts. (Can we say anthropomorphised when we're making body parts into humanoids? ... well well. either way, you get my point.)




(In case you're interested in some trivia information about the show, it's been used in Russian state television as an argument in the discussions on EU and/versus Russian influence in Ukraine (BBC report here). The news anchor Dmitriy Kiselev has said that "it exemplifies the kind of Western decadence that awaits Ukraine if it decides to join the EU and turn its back on Russia." He's also said, in relation to the children's program that there is a "sharp rise in child abortions, early sex is the norm - from the age of nine, and it is not surprising that child impotence starts at 12 [presumably all in Sweden]. There you have European values in all their glory." In case you wondered, these are not truths.

Also, joking about bodily function is not something exclusive to Europe. I feel like we could make that into a tag.. #examplesfromlinguisticliteraturethatprovesthatjokesaboutbodilyfunctionsarewidespread.)

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